Sunday, June 12, 2011

Hungry for the Word: How to Fix a Dog Chewed Bible Clasp

You may remember several months ago when Lucy chewed on my little Bible from Trent during our losing streak. I have been meaning to figure out how to fix it this whole time but tax season, May o' youth activities and mission trip caused me to put it off. I spent some time today working on some projects and crafts so I tackled it.

Besides some tooth marks on the cover, this is what Lucy did to it:

There is a magnet in the clasp, so I removed the magnet from the chewed off piece and trimmed the piece attached to the Bible so that I had a flat edge to work with.

Then I made a little pouch sort of thing according to the width of the remaining piece on the Bible and the length it needed to be to reach the other magnet in the cover of the Bible. I used some scrap fabric I had on hand. It doesn't exactly match, but it doesn't exactly clash either. I figure the Bible will forever have a battle story now so it doesn't have to look exactly like it did before.

I slid the magnet into the end of the little pouch thing then pulled that over the existing piece on the Bible. I had already tested to see if my sewing machine would sew through the leather using the chewed off piece. It was kind of weird to have my Bible stuck under my presser foot and needle but oh well, it worked. The only trouble was that the magnet inside stuck to my sewing machine... I just scooched it along and went slowly.

Success! I had no problem sewing through the soft leather and it ended up the right width and length.

The only problem is that the magnet kind of slides around in there and actually has room to flip over, therefore rejecting the other magnet instead of sticking to it. I may slide it to the end where it needs to be and make one row of stitched right below it across the new fabric clasp to keep it in place and on the right side.

So that is how I repaired my dog chewed Bible clasp. Hurray.

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