The Bookshelf Quilt, Part One. Intro and Planning

I made something. And it’s pretty cool, if I do say so myself.

This is my Bookshelf Quilt. When I was younger, my grandmother made me a bookshelf quilt.  It was stolen when my house was broken into and she passed away before she could make me a replacement.  I’ve been quilting for a while, so I decided to make my own bookshelf quilt.  This one is far more autobiographical than hers was.  Once I finish the embroidery (book titles on spines of the books which have meant the most to me in my life), it will be super-autobiographical (autobibliographical?)

I posted this picture on Twitter and it got pretty popular (well, for me). Some people have even shown interest in wanting to make their own.  Since this project was a big one and I learned quite a bit from it, I thought I’d put together some of the patterns, tutorials, and “OMG, don’t make the same dumb mistakes I did” here.  I’ll split it into parts:

• Planning
• Book Blocks
• Paper pieced blocks
• Quilt, Assemble
• Finishing

So first up, planning the quilt: The quilt is 64″x84″ all told.  I made it using 10×10 squares (the books), which are bordered with 2″ brown strips for the shelving.  All told, that’s 48 squares.  How big should yours be?

Lesson 1: Probably make the squares 12×12.  And don’t trim so much.  More on that later.  Maybe make the brown strips (your bookshelf) 3″.  With seam allowances, that’ll give you finished squares (rectangles now) of 14.5″x12.

This quilt is very scrappy.  The books and other fun parts are mostly from my stash, plus some extra fat quarters and fabric remnants I got from the fabric store during one of their sale events. Never buy fabric at full price! It’s expensive.

I got 4 yards of the background material (the cream color).  I probably have about a yard left over, so I’m happy with that amount.  I got 4 yards of the brown for the shelf and I have about 3 yards left over of that.  I could have (maybe should have) done the binding from the same material and been just fine, because the binding took less than half a yard. The quilt is backed in a lightweight fleece and the batting is 1/18″ thickness, natural fiber.  It’s super warm. I used standard boring thread for the piecing and more specifically quilting thread for the quilting.  If your thread breaks easily, get better thread.  You use too much of it and it’s responsible for a lot, so thread isn’t the place to save costs.

Other supplies I suggest (the links I put in here are only to show what I’m talking about, in case we use different terminology; they aren’t necessarily the exact tools I’ve used and I’m not getting a dime to link to them):

• Rotary Cutter, extra blades and Mat: Lots and lots and lots of cutting. I went through 4 blades on this project.  A dull blade leads to tugging and ragged edges.  I had two cutters, one for my big table and one for my sewing table, and two mats.  This was really helpful when I was piecing the blocks.
• An Iron–a good one.  You and that iron will be best buddies by the time this is all done. Also an ironing board, a spray bottle, and spray starch.
• Flat headed pins: Seriously, where have these been my whole life.  They won’t jack up your sewing machine’s foot or bunch up the fabric funky. I love these things. Also, I got a magnetic pin holder to keep them all in place
• A good square ruler and a good long ruler
• Scissors–good, bad, and tiny: The good: You know, the scissors your mother makes you take an oath on your first born on that you will never use to cut paper.  You’ll want these for all the main fabric cuts.  Although, for this project, these were my least used scissors.  The bad: The scissors you will be using to cut paper.  The tiny: I have my little stork scissors tied around my neck with yard because of how often I need/lose them.  I may have accidentally gone to bed with them on one night.
• Sewing machine: I don’t hand quilt very much.  I have, it’s great, and I have huge respect for the skill it takes. But I also know how my family treats quilts, so we need stuff that’ll hold up in the wash. I got a new sewing machine, but it’s still an almost-basic one, not an OMG free arm super quilter machine.  And it did what it needed to do.  I feel like after all the time we spent together, I should name my sewing machine. Bessy? Is that a good name for a sewing machine? I went through 4 needles and I lost count of how many bobbins. Get ready to wind some bobbins, y’all.