Hello Little One

Hello Little One has a special meaning for this grandchild. She was born January 11, but I had yet to meet her due to COVID-19 social distancing precautions. She is three months old now and I have just met her. 

This cloth book is made from a Bambi panel I bought at my very last quilt and craft show before COVID-19 put those gatherings on hold. The art work was so soft and gentle I thought I might cut apart the pages and make each into a quilt block. I changed my mind when I realized the quilt would be monotone and not as appealing to a child as I might hope. I decided to stay with its intended use as a cloth book. But I chose to add a bit of pizzazz by inserting some crinkle material within the pages. My youngest granddaughter's oldest sister loved that as a baby. I put crinkle within the inner pages only, not in the cover. Why you ask? A very logical reason. I made the cover first and forgot that was what I intended to do. Duh.

As I paged through the finished book I admired once again the delicate artwork. Although not very visible in the photos, the pages do alternate between pale and medium toned aqua.

I have made many cloth books but in my post for 3/24/13, I included instruction. Tips included

• Rough cutting pages first
• Stretching on bias to square up book
• Leaving final precise cutting to do through all three layers with batting
• Size of turning opening
• Preferred edge crisping tool
• Spine sewing process

As with most panels there is some surrounding fabric that contains printed instructions in black and white; but many panels also contain miniature color pictures as means of illustrating the finished product. I cannot bring myself to throw those out. For a while I considered how I could make the surrounding scraps from this panel into a rattle or a crinkly stuffed toy of some sort, but then stopped myself from going overboard. I folded them up and stored them away with my other scraps in their various disorganized locations. Besides these miniature instructional diagrams there is also often a border that runs around a panel. I save those, too.

Then I had an idea that I would like to revisit some day. People make T-shirt quilts to gather life time experiences. Perhaps I can gather these bits of miniature images from doll, animal, book panels and borders and make a Grandma baby memory quilt. I might have to appliqué each to a block, but I think I can rise to the occasion. Now I am about to make a mess, finding and gathering all those leftovers I was too chicken to throw out but too lazy to store logically. Sound familiar? The next collage is an indication of just how many of those scraps I have.