Stack of Books Quilt

I made my first quilt in 2012 (if you’re an OG reader you may remember that Block of the Month quilt). In 2013 I started my 2nd quilt – a “stack of books” quilt. I’d seen one on Pinterest and loved it – at the time I was a librarian and a quilt about books seemed perfect. I could just imagine it draped over a cozy chair in my reading nook!

The quilt design seemed easy enough, just strips of fabric in varying lengths and colors, so I set out to make it. The problem was I was a very new sewist…my quilt from 2012 was all I’d made and I didn’t have a stash of fabric yet to pull from. I wanted each of the books in my quilt to be different! This would have been the perfect scrap quilt for someone who had lots of leftover scraps but not such a great choice for a new quilter!

Thankfully I have friends that sew and 3 or 4 of them donated some of their scraps so I had plenty for all my books.

The quilt top came together pretty quickly, I basted it to my backing, and started the quilting.

Then I had a baby. And another, and another, and another. And started a business and started homeschooling…

…and the stack of books quilt got put aside. For 7 or 8 years I did not quilt at all except for making a baby quilt every 2ish years for each new baby. Once a year or so I’d pick up the stack of books quilt and quilt a book or two, but most of that time it just sat in my craft area mocking me 😂

As my kiddos have grown I’ve gotten back into quilting a bit. I’ve completed a few other projects that had been on hold but that darn book quilt kept looking at me accusingly.

Here’s the thing: the way I’d chosen to quilt it (echo quilting inside each block) was incredibly tedious and slow. I’m in to a chunkier, thicker, colorful quilting look these days. The backing is ugly…something I probably found on clearance at Hancocks when I was first starting out. The scrappy books are chaotic and not what I’d have chosen now if I were making this again.

Basically, I don’t love this quilt and didn’t want to spend my time hand quilting it. I have other fabrics and quilt patterns I’d much rather be working on. Buuuutttt I don’t like unfinished projects and felt like I couldn’t move on to the quilts I want to make until I finished this one. A catch-22.

After some thought I decided the best option was to finish quilting it with my machine so I could just get it over with. We’d have a warm, snuggly, functional quilt to use and I could move on to something I really wanted to make.

Last week we took a homeschool break and I used two of those days to finish up the quilt.

I did straight line quilting across the blocks. Didn’t even pull out the hand quilting I’d done, just machine quilted over it so there’s a mix of both. The quilting is TERRIBLE. So wavy and ripply and uneven and just bad. Between wanting to just get it done and also stopping constantly to deal with a mischievous toddler, it was a fast, sloppy job.

I finished off this scrappy quilt with a scrappy binding and called it good. After a wash and dry it crinkled up so nicely and has that lovely quilt texture.

So here we are in 2023, 10 years after I started this quilt, I finally finished it!

It’s certainly not my favorite thing I’ve ever made but I’m proud of it anyway. It was only my 2nd quilt and I didn’t use a pattern or anything, just looked at a picture online and mimicked it. The fabrics may not look all that cohesive but they represent friends who shared their scraps with me. The concept was meaningful to me at the time I started the quilt (and still is, as I love reading aloud to the kids).

It’s already being put to great use! (You can’t see him but there’s a child napping under there)