The Yellow Daisy Festival Online Market begins on Tuesday, Sept 8th. In celebration of this, I’m making some posts about the quilts I have ready to go. Each day I’ll feature two or three quilts and tell about their process and what I like most about them. These and other quilts can be found in the Quest Quilts shop on this website or in my Etsy shop.
These were some fun wall hangings I made to resemble a bookshelf. I made too many “books” for a bookshelf quilt a while back, and they’d been sitting around for a while. Originally I was going to make another larger quilt, but the idea of a smaller wall hanging was too tempting.
When I made these, I had in mind that someone could take them and get them personalized with their favorite book titles. I imagined them in a classroom or even in an office or library. I went ahead and put hanging loops at the top, so a cafe rod would be perfect.
I’ve sold a third one already, and the friend who bought it did end up getting titles embroidered. It looks gorgeous!
She took it to a local shop and got all her favorite titles embroidered. I love the final look!
I have made a lot of bib and burp cloth sets over the Thanksgiving Break in anticipation for my last show. I figured I’d post some pictures below. Prices listed in the picture caption. Please add $4 for shipping. If you’re interested in one, email me about it at the new email address: kira@questquilts.com.
A friend from church approached me about making a quilt for the church retreat in October. When I heard that the theme was “Connecting Through Stories”, I just knew which quilt design I wanted to do. I’d had my eye on a bookcase quilt for ages and wanted to give it a try, so I used this as an opportunity to finally make one.
I started by cutting my scraps into various strips of width and length. I did stick to fabrics that I felt someone would be able to write on and be easily visible. Of course, every once in a while I threw in a darker color for balance.
Then I sewed those scraps into large pieces of white muslin and trimmed them all to be about 12.5″ long. From there, I sewed the “books” into blocks of roughly 12.5″ square.
Scraps for a bookshelf quilt
I also used some of the particularly smaller “books” to make stacks.
The hard part came when I knew I needed to make about four books that leaned. I did this by attaching white fabric all the way around and then using my grid to skew the cut, making sure to leave .25″ of white at the corners so that my book didn’t look like it was sinking into the shelf.
From there I made my “shelf”.
I did find a nice wood grain fabric at JoAnn’s, and I used it for the shelf. The wood grain fabric was pretty pricey, though, so I went with a more cost-effective brown fabric for the back since it would be in a wall anyway.
I decided to only quilt on the wood grain fabric since the shelves and books needed to be open for signatures, but I do think I’ll go back and quilt those sections at least a little before all is said and done.
I did have one large brown block in the center of the shelves. This actually isn’t a book but rather a frame. My idea was to take a group picture of everyone at the retreat, print it on fabric, and then make it look like a photograph on the shelf.
The last step was to add a hanging sleeve. I can’t wait for everyone to see it at the retreat!
Occasionally I like to raid used book stores with the zealousness of a Norse Invader on the British coast. But it isn’t just any old book I go for. I like the good stuff. The Norton Critical editions.
And today I hit a gold mine! Normally I’ll haul in one or two. But today resulted in a whopping EIGHT Norton Criticals of varying ages.
I also snagged some other goodies as well.
These are going to look so pretty in my classroom.
Quest Quilts 
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