Hi, it’s my day for the EQ bloghop and my project is a fabric book for children. My grandchildren love a fabric book that I made for them from a panel several years ago. Even the four and five-year olds still pick up that book and “read” it. The youngest grandchild who is 8 months old also loves that little book. So, I decided to make a new fabric book to send to the other grandson who lives in another state.
I participated in a novelty fabric swap a few years ago, so have quite a stash of novelty fabrics. Those fabrics plus some machine embroidery samples are what I used for the “pages.” And since this was a special book, I thought it would be nice to have pictures of Mom, Dad, and big brothers on it as well as baby’s name. I use EQ Printables for printing photos on fabric and for quilt labels, so that is what I used for the photos.
My biggest concern was in getting the pages done in the correct order. I can hardly make my printer do front and back and get the pages collated correctly, so actually piecing pages and getting them in the right order was the challenge.
And that’s where my trusty Electric Quilt software came in handy. I took the fabric book that the grandchildren already like and was able to use that as a guide for the pages. In Electric Quilt, I went to the block worktable and created the pages there. Here’s the layout that I used. I set the block width at 18” and the block height at 9” with snaps horizontal at 72 (18 x 4) and snaps vertical at 36 (9 x 4). I set the graph paper at 1 inch intervals with horizontal 18 and vertical 9. I set snap options to snap to grid.
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After that I drew two blocks. I wanted the seams on the side for the front of the page and on the top for the back of the page. Here’s a picture of the two different pages. |
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| The next step was to go to the Quilt Worktable and create a quilt layout that would give me the correct layout for the pages. These are the settings I used. I created a quilt that was 1 block across and 6 blocks down. I set the size of the blocks at 18” wide x 9” tall. |
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Then I set the blocks into the layout. After that I went to layer 2 on the Quilt Worktable and selected the text tool and labeled each block with its page #. Here’s the final quilt layout. Each blue “block” will be paired with the red “block” below it. I selected the novelty fabric or embroidery that I wanted for each particular page and wrote that on a printout of the quilt layout. |
It is now time to cut and sew. The rotary cutting instructions printed from EQ are attached.
Cutting Instructions for Pages: Back-Front, 9-2, 7-4
| Patch* |
# to cut
|
Patch Dimensions
|
Fabric |
|
A
|
Top and Bottom Strips |
6
|
2 x 18-½”
|
Blue |
|
B
|
Side Strips |
6
|
2” x 6-½”
|
Blue |
|
D
|
Center Strip |
3
|
3-½” x 6-½”
|
Blue |
|
C
|
Center Block |
6
|
6-½” x 6-½”
|
|
Cutting Instructions for Pages: 1-10, 3-8, 5-6
| Patch* |
# to cut
|
Patch Dimensions |
Fabric |
|
B
|
Top and Bottom Strips |
12
|
2” x 6-½” |
Red |
|
A
|
Side Strips |
6
|
2” x 9-½” |
Red |
|
C
|
Center Strip |
3
|
3-½” x 9-½” |
Red |
|
D
|
Center Block |
6
|
6-½” x 6-½” |
|
*Refer to rotary cutting instructions for Patch #
After cutting, I used standard quilting procedures for piecing each block. Here are the blocks. I used two different fabrics for the pages just as in the quilt layout.
To assemble the book, I placed a blue page and it’s corresponding red page with right sides together , layered a piece of craft batting beneath the layers and stitched them together with a ½” seam, making sure to leave an opening at the bottom of one page for turning right side out. After stitching, corners were trimmed and excess batting was trimmed from the seam allowance.
The page was turned right side out, pressed and top stitched. A top stitch along the edge of the page helps the smaller children turn the pages. Top stitching was also done around the center block.
When all the pages are complete, they are layered together in order and a single row of stitches is done to create the “spine” of the book.
