Toni Federico makes heirloom journals by hand with upcycled fabric for the covers. After years of her own journaling, Toni went on a quest to find the perfect journal for fountain pens and failed at every turn. The ink bled through in every brand-name journal she tried. Out of sheer frustration, she learned to make her own journals. Then, as she put together a pile of clothing for donation to a local thrift store, she realized that she had the perfect materials to make bookcloth. Now a thrifted skirt, a vintage designer scarf, a bolt of fabric from the 1950s, or anything else that catches her eye, ends up as a cover.
Every book is bound with archival, acid-free paper that can actually take fountain pen ink without bleeding through. The endpapers carry her own artwork, a crossover from her freelance illustration practice, and are often designed specifically to match the fabric used for the cover, making many of her journals one-of-a-kind.
Folding signatures is meditative work. So is the stitching. She learned both by hand and still does every step that way, no shortcuts, no outsourcing. Each journal comes from a piece of fabric someone else gave up on. Toni just gave it somewhere to keep going.
Before the journals, there was an MFA and three decades of project management work, which sounds like an odd pairing until you watch her run a production schedule. Now she also co-hosts Two Cranky Creatives, a podcast that skips the pep talks in favor of the truth, and teaches course design and project management through Toni Teaches, for creatives who need both a plan and permission to be a little rebellious about it.