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Big Finishes and Little Finishes

by CZeitler

This has been an amazing week, I have managed to finish several projects to put into my shop. My big quilt from the Tula Pink Still Room pattern is finished, the threads are hidden, and it is up for sale on my Etsy Site. It is a bit expensive, however it took a good month to make and hide all of the threads, as well as all of the cutting, sewing, and the price of fabric and batting. Yes, I’m justifying the price but I’m not planning on lowering it. https://www.etsy.com/listing/1555929929/a-little-more-madness-quilt

In addition to this big win I also put up some small items, reusable makeup wipes and a little coaster with licensed fabric.

https://www.etsy.com/listing/1543000588/halloween-yoda-coaster
https://www.etsy.com/listing/1542321850/reusable-makeup-remover-wipes

This has been a great week for me to work on my crafting, in addition to these finishes I have a couple of starts! I started about 3 quilts this week of differing difficulty. Two of them are compromised of squares stitched together along a theme. I am calling the first, that I have already gotten to the quilting on, Love in All Stripes. I finished the quilting last night and I hope to get to the binding and clipping threads today.

While I have t gotten to any home improvement projects this past week, I am now on vacation for a week so I plan on finishing projects indoor and out this week…well not tomorrow. I e got other plans tomorrow.

I hope that everyone has an amazing week and Remember to Live Life A Little More Abstract!

Personalized Bookcase Quilt

by CZeitler

Welcome Everyone!

I have always loved the look of bookcase quilts. I have decided to make a personalized spin on a bookcase quilt. It is one of my annual goals to try to read 100 books each year, I have recently started to allow rereads to count. Otherwise, I will never make that goal. What is more fun than combining those two goals? To do that I have started embroidering what will be the book spines with the titles and authors that I have read. I discovered that I can fit eight to ten spines on a fat quarter. I used a peel and stick wash away stabilizer so that the fabric was stable enough for the embroidery machine. I made sure that the stabilizer was on the far side of the fat quarter, so that there was plenty of room to cut the spines a part down the middle.

Since I do not like changing the thread, I decided to ensure that there were at least one or two other books in between each so that I will not have a huge chunk of the same color spines. There are a couple of series that I decided would be OK if they are the same color, so that is why all of my Shelly Laurenston books are on this fat quarter. I have decided to give myself about half an inch to an inch around each spine so I measured that out and cut each one out individually.

Since we have not even reached the halfway mark of the year, I am not going to worry about sewing the spines together quite yet. It’s probably going to be a couple of months before I do another batch of spines, so that I have enough titles to avoid embroidering a whole batch of titles right next to each other, on the same kind of fabric. When I do assemble the quilt, I plan on assembling the spines in the order that I actually read the books. I have trimmed the tops and bottoms of the spines, so that there is plenty of room just saw them together yet the books are not all the same height.

For a few of them, I have experimented with adding a different color to sort of look like fancy spines. Right now I have them in blocks 14 inches wide and I will eventually add a background color to the top so that the actual block is the same height. This is as far as I’ve gotten planning this quilt, it has been put on hold for right now, until I have read more books and until my Etsy shop is open. My Etsy shop will be opening June 2, 2023 and I hope to see everyone there.

Until next time, please remember to Live Life a Little More Abstract.