Dear Readers,
I had another finish! It is called Story Time. I got the call a little before Christmas that my fake nephew and wife were having their second baby. I call him my fake nephew as he was my ex-husband's nephew. I had made The Guardians , a llama quilt, for their first baby so I needed to come up with something special for this new little girl too. So I ran across the pattern Book Nerd by Angela Pingel. Bryan and Missy got married in a library and Missy is a principal so I know that they must like books! So while I was in McKinney helping Will get a bit more settled, I took a day and drove around to a bunch of quilt stores. Before I went, Will and Celeste helped me think of children's book titles that they had loved as children. I had not thought to bring the pattern with me, and I didn't remember how many books were on the throw size. My goal was to find fabric that represented the books. So I needed lots more titles as I know there would not be a good match for every title. Will and Celeste came up with tons of titles. I could not remember if the pattern had 20 or 24 titles so I wasn't sure how to much to buy so I bought a few extra pieces. While I was driving around I found a cute shop, The Quilt Mercantile, in Celeste, Texas they did not have the pattern tho so I was still buying blind, but they had lots of great designers, Tula, Quilt Apothecary and others so I found a number of things there.
Another shop I stopped at in Garland, Texas was the Rocking Bobbin. They actually had a Book Nerd quilt on their long arm machine.
She had the idea for embroidering or writing book titles on the spines and suggested using grunge fabric for the spines of the books. Her quilt did not have the names on it, as her DIL did not want them. Grunge has been a favorite for a long time so I already had a lot of different colors of grunge that could work for the spines. She also had some fat quarters that were perfect for book covers. we had a good time visiting and tossing around ideas.
So here is my quilt...
I custom quilted this one too. So I took some close-ups of the pairs of books. I also wrote titles of other favorite books in the horizontal sashing and on the vertical sashing I did something different on each row. Just trying to learn more techniques.
 |
| Babar and Frog went a Courtin |
 |
| The Velveteen Rabbit and Goodnight Moon |
 |
| Angelina Ballerina and 101 Dalmations |
 |
| Oh, The Places You Will Go! and Bambi |
 |
| Cinderella and Goldilocks and the 3 Bears |
 |
| The Giving Tree and One Fish Two Fish |
 |
| Curious George and Owl Moon |
 |
| Winnie the Pooh and Mother Goose |
 |
| The Good News of Christmas and The Secret Garden |
On the way home, I stopped in Vicksburg and went to Stitch-N-Frame. Pick up a couple of more fabrics and found a great piece for the back...This is a Robert Kaufman print...called Library of Rarities by Aimee Stewart.
I really hope Bryan, Missy, Addy (the older sister), and the new little baby girl will enjoy getting under the quilt and having story time. I know that is some of my most fond memories as a mother. We read together a lot. We loved reading stories and went to the library about twice a week. Read on!
Terry
Update: When the quilt arrived the big sister, was so excited that she played under the quilt for an hour, checking out the books, texture and design. You can't ask for a better reaction than that!
I had decided to custom quilt it and had watched the videos where Tula had talked about Angela Walters amazing quilting so I did a lot of things she did but tried to give it my own take. I also tried to do something a little different on each pineapple except the ones with diamonds....I couldn't think of anything to do for those. I also decided that each background color would get a different pattern. I was thrilled with how this one came out. 
