I am on Spring Break and so yesterday I spent most of the day in my horse room working on Kate's quiet book.
This panel is the furthest along, but there is still some final coloring and sewing to do (as you can tell by the missing apple on the apple tree.)
The panel in this photo is the one I worked on for the longest yesterday. If I could just use one color of thread for everything, that would speed things up tremendously. The tiny apple took four colors, brown, green, red, and white, and some of those colors only had a few stitches. (For example, the apple's stem had a total of five!)
But I am more interested in making something that will last and hopefully be a hand me down to my great grandchildren and so I put in a lot of work that is essentially unnoticed. I back everything with felt or cotton and that takes forever to do. I also use high quality stitching which means lots of thread changes and stitch-type variations (zigzag, straight, buttonhole, decorative, etc.) But I do think it's worth it in the end!
All the pieces are cut and prepped for the third panel of four pictures. I learned a long time ago (Kate's book is my seventeenth!) to have everything cut out and prepared so that they are ready to go as it makes the assembly of the pages go so much faster.
The grandchildren seem to enjoy the fruits of my labor whether it is a quiet book or their holiday pillowcase set. Kate and Julie just received their Easter package from me, and inside was Kate's Easter pillowcase.
You can see it tucked under the book on her lap.
I enjoy it, too!
