A Quilt Inspired by Books... My Booksy Block #1!

Hi, welcome back! We are officially NOT sick anymore... fingers crossed that status quo will stick around for a while!! I took a couple sick days in the last two weeks to physically recover, clean the house a bit, and do some mental self-care, too. And if you know me at all, "self-care" translates to... quilting!!

Today I want to share my newest quilt project with you. This is called the "Booksy Block Project", which is a free quilt-along (which is kinda like a sing-along, just with your sewing machine 😅) hosted by Amy over at Ritual Quilt Company. Here's the challenge: Each month of 2025, Amy will publish directions for a 12" by 12" quilt block, and then I will use those directions to stitch together a quilt block that coordinates with, or is inspired by, the cover of the book I read for that month.

So basically, the REAL challenge is gonna be stepping away from my sewing machine (and other responsibilities) long enough to read a whole entire book each month. I used to be obsessed with reading when I was a kid, to the point where I got in trouble multiple times for staying up wayyyyyy past midnight with a flashlight under my bedcovers, because I just HAD to figure out what was gonna happen to Harriet the Spy. But then adulthood hit, and responsibilities happened, and since then I've tried and struggled to finish any book that wasn't a college textbook (I definitely struggled with those too, just in a very different way... 😂).

So, with a huge to-be-read bookshelf calling my name and a bin of scraps begging to be turned into quilting magic, let's get started! Click here if you would like to see Amy's original post with the actual directions and pattern for the very first Booksy Block of the year. And then scroll down if you wanna read my bunny-trail ramblings and see an OVERLOAD of my own quilty pictures as I make this first Booksy Block!

Step 1: Read Your Book and Pick Out Your Fabric

Okay, first up, a confession— this book is actually technically my LAST read of 2025. I finished it around 2 a.m. and around 30,000 feet in the air while on the plane to San Francisco during Christmas break (which reminds me... don't let me forget to show y'all some photos of our San Francisco adventures!). 

The book is called "A Coat of Yellow Paint" by Naomi Davis. It's a personal memoir of spunky family adventures and an encouragement to live life joyfully despite other people's criticisms. For example: painting your family piano bright yellow, just because you want to and just because it makes you happy. And then letting that joy drown out the noise of all the online trolls who have decided to wage a war against yellow pianos until their dying breath. 

In a way, this book was the breath of fresh air that ignited this entire blog project that Josh and I both have been toying with for the past year but were too afraid to actually start. Putting your name out there for anyone to see and judge is scary. Online trolls, please be nice to us!! 😂

But really, we have been looking for ways to grow in confidence and this blog is just the right step outside our comfort zone we need right now. Just be gentle with us!

Okay, back to the book. Y'know, the one I brought to all the way to San Francisco and back? ...and then promptly lost in the bottom of my luggage that *may or may not* still be staring at me waiting to be unpacked???

Unpacked my luggage. Located the stranded book. Okay, NOW we're in business. Time to plug in my headphones, pull out my fabric stash, and pick something pretty!

Of course, I knew one of my fabrics HAD to be yellow. And I don't have a huge fabric stash (literally ALL the quilting fabric I own is in the photo above, save for a container of scraps and anything specifically set aside for an active project). So I had a choice between faded yellow bumblebees (which you can see in the back of the bin on the upper right), or bright yellow polka dots. No-brainer. If I'm gonna step outside my comfort zone, I'm gonna do it bright and unapologetically and polka-dotty!! And for the second color, I selected a contrasting plain dark charcoal grey so my polka dots can stand out and have the whole stage to shine all by themselves.

I also printed out the pattern, because I absolutely DESPISE trying to zoom in on a PDF on my tiny phone screen while I'm also trying to sort out all the fabric puzzle pieces with my fingers. If your interest is piqued, here's the link to Amy's blog post where you can get the free pattern for yourself. I'm gonna show you lots of pictures of the process I went through to make this block, but I'm not gonna share the actual measurements here so I'm not stealing Amy's blog traffic. But it's all free, so go get it yourself from her site! 😊

Step 2: Follow the Pattern to Make 16 Fabric Puzzle Pieces

Watch these next few pictures carefully— I promise, this is gonna be really cool. 

The finished block will be made up of 16 little quilting puzzle pieces, called half-square triangles. (You'll see this abbreviated around the interwebs as HSTs.) But to start with, all we gotta do is cut two squares of each fabric, so four squares total.

Then, each square gets paired with the opposite color, with "right sides" facing in and "wrong sides" facing out. 

(The right sides are the pretty ones, the ones you WANT to be showing on the outside of your quilt when it's done. The opposite of "right side" is the wrong side- the side that's just kinda faded and ugly and not supposed to be showing. In the crafting world, you'll see "right sides together" abbreviated as RST, and "wrong sides together" abbreviated as WST.)

So, for our purposes right now, we want right sides together facing in, and wrong sides facing out (for the fabric I'm using, the charcoal grey fabric is the same on both sides. So all I actually need to worry about is making sure the yellow polka dots are facing the correct way). 

