Tag Archives: Project QUILTING

• 8 Comments

•

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!

•

My annual tradition on December 29th is to share my top new blog posts from the year so (even though I didn't post much this year) here goes. Thank you to Cheryl of Meadow Mist Designs for hosting the Best of 2025 Linky Party. This is my 11th year participating by sharing my five most popular blog posts that were published in the current year (plus a bonus list of three more below). Big shout out to Project QUILTING, which starts season 17 on January 4th. I hope you'll consider joining us!

And since there weren't a ton of new blog posts this year, these are my three top viewed pages this year (of older posts). If you haven't checked out my Machine Binding tutorial, that's a personal favorite.

Visit my Best of 2015, Best of 2016, Best of 2017, Best of 2018, Best of 2019, Best of 2020, Best of 2021, Best of 2022, Best of 2023, and Best of 2024.

I'm linking up to Cheryl's Best of 2025 Linky Party.

•

This week's Project QUILTING challenge is Follow Your Arrow. Our one requirement was to include an arrow shape. "Chevrons can be a very modern, streamlined arrow shape. You can find lots of patterns for arrowhead-and-feathered-shaft Robin Hood style arrows."

Immediately I looked for arrow prints and landed on this black and white Alison Glass print. I love a palette of black white and one color. I chose pink and decided to use 8 different pink solids. (These included Kona Azalea, Bright Pink, Pomegranate, Punch, and Watermelon. The others were unlabeled.)

I went with a simple checkerboard layout of 6 1/2" squares for my 24" x 24" NICU quilt. As of Saturday evening I hadn't sewn a stitch. I got up at 5:45am (the new time after time change) to finish up my quilt Sunday morning. Some speed choices in the interest of finishing before the deadline included: single piece of fabric for the backing, no basting quilt sandwich before quilting, minimal quilting, quilting in just one color thread: Aurifil 50wt Fuchsia (#4020) (if I had more time and more thread options I would have used a variety of pinks), chose remnant binding from my binding box, attached the binding with the same thread I quilted with, machine bound (as I usually do).

Tada!

I chose a lovely pink Alison Glass print for the back.

I'm linking up on Kim's blog for the Project QUILTING Follow Your Arrow challenge. One more challenge for the season, starting March 16!

Stay in touch by subscribing to my newsletter.