Project Quilt Challenge 4: A Book

 There may have been issues of interpretation along the way, although none of them were due to the wonderful creators of Project Quilting. It started with me thinking I should choose an influential book. My cats reminded me that I have no emotional depth and my living room is full of fabric and a design wall. They voted that I had to choose a quilting book. At that point the choice was obvious: Mary Ellen Hopkins' "It's Okay to Sit on My Quilt Book." And if you know this book...hello Boomer!

To complicate matters, Buddy read the instructions to say that I had to make a patchwork book of the book, and this was before I remembered that Buddy can't read. But the damage was done...

And just for a little back story...it was my sister-in-law who was the graphic designer for this book...back before books were laid out on the computer. So it is only right that when I put this book together, I got the pages out of order. Of course, I could have photographed it so that it looked in order...but happily this challenge only requires completion, not perfection or even "pages in order."

The original book is laid out on graph paper because it is all about learning about the grid, and constructing, deconstructing and designing quilts. But it starts out with the triple rail fence because that teaches strip quilting.

The page on the right should have been the first page of the triple rail quilt project showing the strips that will be cut. The last photo shows how to sew the strips and the page on the right shows that the strips are cut to make squares.

If you read right to left, you see how you would lay the blocks out in their sewing order. Then the book shows you how to sew them in rows. 

Then we get a look of what the quilt should look like. Then we provide an end page because, well, because.

The book contains a lot more than what I am showing here...but the page on the right demonstrates the use of connecting blocks to create secondary patterns. And the flying geese are a decorative element on the cover of the book.

Finally, here is the back covers of the book...part of the title and Mary Ellen's initials.

And last but not least, here is the book that explains how to make fabric books...and oddly enough it explains how to make the book with the pages in order. And this is where we learn that maybe Buddy isn't the only one who doesn't follow instructions as carefully as they should.