Saturday, April 12, 2008

Library Quilt


This is a quilt I recently made for a teacher at my local primary school who is undergoing treatment for cancer. It was a community effort, with each student at the school decorating a piece of fabric representing a book spine with the title of their favourite book. Each book (about 170 of them, from students and staff) was sewn onto a background to create a library bookshelf arrangement. After a lot of time and effort, the final product was over 2m high by about 1.7m wide. A very satisfying quilt to make from start to finish, and my biggest so far. Click on the picture to have a closer look.

My initial idea was to use "wood grain" type fabric to represent the shelving, but when I got to that part I felt it didn't suit the quilt. Using black instead makes the books stand out more and they do the talking. it still looks like a bookshelf. The books were appliqued on in an ad-hoc manner using satin stitch with matching bright embroidery threads, but they could just as easily have been foundation pieced (I expect that would have taken longer though!).


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