Yay! My Blog Books Arrived

Volume 3 and Volume 4 of DianeLoves2Quilt arrived on January 20th and January 22nd. I guess I was pretty prolific this year, since I exceeded the page limit of shared book and had to split it into two volumes. I just plumb forgot to blog about the blog book arrival I was so intent keeping up the momentum on my Simple Gifts quilt and helping my son and daughter-in-law move at the end of January. Then, in March, I forged ahead on my Classic Cars and Overlapping Squares UFOs.

I picked a bright sunny yellow for the binding on Volume 3 and featured a cover photo of myself with my daughter, my daughter-in-law, and my two granddaughters. They were all visiting on a gloriously sunny Father's Day weekend. The dedication of Volume 3 reads:

"The first half of 2014 saw the addition of a second granddaughter, born April 6, 2014. Keeping up with sewing for the new baby and her toddler cousin, born October 11, 2012,  kept me busy."

The back cover is a Dr. Seuss tongue in check tribute to the two granddaughters, who we lovingly dubbed Thing1 and Thing 2. See? That bright primary yellow also really sets off the red and blue of Thing 1 and Thing 2.

Volume 4 covered the holiday portion of 2014. The oranges of the tree sweater in the front photo and the green of the stockings and Grinch Quilt in the rear photo inspired me to go with a purple for the binding. Why not? Primary colors for Volume 3 and secondary colors for Volume 4. Volume 4's dedication reads:

"In the second part of 2014 there was a bit more knitting, a bit more decorating, a bit more visiting, a bit more remembering and a bit more of a seasonal theme."

The rear cover photo features some of the Christmas decorations at our house in 2014.

My post about my first blog book was April 23, 2013. I discuss in that post my lessons learned. I talk about changes I implemented in Volume 2 in my post for April 14, 2014. Obviously I am happy with this company since I have used them for five blog books now, four volumes of DianeLoves2Quilt and one smaller blog book to go along with a gift quilt Color Play of the Day containing posts just about its making (completion post on July 19, 2013). The link to SharedBook is http://blogspot.sharedbook.com/blog2print/googleblogger/index.html. The site is user friendly. I intend to continue periodically collating my posts into a coffee table style book I can enjoy paging through when not at the computer and that I can pass on to my kids someday.

However, I'd like to make folks aware of a limitation of shared book that I just encountered. I wanted to extend making hardcover books to my other blog. I compiled a book over a period of posts but, when I previewed the blog book online, the captions were integrated in, and indistinguishable from, the main text. I contacted the SharedBook help line with the issue thinking perhaps it was a WYSIWYG ... what you see is what you get... preview quirk. Unfortunately, with my caption style, the software treats formatting the captions in a way I found unacceptable. I do not caption in DianeLoves2Quilt so it was a non-issue for this blog. In the other blog though I would need to go back and add blank lines and additional manual line breaks, which was too daunting a task for the number of posts and pictures I had. Maybe I will change my format from this point on and, perhaps when I am bored on a rainy day, go back and play with older posts if I still want to make historic blog books for WanderOrPonder.

But now, I am on to more quilting-centric works in progress by linking up to this week's Freshly Pieced WIP.