Sunday, November 1, 2015

Industrious Blocks



Please click on the links below to view other Four In Art Quilts.


Catherine Chisholm http://www.knottedcotton.com
delayed due to house flood

Elizabeth Eastmond http://www.opquilt.com





______________________________

Betsy & Ben
Were Industrious Blocks


The Front

The Back

This projects' inspiration came from a children's book called
THE BLOCK BOOK
By Susan Arkin Couture
Illustrated by Petra Mathers

I picked this book up at an overstock book sale in Ann Arbor, Michigan
The book has become a family favorite over the years.
We've read it so many times my husband and I have the 
entire book memorized. Here are a few photos of the book. 





For this project I wanted to make a giant letter B. 
The lead characters in the book are named Betsy & Ben
and they are industrious blocks. So I opened up Illustrator and scrolled
through my fonts until I found a block that I felt suited Betsy & Ben. 


I set up my document page as 13"x13" and tiled the print.
I taped it together then cut out the individual pieces for each piece of fabric. 


I then designed some fabric in Illustrator with the text from The Block Book. 
I managed to use every single word from the book. 
I decided this fabric would be used as background fabric.  


I chose to use the following fabrics for the letter B. 



Here's the metamorphosis of the letter B.





Once I completed the letter B I realized that the mini quilt 
didn't convey any of the fun quirky qualities about the book. 
So I decided to make the letter B the back of the 
quilt and illustrate one of the images from the book.
In the story a neighbor's house burns down. 
Not much of the burning house is shown in the book
 so I decided to illustrate it. 


Here are the beginnings of the burning house.


I wasn't quite sure how to show flames coming out of the house, 
but I happened to have chili pepper fabric on hand. 
Chili's by the way, are HOT.






I wanted a narrow binding, and totally goofed on how wide to cut it, so I ended up rolling the binding under on the backside towards the raw edge of the quilt.