The Bookshelf Quilt is Finished

The glorious day has finally come that the bookshelf quilt is finished!

Its finished size is approximately 65"x95", so more or less within the standard sizing for a twin-sized quilt. I'd made the older kid's dorm room quilt more of a full size, thinking it would serve her better over the years, but with the bed lofted that extra quilt width is really in the way, so it turns out that a twin-sized quilt really IS the best size for a twin-sized bed, ahem.

The grey background fabric is a really nice piece of cotton yardage that I found at Goodwill--our local Goodwills have raised the prices on most items to a shocking degree, but you can still find great deals on fabric cuts.. probably because the staff don't know what they even are.

Most of the books are stash/scrap fabric from my own collection, but about halfway through piecing the blocks I realized that picking through my fabric to dig out the right scraps, then painstakingly cutting around all the other random cut-out bits and old seams and crap to make them the right sizes was taking WAY longer than it did to just sew my jellyroll pieces into books... so I hopped over to Joann's and had the kid pick out a couple more jellyroll sets. I do really like the scraps that I used, though, especially the red/green batik canvas that used to be bedroom curtains in the house before this one, and the Pegasus prints that I sewed a ton of stuff for my horse-loving older kid with, and all the various other bits and pieces of kid clothes and home projects and pretty things long past:

Here's my view from the ladder I'm perched on. My partner is rightfully refusing to help me because I rightfully got mad at him after I'd asked him to help me and then caught him PUTTING DUCT TAPE ON MY QUILT. He thought it would look better if it was photographed hanging, and apparently duct tape is the best way to hang a handmade, heirloom quilt that his wife is barely 12 hours from having completed:

Kind of reminds me of the time that our newborn first-born daughter would not stop screaming so he jokingly screamed back at her, and I flatly informed him that if he EVER screamed at my child again I would divorce him.

And he never screamed at the kids again! Ahem.

I'm the proudest of those blocks with the leaning books. I got the idea from this tutorial, but I think I ended up doing mine a little differently:

The couple of empty blocks were my partner's idea, and it was BRILLIANT. I felt like I could only get away with putting a couple in there, but OMG what a time-saver, and obviously a bookshelf has to have some room for more books!

I still don't love the look of the stacked book blocks, but I do like how they break up the space. They've grown on the kid, too, mostly because she likes to do the same thing on her own bookshelves:

I'm so happy to have this quilt finished, and I'm so pleased that my kid is pleased with it--

--but dang does it make her imminent departure real. I spent most of the summer feeling a lot of anticipatory grief about both kids going away--and pretty far away, too!--but now that we're just about in the moment I'm sort of... I don't know. Kind of in a state of just pushing through and getting stuff done and being sad about it later? I am firmly reminding myself not to get all wrapped up in my own feelings so I can keep the focus on the kids and their experience, but I did also mention to my kid that although I was super happy and excited for her I would probably cry, and when I cried it didn't mean I wasn't happy and excited for her. She was all, "Yeah, I HAVE met you before. Remember that time that you randomly burst into tears, oh, let's see... THREE HOURS AGO?" And my other kid accused me of not letting her out of my sight, which is completely untrue, but yes, I likely have been staring creepily at her because I want to memorize her face before she sails literally halfway across the world.

So, I dunno, you guys. I am freaking out but also feeling like I'm too busy to freak out and if I just hold off on freaking out now I'll have plenty of time to freak out later. But my kids are going to very exciting places to do very exciting things, and they both have handmade quilts to accompany them.

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

Piecing the Bookshelf Quilt

Back in May, the summer seemed so long, so how is it actually so short?

When the summer seemed long, the time that I would need to drop my baby off at college and help her make her dorm room bed, complete with a homemade quilt on top, seemed so far away. Too far away to worry about now. Time enough to start sewing later. June, maybe. July, at the latest.

And then somehow it turned out that it was actually August. Cue quite a shocking number of sewing fugue states!

Probably for the best that I didn't realize how long this quilt would take, ahem. The big kid's quilt is the same size but didn't take nearly as long, probably because the pieces were mostly zigzag appliqued and there was a lot of negative space. The pieces for this kid's quilt, though, were endless and looked like this:

I did them in batches, cutting a ton of strips to different widths, cutting and piecing them to different lengths, and then every now and then getting down on the floor and laying out a few blocks:

Fortunately, I always had my gentleman helper at hand:

So helpful!

Is he not exquisitely handsome in this light, though?

Even when he's sitting directly atop the block that I'm trying to lay out...

Each block took between 6 and 11 strips to create, depending on the widths that I tried to vary:

I also did some blocks that are stacks of books:

The kid and I didn't end up loving the way these stacked book blocks look, but that's just tough because by the time we decided that I'd already cut out a ton of strips for them. Oh, well... not every block in your quilt needs to be the cutest block you've ever seen!

After a while I got a little punchy and just started throwing pieces into quilt blocks. That rainbow book is a mini quilt block that I made during my mini quilt block obsession at the beginning of summer but never got around to incorporating into anything. So I sliced it up and put it here!

My partner took me on a weekend trip to Nashville for my birthday earlier this month, and I found an arts and crafts reuse store to visit. They had even more fabric scraps and unfinished quilt blocks, most already the perfect size to be books. Those mountains in the image below started off as somebody else's project who knows when!

