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I love Project QUILTING season. This week's challenge is Blank Slate. I had a plan for small quilts this season. And thought I would use fusible appliqué for a change. And Blank Slate even lends itself to that since I could start with a base layer of white fabric. But... I am bringing you something outside the box! Today I made this:

I imagine your first thought here is that this isn't a quilt. I do realize I've taken some liberties, but hear me out. Doesn't that open book of blank pages read as a Blank Slate to you? And Project QUILTING has minimal requirements beyond the theme:

"Your project does not need to be a traditional quilt, but must meet at least one of these three requirements:

  • include patchwork
  • include appliqué
  • have 3 layers stitched together by hand or machine."

Do I have patchwork? Nope. Appliqué? None of that. But were 3 layers stitched together by hand or machine? Why yes, yes there were!

The longest part of the process was actually prepping the pages for the book. This started with folding all the A4 papers in half, putting them together into signatures of four sheets of paper (which each become 16 pages of the finished book), punching holes along the fold with an awl, and then stitching it all together with many, many hand stitches.

We learned the French link bookbinding stitch, which would be really pretty on a book without a spine covering it up. Then we finished it up by covering it to have a fabric book cover.

I had settled on a lovely medium blue cover fabric with a pretty floral endsheet paper in soft blues, pinks, and lavenders. It coordinated nicely. But it just didn't feel like me. So I went back to the table in class to see what the other options were. That's when I saw the peacock endsheets. In the end, I chose this cover fabric to go with it for a few reasons. It was actually the first cover option that grabbed my eye at the beginning of class, it felt "me" in color, and it would be significantly easier to find laying around the house than a medium blue cover. And it didn't not coordinate with the colors in the peacock paper.

I loved learning all the vocabulary for the different parts of the book. I was already familiar with signatures (the sections of pages -- you can see them below) from my time as a yearbook student and teacher. That little green piece at the edge of the pages near the spine that you can see below is a tailband. The book also has a headband at the other end (not shown) near where the bookmark ribbon comes out. It's similar to twill tape, but has a decorative little bit for the part that sticks out.

It was a lovely class and I have no idea what I'll use my new book for. Yes, it feels too nice to use. I'll have to get over that.

I learned the process of bookbinding about 25 years ago (and only made a few books). With my foray into mixed media collage in recent years I've been itching to make books again, so this was the perfect re-introduction. This book is fancier than the ones I have made in the past. Huge thank you to Sarí who ran the class.

I'll leave you with one more closeup of the cute little peacocks.

Thanks so much to Kim and Trish for hosting Project QUILTING. I'm linking up with the others who have participated this week. There's already a great variety of projects.

For anyone who wants to play along, I'd argue with 11 hours from the time I'm posting this you have time to participate this week, but in case you don't read this until later, the next Project QUILTING challenge will come out on Sunday, January 18.

Thanks for visiting!

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I'm joining Jandi Dean on Instagram for her 2026 UFO Challenge. She's asked us to identify six UFO projects (so hard to narrow the vast list down to six!) with a goal of completing one per quarter. So here goes!

I actually made a list of six last year and finished zero. I've replaced one of those and here's my new list.

Overall I have chosen the low hanging fruit, as you'll see...

All About Angles in Blue Lagoon is a quilt top. However, I need to rip out a section to replace a piece of fabric that I found a flaw on after finishing the quilt top. No idea how I'll quilt it. I'm open to ideas!

Trinket is a finished quilt top. I think I'll do an all over free motion motif on the background of the blocks and in each 4-inch block I'll do some fancier FMQ. First step will be deciding what color thread to use.

Tic Tac Toe is a finished quilt top of bee blocks (from a bee I was in years ago). I think this is the next thing I'll put on the longarm. I think the repeated geometric design will give me an opportunity to make a plan for what FMQ designs to use and I imagine I'll see improvement in my longarm quilting by the time I finish the quilt.

Rainbow Chain is another set of old bee blocks. I set the layout when I was at quilt retreat in November and started piecing the blocks together. (This is the one that got added in for this year.)

Improv Houses is nearly a quilt top. It will require some partial seams and filling in sections to square it up.

Not sure why I listed the Wholecloth FMQ quilt last, because it'll be the first one finished as it is currently on the longarm. I even worked on it a bit this weekend. Then I ran out of bobbin thread so I took a break.

Do you have any UFOs you're working on finishing up?

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In August, Emily pointed us to Bow Bridge in Central Park at spring sunny day by Helen Denisevich for our color inspiration. She asked us to choose two color groupings inspired by the vibrant colors in the watercolor and ink painting. She wanted a 12" x 12" block with a small section of one color group surrounded by the second color group. Any improv we'd like!

I loved the greens in the painting, ranging from yellow-greens into blue-greens, so I pulled fabric for that to be one of my groupings. Then I focused on the pinks in the tree and chose a variety of pinks, light to dark.

My finished block is approximately 12" x 12". The pink section in the center was informed by the shape of my scraps, starting with the largest triangle in the center.

The green section to the left of my center section was informed by scraps that were wedge shaped.

I pieced green strips for the top section, but when that was too boring for me I made a couple vertical slices to insert additional pieced sections.

I love having beautiful, saturated bold colors in a prompt. And the freedom to do any improv pieced we'd like meant that I could just play with the fabric. It was such a joy to create.