Bookworm Wednesday!

Welcome to the first Bookworm Wednesday of the new year!  This is one of my favorite things about this blog.  I really just love sharing what I'm reading and loving with you all!!

This week I thought I would share a book that is a vital part of my 2012 and this blog - Hobo Quilts by Debra Henninger.  When I started planning my monthly quilt block I was thinking about the final product...just 12 quilt blocks?  Really?  Unless you make MASSIVE blocks it is hard to do much with just 12 blocks...so then I started looking at quilt books that have a variety of blocks with a unified theme.  I found The Farmer's Wife, Civil War Diary Quilt, The Civil War Love Letter Quilt, and Hobo Quilts.  I chose Hobo quilts because, well, I feel rather like a hobo at this point...but also because I *love* that the blocks are based off of actual signs and writings that hobos used when traveling in the old days.  Each book tells stories and shares letters from the people that lived during the time periods of the books which just make them more special in my eyes!

Now how does this play into my year and 12in12?  Well, I'm getting my patterns from this book....only instead of doing just one block each month, I will be doing 3!  The patterns are written for only about six inch blocks so I will get to play with borders and grids between the blocks in construction that I haven't done in a quilt yet.  How else did I know this book was perfect?  There are precisely 38 blocks in the book that are made in traditional piecing fashion...and two of them I didn't particularly like, so that left me with 36!  36 divided by 3?  Why, that's 12!  haha, it was meant to be! 

Since I didn't want to buy the book (because, well, I'm broke.) quite yet, I checked it out from the library and I've been drafting the blocks into this journal so I can write entries with each block that I've made.  I love journaling/scrapbooking about my quilts!

See?  I can draft the pattern (using super contrast-y sharpies!) so that I have the measurements right there with layout for the block, and then on the second page I can write away!  :)  I should also add that these are *not* the colors I'm using, just needed contrast so I knew how many fabrics I would need for each block.  I'm really pumped to show the fabrics soon!