I kind of lost my mind when I got down to the wire, and I kept losing count of how many quilt blocks I'd made and having to count them all over again every time I finished a new one. Eventually, my big kid took pity on me, counted them once and for all, and set me up with an easy way to keep track:

Two episodes of Chicago Med later, and I could lay out 48 10.5" x 10.5" bookshelf blocks on my favorite sunny spot on the floor:

Still to come:

• a proper arrangement of the blocks to look just the way the kid prefers
• piecing the blocks into bookshelf rows
• selecting, purchasing, washing, then cutting and sewing sashing fabric for the shelves and the perimeter
• sewing the entire quilt top together
• selecting, purchasing, washing, and laying out the backing fabric and batting
• quilting
• folding and sewing the back-to-front binding
• cutting off all the little threads
• washing and drying to make it clean and fluffy

See, I'm almost done!

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

How to Sew a Bookshelf Quilt Block

I originally published this tutorial over at Crafting a Green World.

These bookshelf quilt blocks are a LOT easier to sew than they look!

I promised my rising college freshman a quilt for her dorm room bed, something that’s always easier to promise than it is to do, ahem. Just between us, I’d hoped she’d pick the Cats in Space pattern, because I’ve been dying to sew it without a good reason to, but instead she got on Pinterest, discovered bookshelf quilts, and asked if I could make her one of those.

My first ideas were significantly overengineered, based mostly on the Fandom in Stitches bookcase quilt blocks. I even went as far as to check out a bunch of books from the library, determined to teach myself Foundation Paper Piecing to make the quilt happen. Fortunately, though, I also started noodling around with my fabric scraps, and I figured out that I could use fabric strips to make a pretty darn convincing shelf full of books.

It turned out that my college kid loved the look of a plain bookshelf quilt block with nothing but books on it, no paper pieced vases or potted plants or little tchotchkes needed. And it’s certainly going to make my life easier to use the same piecing method for every quilt block! I’m also loving how I can use up fabric scraps, including more unusual scraps like bits of favorite clothes and old blankies and curtains, etc., to make books that also have secret sentimental value.

Here’s a tutorial for the basic bookshelf quilt block that I’ve been making dozens of over the past few weeks. This bookshelf quilt block is 10.5″ unfinished (10″ finished), but you can scale it up or down as needed.

Materials Needed

• neutral background fabric for the bookshelf. I’d recommend something like a Kona cotton solid for this fabric. My kid had suggested black or brown, but unfortunately not until I’d already started and gotten a couple of blocks under my belt, so for this quilt we’re going with the grey I originally chose.
• fabrics for the books. Anything that you can sew and that would feel pleasant in a quilt should work for this. Jelly rolls are really nice to work with, since they’re already cut to a good length, but any fabric solids, fabric prints that look believable as book covers, and most clothing-weight and home decor-weight fabrics can be used. I’ve got canvas, upcycled curtains, bits of old clothes, and refashioned formalwear cuts in the bookshelf quilt blocks I’ve created so far, and they all look great!
• measuring, cutting, and sewing tools. The most time-consuming part of the process is measuring and cutting all the fabric strips. I’m multi-tasking by catching up on Call the Midwife as I work–feel free to suggest what show I should binge next!

Step 1: Cut and piece your first book.

I’m going to assume that your bookshelf quilt block is also going to be 10.5″x10.5″ unfinished, so make your own adjustments if it’s not.

In your block, you want books that are different colors/patterns, different heights, and different widths. For heights, any book height between 10.5″ and about 2″ looks good, and for widths, I’ve been going with increments between 1.5″ and 2.5″.

Start with one book strip that fits those guidelines–above, my purple strip is 1.5″x6.5″.

Using a .25″ or .5″ seam allowance, as you prefer, sew a strip of background fabric short ends together to the purple fabric. I precut my background fabric into strips of my most common widths to save time here. Trim the background fabric as needed so that the finished piece is approximately 11″ (later, you’ll trim it down to 10.5″).

Step 2: Cut and piece additional books.

Pick a new book fabric and piece another strip! Notice how the new book, which once used to be part of a silk blouse, is both a different width and a different height. This is what will give realism and dimension to the finished bookshelf quilt block.

Don’t worry if your books don’t look good together, because as you can see above, you can rearrange them as you go until you get an arrangement that you like.

You can also piece the book strips to look like fancy binding, as I did with the book on the far left in the above image, and you can piece the book strips horizontally so that they look like they’re stacked on your bookshelf. The scrappiness of this project reminds me of the quilt-as-you-go blocks that I love to make!

Your final design should also be 10.5″ wide, subtracting the seam allowances, so keep piecing book strips until you’ve got it.

Step 3: Piece the bookshelf quilt block.

Piece the book strips together, ironing the seams however you like.

The final step to finish the bookshelf quilt block is to square it up to 10.5″x10.5″. If you need to add extra fabric to the height of the block, put a strip of background fabric along the top of the block and it will just look like you’ve got some short books in that section of shelves. If you need to add extra fabric to the width, stick another book on your shelf or add a strip of background fabric to either end to make it look like you’ve got space for more books on your shelf!

With 20 blocks done and 28 blocks to go, I’m so excited about how lovely this bookshelf quilt is looking so far! I’m getting anxious to start piecing blocks together to make whole shelves, but I know I need to wait until all my blocks are done so I can rearrange them until they look their cutest.

And with this method, the blocks are coming together so quickly that I might even have time to Foundation Paper Piece a couple of vases or plant pots or tchotchkes, after all!

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