When I set out to do this project I had no idea what the outcome would be. The rules said that the participants were to complete a 6-inch or larger crazy quilt block each month.
I made mine 10 1/2 by 11 1/2 because I wanted to do the hearts and six inches didn't give me enough area to work on. The hearts themselves are 8 by 8 1/2. Now my first mistake was not making my background block larger and second not finishing the edges. The fabric I used frayed a lot. My background blocks slowly lost their square shape. But I plodded on.
I soon realized that a wall hanging was not going to happen as the colours I used in each "block" didn't really all blend well together. So I decided since it was the Crazy Quilt Journal project that I would make a book.
My first plan was to add a matching piece of fabric for the back of the block and use that to bind the edges. It worked for my wall hanging but for a book it was a bit floppy. So I decided to add a layer of thin felt between the block and backing. It sounded like a good idea.
Thankfully before I started to sew all this together I gathered my stuff and I piled it up to see how thick this "book" would be. It was massive and it soon became apparent that the hearts created a mound in the middle and the edges drooped. Pretty ugly.
Plan B.
I sewed one block to a backing fabric and make a square pillow. I then cut a piece of thin cardboard to fit (I used cardboard from file folders that I had at hand) and inserted it into the pillow or pocket or whatever you want to call it 😀 UGLY!!!
Plan C.
I unpicked my pillow and glued the edges only of the block to the cardboard...see pic. I used Aleene's Original Tacky Glue. From my experience it's the best to use with fabric because of it's tackiness and it dries very fast.
Then I cut a second cardboard and glued the edges of the backing fabric to that. My plan was to sew both together using pearl cotton. The problem was I did such a good job stretching and gluing the fabric edges flat to the back of the cardboard that it was difficult to sew together. I had no leeway without bending the cardboard which I didn't want to do.
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Also this really screwed up my plan to sew the boards together at the spine side to make a book. In the end I decided to glue both pieces of cardboard together.
But before I did the gluing I had to figure out a way to sew my pages together. I had some tape in my stash that I've had for eons and luckily I had just enough. I cut the lengths I needed the did a blanket stitch along one edge. I then glued this tape to one of the cardboard sides. This gave me "loops" to sew the pages together.
I then glued the block and it's backing together to make one page. Here are some of the pages finished.
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Done!!!!
