Quilting books

As I was paying for my groceries at Sobey's on Friday, I spotted their free magazine "Inspired" and remembered a tutorial I had seen a while back on using the spine of such magazines as the basis for books. Unfortunately I don't remember where I saw the idea so can't credit it.

You need a magazine with a glued spine - not stapled.

I measured in 3/4" from the spine and positioned my stainless steel ruler then began cutting with my utility knife. The trick here is to cut through only a few sheets at a time so just keep making cutting strokes along the ruler until you've cut through the entire magazine.

You'll end up with a strip like this:

Then I Googled Images quilting books and found 15 quilting book covers that I copied into a Word document. I then re-sized all the covers to be 3/4" wide.

Once that was done, I opened a table 15 cells wide and 3 cells deep. Each set of 3 cells across was sized to 3/4", .12 ", and 3/4". The book covers were then pasted into the second of the 3/4" cells. The .12 cells were coloured to match the covers and the name of the book typed in.

Some of the books are shorter than others so those need to be cut along the bottom edge of the book, not the bottom of the cell.

Here I've used Yes glue to paste a column of three books on the spine strip then used the utility knife (same lots of strokes technique above) to separate the books. You have to be careful that your cut is straight, not angled.

I had more book covers than spine strip so I glued the extra covers on a piece of balsa wood.

The books done  on the magazine spine are more realistic but the ones done on the balsa are much quicker to make.

Sorry the pictures are so poor - just couldn't seem to get good ones yesterday and today.

There were two books were separated on a slant cut but I did manage to recut them and straighten up the cuts so they're usable so I did end up with all fifteen books.

Sometime this week I'll make a rack to hold the books. Something like this.

Weird thing! That album on Fotki says there are 13 pictures but only 3 are showing!

If you're doing a quilt shop and would like a .pdf document of the quilt book covers, send me your email addy and I'll send you a copy.

Haven't decided which I'll work on next - the book rack or get started on the bolts of fabric.