Quilt of Books

My dear friends decided that they wanted to combine DNA. I was and am very excited for them. They live in the harsh New England area and it is said to get a fair bit brisk there than it does in my location.  I had this brilliant idea that I would make them a book quilt.  Books are unisex and everyone of any size and shape can enjoy them and they can grow with you and help you grow.
Quilts are warm and help you survive through the winter.  It was a perfect combination in my mind.

The only hitch in that plan, is that while I have done quilts in the past, I haven't really done a quilt.  Normally my mother and I will work on a quilt together. My job normally has something to do with the acquisition of fabric and supplies and the manual labor of hand tying it when it has been assembled.  My job has never been the math in the quilt, until now.  My mother was unavailable to assist in this adventure, and with the help of some creative excel spreadsheet mapping, I had a plan and some math flushed out.

Where The Wild Things Are

The plan was simple.  I have one large block that I draw a book cover on and then I have color block around the side of it. Then it all gets sewn together on a flat sheet with batting and add a border. It would test not only my artistic skills, but my limited sewing skills. It was a simple plan and I gave myself two weeks to get it accomplished in time for their shower.

The beautiful thing about math, is that number don't lie, however if you ignore them or perhaps don't pay attention to them, then things get a little interesting. All off that math I spent a day mapping out turned out to be mostly useless, because I bought the wrong sheet size in my supplies gathering, and had to wing it from there on out.

I could go through the ins and outs of what it takes to make a quilt and how much fun it is to try and do anything with a super helpful cat that thinks that it is his job to lay on everything or chew on any of the strips of fabric, but I won't.  I had promised that I would give a guide to the book covers that was used on the blanket. This is that guide. From the top row, where Iggins is standing going left to right is the following:


1. The Hobbit
2. Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy
3. Brisinger
4. Pride & Prejudice
5. Dune
6. Moby Dick
7. Alice in Wonderland
8. Don Quixote
9. Disc World (I couldn't choose just one book!)
10. The Last Unicorn
11. Harry Potter (Again I couldn't pick just one!)
12. We Have Always Lived in the Castle
13. Peter Rabbit
14. Where the Side Walk Ends
15. Where the Wild Things Ate
16. Sherlock Holmes (Okay so maybe there are several book series on here, but they were needed!)
17. Game of Thrones
18. Batman (Frank Miller's Batman was one of the first graphic novels according to my husband and everyone needs Batman in their life.)
19. The Phantom Tollbooth.
20. The Lion, The Witch & The Wardrobe  21. Charlie & The Chocolate Factory.

I had a lot of fun working on this, and while it might not be a perfect quilt with all the straight lines and defined lines that my mother would have done, but I am still proud of it.  It was fun to think about what sort of books should be on the quilt and whether or not I could mimic any of the art. My husband was a great support in looking for images for inspiration and listening to him campaign as to which books he felt should be on the quilt.  If anything my friends have a reading list they can pass down to future generations.