June WIPs: Books, Bookmarks, and a Bookshelf Quilt

Little Free Library Bookmarks

Making these quilt-as-you-go scrappy bookmarks is my favorite thing these days! You can tell from the variety of ribbon that I'm even using up all of those little scraps that I've been hoarding saving, too. That rickrack?

It's VINTAGE! New in the package, too! I held onto it for another probably 15 years or so after getting my hands on it, but I think it'll be much happier as a dozen bookmarks than it was moldering away in the back of my closet.

I think the bookmarks in general look cuter with smaller scraps all pieced together, but I had some novelty fabric scraps that I feel like I've been holding onto forever, trying not to waste them but not knowing what to do with them. I'm especially in love with those vintage dinos!

Even though these bookmarks look finished, they're technically still WIPs while I wait on my partner to design some fabric for me, because my dream is to use Spoonflower to print custom messaging onto fabric, complete with the bookmark template as a cutting guide. Then I just need to cut it out and edge-stitch it to the backs of my bookmarks and yay! I'll have cute bookmarks with literary quotes on the backs to give out inside my Little Free Library!

My Too-Long TBR-ish Pile of Books

I normally read a couple of books a week, so I don't know why I'm dragging through those top four books so slowly. I even like them, so that's not the reason!

Oh, lord, I've just noticed that my Complete Letters of Vincent Van Gogh isn't even on this list, and I've been puttering through that one since last winter...

In other news, though, thanks to all the sewing and gardening I'm almost finished listening to A Court of Mist and Fury. I'm really liking it, and my review of it is going to be VERY different than the one that I wrote for A Court of Thorn and Roses, ahem. My favorite part of the book so far is when, near the end, Rhys sits down and literally rewrites the canon of the first book to fix all the problematic stuff. It's not a bad authorial choice, actually! The author also did a lot of work throughout this book to change the perspective of the first book and justify those changes through plot and characterization, etc., but sometimes you just gotta have a good, old-fashioned lore drop.

Bookshelf Quilt

It consists so far entirely of aspirational Pinterest pins:

But one day, ideally before September, it will be a real quilt on the dorm room bed of my younger kid!

Just have to teach myself Foundation Paper Piecing first...

In other news, look who loves the newly power-washed back deck!

Does anyone else's co-parent buy himself everything he's ever wanted right before every gift-giving occasion? Did it occur to him that maybe I knew he wanted his own power-washer instead of renting the one at Menards, and maybe I might want to buy it for him for Father's Day? SIGH! The kids have at various times been reporting to me about actively heading him off from impulse-purchasing other long planned-for Father's Day gifts, but all I can say is that he better not buy himself a single other thing before Sunday!

P.S. Want to follow along with my craft projects, books I'm reading, road trips to weird old cemeteries, looming mid-life crisis, and other various adventures on the daily? Find me on my Craft Knife Facebook page!