Kona challenge quilt finished!

Sophie with my completed Kona challenge quilt

Cross one project off the WIP list - I've finished my Kona challenge miniquilt! I used Don't Call Me Betsy's bookshelf quilt tutorial to create "Nancy's Library" for my Aunt Nancy who retired this year from a career as a librarian. It's finally complete and I'll send it off in the mail asap.

Back in March (right when I was welcoming baby Ellie into the world), the Vancouver Modern Quilt Guild announced they'd be participating in Robert Kaufman's Kona cotton challenge. Each quilter was given a dark charm pack (43 five inch squares) and challenged to make a quilt adding only solids. I made sure they saved a charm pack for me as I was determined to play along. I didn't get anything done for the big reveal at our one year anniversary meeting in June, but I did manage to have my quilt ready for show and tell at our August meeting.

The dark colours reminded me of book bindings, so I thought this would be the perfect opportunity to make a bookshelf quilt. Since the pieces were only five by five, I had to piece every single book using three to seven pieces. Observant Harry Potter fans may notice a few familiar spines. 

The state of my quilt as of August, 2011 (note stray threads and binding pinned down)

Since all the fun stuff was done, this is where the quilt sat for months. Finally, I pulled it out at the November sew-in and added the sleeve (thanks to Terry for giving me some tips about pulling the sleeve up a quarter inch before hand stitching it down to allow for a hanging rod!) and stitched down the binding. Now, I only had to add the label. I really wanted to continue the library theme and make the label an old school paper due date card. This is what I came up with:

Here are a few pictures of the finished quilt: 

Book titles (thanks to Dean for mentioning I was about to fuse them on upside down!) read:

Red Letter Day by Lizzy House (because retirement is a red letter day!)

It's a Hoot by Momo

Sophie's Garden (a nod to my daughter, Sophie)

Flights of Fancy by Paula Prass

Central Park by Kate Spain (in honour of our family's frequent trips to NYC)

Quilt back complete with hanging sleeve, label, and every square inch of the remainder of the charm pack

Label detail

Books detail

Details:

19"x26.5"

Kona cotton charm pack (dark)

Assorted selvages fused on with Wonder Under

Kona snow as background

Kona coffee (mmm, sounds yummy!) for bookshelf and binding

Cotton/bamboo blend batting

Quilting: outlines just inside each book as well as around the tops of all the books