Then, on whichever fabric is lighter (and therefore easier to see pencil lines on), I drew pencil lines from corner to corner to know where to sew. Don't worry, this is on the wrong side of the fabric, and the pencil lines will be hidden inside the quilt when we are all done!!

Next up, sewing time! Stitch along BOTH sides of BOTH lines on BOTH pairs of squares. I know that sounds very confusing haha. Here's a picture to clear things up:

By the way, this particular technique is called the "8-at-a-time half-square triangles method". Just in case you wanna add some fancy quilting jargon to your personal vocab list. Wanna see how these squares get cut up?

With my rotary cutter and ruler, I made four slices in each pair of sewn-together squares. Two slices to make a cross shape, and two slices to make an X. 

And just like that, we have our 16 puzzle pieces. Did I keep my promise that this would be super cool??

Iron the seams of the 16 half-square triangles open, and then do a happy dance because now you can actually see the pretty colors starting to shine.

This is one of the reasons I LOVE quilting. There are certain steps in the process that are SO satisfying. Like when all you can see for a while is ugly wrong sides of the fabric, and then the iron comes out, and it's like magic, and all of a sudden everything is pretty and bright and happy again.

Kinda like life, right? We go through seasons of ups and downs and we never really know what's gonna happen next, but we know change is coming, and sometimes the change is ugly. But we know there are brights spots to be found in the middle of the ugliness if we take the time to look for them from a different perspective. (NOT saying that the ugliness isn't ugly in its own right!! But, for us at least, chocolate and a good cup of coffee have a way of making any ugly day just a tiny bit brighter. 😊)

Next up: trimming the half-square triangles. This step is the bane of existence to most quilters, but it's a necessary evil if you want seams that are gonna actually line up correctly in the end.

A couple things to notice here. The trimmed blocks I'm currently making need to be 3.5" square, but also of key importance is that little yellow 45° angle line. That 45° angle line needs to be lined up exactly with the seam in the middle of the fabric. Once that that line is sittin' pretty, everything larger than 3.5" gets trimmed off the sides. Yes, that means turning each block 4 times to trim each side. And yes, it takes forever!! 

The other important thing to notice here is that it's much safer, and usually more precise, to cut away from your body rather than towards it. Something about the outward pushing movement is much easier to control than an inward pulling movement. Ask me how I know... 😅

You can see my trimming carnage in the photo. Normally I don't like to have quite this much waste, but for just one experimental block, it's okay. If I were repeating this one block for an entire quilt, though, I would definitely reduce my original fabric size just a tiiiiny bit so that I would be trimming off less fabric at the end. My fabric is precious and expensive and I don't wanna waste it any more than necessary!! 

On the other hand, the measurements used in this pattern are very handy for beginners who want room for error. If your stitch lines aren't quite straight, or if you accidentally let your rotary cutter slip, it's okay! In life's oopsie moments, it's a huge relief to have a little extra so you can just reassess, shift the fabric a bit, and fix your mistake without having to start all over again from the beginning.

Step 3: Sew It All Together

Almost done!! The photo above is how we're actually gonna sew this block together. But one thing about me is that my brain is always looking for bunny trails. So of course I had to play around a bit with the puzzle pieces first! Half-square triangles are full of possibilities. Here's an example of an alternate layout that could potentially be created with these half-square triangles, just by rotating a few pieces: 

Am I starting to convince you why quilting is so addicting?? Haha. I'll win you over to the dark side yet. Basically, I see a special kind of creative beauty in the endless possibilities and the power to completely change my quilt's design with each step of the process.

But this time, I do actually want to stick to the plan for the purpose of this Booksy project!! So here's my true layout, set up to match Amy's pattern:

At this point, the goal is simple... but not necessarily easy: sew all the squares together, trying to preserve the sharp triangle points as much as possible, while also trying to line up all the seams as much as possible too.

First, let's stitch the blocks together two at a time. No points to match up, so this is pretty quick and easy:

Then, four at a time. We start running into some matching points here:

Here's a close-up photo of what I mean by "matching points". 

See how, along the horizontal seam line, the points of the triangles start and stop at the same point in the seam? (Don't be fooled— I definitely had to use a seam ripper to pull out my stitches and redo a couple of these because they didn't turn out quite right the first time. Just part of the process. 😂)

Next, we gotta sew the sets of four together:

Only one seam left!! Here is my finished Booksy Block #1:

This photo fails to do justice to the saturation of the yellow fabric. It's a super vibrant, happy yellow. But you get the idea!! This is the first time I have had a reason to cut into this happy yellow polka-dot fabric, and I love it. I'll never complain about a little more brightness and happiness in my life.

I'm super excited to see how the next Booksy Block turns out. This quilt is gonna be a bit random but that's half the fun of it. Now that it's February, I gotta go pick out a new book... 

See you soon with Booksy Block #2!!

In the meantime, stay safe and warm out there.

Bonjé

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P.S. Okay, now it's your turn to go do something creative. Whatcha got planned?? I wanna know!