DianeLoves2Quilt: My DL2Q Blog Book

Sunday, November 12, 2023

My DL2Q Blog Book - Vol. 19

When Blog2Print had a 35% off sale I seized the opportunity to publish my 19th DL2Q blog book. The site has sales often enough that I rarely, if ever, pay full price. Here are two pair of pages from inside the book. The first pair is images of my "Third Saturday of the Month" outdoor quilt displays. The second pair is my daughter, visiting from Oklahoma, sandwiching her Story of the Sky creation to quilt on my Sweet Sixteen Handi-Quilter. Those glossy pages seem to enhance everything. Blog2Print really does a nice job. I am always pleased with the finished bound hardcover book.

DianeLoves2Quilt - Vol. 19: October 20, 2022 - June 15. 2023
Volume 19 contains 248 pages over a time period of nearly 8 months in 23 posts. I picked a cover design, Mini Print - beige, that blended with the gray Christmas Cars quilt and complemented all the blues of my daughter's quilt Story of the Sky.

The Dedication for DianeLoves2Quilt - Vol. 19 and the subsequent Table of Contents read as follows:

Spectating at the Houston International Quilt Festival starts off Vol. 19: participation in the Stir Crazy Museum Show closes it. In the intervening pages are visits with my daughter and grandkids, sharing sewing and quilting with them. A crocheted cardigan is included, tucked away among small sewing projects and finished UFOs.
- Diane Chambers

I added DianeLoves2Quilt - Vol. 19 (far right, beige) to my shelf with the others. They all look relatively the same thickness, but are not, really. DianeLoves2Quilt - Vol. 8 (middle, medium blue) and DianeLoves2Quilt - Vol. 9 (middle, sage green) are the thickest at 429 and 355 pages respectively. This number of pages is actually a bit awkward to handle when holding the book and browsing through it so I like to keep it to between 200 and 250 pages. The number of pages and number of posts do not necessarily track with each other chart. The nerd in me cannot be suppressed as I show this lack of correlation in the following chart of number of pages in blue columns and the number of posts in a red line.

The number of pages also does not reflect the time period covered. The thickest books do not necessarily cover the longest time period. In the following chart, the red line of "months covered" do not directly follow the blue columns of "number of pages". When I just started blogging, it took me almost a year and a half (17.8 months) to build up enough posts for a 228 page book. Mostly I get these books printed about twice a year. For any of my readers who want to try these books, for me and my post style/length/photos I've learned the following rules of thumb:

200-250 pages is a comfortable thickness for holding and browsing
the number of months covered depends on how long the posts are; I aim for 6-8 months
24 posts makes a one-page table of contents
keeping track of cover colors gives me variety when displayed on the shelf; in my humble opinion, consistent colors are not as exciting and also run the risk of a style or pattern being discontinued