I’ve made several pieces for our group exhibition application that is coming up in May. Our theme is Portals and I showed you the lazy girl’s bookcase, made with great striped fabric, getting ready for my portal…books. I’m not very good at drawing, but I came up with some line drawings that would work for what I wanted.
I enlarged the drawings, traced my books onto tissue paper, and stitched a single line of thread. Tissue paper is quite easy to remove, except for those teeny, tiny spaces where the lines are close together!
This was done on just the top and gave me a very good outline to follow.
The next step was getting it layered and quilted…simple lines to outline the books and straight lines to fill in the bookshelf framing. Then the fun part! I have a great white cotton yarn that I couched down to make a bold line drawing of each book.
The final decision was finishing the edge—binding? Facing? Something funky?
I stepped away for a little bit of thinking time and ended up deciding to go with a traditional binding. Black, so it really doesn’t show up and there’s no distraction from the center.
It might be kind of a clichè piece, but I like it. And I’m not going to make any more pieces for this exhibit…I have gardening and painting to do! There may not be another post for a few days…there is manual labor to be done and I’m just the ‘man’ who can do it!!!
Quirks Ltd. 
That turned out great!!!
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That’s high praise from a librarian! Thanks.
On Tue, Apr 28, 2015 at 4:14 PM, Quirks Ltd. wrote:
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I really, really like the whole idea and your execution of it. Great when things come together like that. Been working on mine!
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It was one of those ideas that jumped full blown into my head. I love it when that happens AND I can execute that idea!
On Tue, Apr 28, 2015 at 7:08 PM, Quirks Ltd. wrote:
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This is really genius. I love what you did with this. I agree, this should be hung in a library somewhere. It would be perfect.
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Sometimes the simple plans work best!
On Tue, Apr 28, 2015 at 12:57 PM, Quirks Ltd. wrote:
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This turned out great!
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It’s a happy time when a picture in your head actually materializes in fabric!
On Tue, Apr 28, 2015 at 12:45 PM, Quirks Ltd. wrote:
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What a great composition…..love the interpretation of the book!
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It’s a piece that makes me smile and think of my childhood goal of reading a million books in my lifetime!
On Tue, Apr 28, 2015 at 9:41 AM, Quirks Ltd. wrote:
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Love the piece, especially since I was a high school librarian in my ‘work’ life. Great job!
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I’m thinking there might be a gift to a library or a librarian when this piece is ready to leave home! Think I should put the word “READ” in the center of the bottom book?
On Tue, Apr 28, 2015 at 8:21 AM, Quirks Ltd. wrote:
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I wouldn’t add it for the portal exhibit, but maybe when you are ready to give it to a library or librarian. It is really effective as it is and my gut says no “Read”. It might make it look like the posters we used to get for National Library Week. My thoughts only; in the end, you should do what your gut says. :^)
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Well, the word isn’t there now, so I guess I really don’t want it there!
On Tue, Apr 28, 2015 at 10:49 PM, Quirks Ltd. wrote:
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