Books Mini

Alright, in my process of grudgingly releasing 'summer' into 'autumn' I am very slowly moving from summery items around the house to ones that are slightly more autumnal - though anything to do with harvest or leaves is going to have to wait a bit longer. This week, I'm embracing sort of a 'back to school' feel (though school is not currently a part of life around here) by inviting some more books into the house -- and as I went to display them, I realized I don't think I ever shared them here!

I'm sure if you've spent any time on Pinterest, or looking at very many sewing or quilting blogs, that you've seen some of the cool bookshelf looking quilts that so many people have been making. Well, in early 2013, I wanted to try my hand at making something similar. Since then, I've lost the link I followed as a tutorial, and I'll admit (but not show you) that the first attempt didn't work at all (they were more like magazines than books, and rather wonky in a stretched fabric kind of way). Although I'm still not sure what I did wrong, I did try again and that time I wound up with something I'm willing to share!

I took a few rectangular scraps from my stash, and a few interesting pieces of selvage I had laying around, and wound up with an adorable bookshelf's worth of quilted books!

My binding job is a little awkward. I really should have removed it after the first issue and re-bound, but instead I ran around and stitched the binding down three or four times until I was fairly determined it wasn't going anywhere.

I absolutely adore these books. I've been very careful all spring and summer to keep any interesting selvage print, and to guard my larger rectangle scraps so that sometime in the future I can do a larger version on this idea.