Birthday Bunting

I made some tiny pennants (or bunting as the Brits call them) for my friend, Ramona's birthday.

Here they are all lined up on the ironing board with the iPhone for comparison.  They are just raw cuts that I then stamped letters on and sewed together on a thin piece of ribbon.

These are the stamps that look like typewriter letters.  I made a card, too.  Quilted Librarian is off to school.

Beginning the new year with some little projects

Now that my niece's quilt is finished and on the way to her, I'm starting out the new year with some little projects.  I made two sets of these little pennants using Christmas fabric for my two dear friends here who are sisters.  They have little loops on each end so they can be hung on the tree.  I made a set for our tree, too.

I decided to make a set for Safety Pin Studio using some of the safety pin fabric in my stash.  I made them just like the large pennants but rather than using bias tape to string them, I just zigzag the raw top edges to the ribbon.

Speaking of stash, I've been hoarding all of these gorgeous William Morris reproduction fabrics for years and I finally decided to use one of them to make a cloth shopping bag for Anna.  Here's hoping your new year is happy, healthy, and productive.

Pennants on display

Here are the pennants on display.  It was tough to get a good picture without reflections.

Chatting with SLIS students

When I was in library school at Indiana University's School of Library and Information Science, my favorite courses were taught online by Dr. Annette Lamb and Dr. Larry Johnson.  Not only were they challenging and informative, they were also fun.  Last year at the AASL conference in Charlotte, I had the distinct pleasure of meeting both of them in person for the first time.  Recently, Larry asked me to serve as a virtual visiting professional and dialogue with the students in his Library Media Specialist class via their class blog.  In honor of that, I thought I would feature the One Million Books quilt that hangs in my office at school and a new set of pennants I'm making for the library media center.

"

 Using the same technique that I employed for the letters of the OMB quilt, I cut out letters to spell out, "Read one million books." Black seemed to be the best background color for the pennants themselves.  The pattern was developed last summer when I made a string for Anna and Matty's wedding. For the moment, I think they will hang in the display case outside the library media center.  

While my blog is called The Quilted Librarian, it tends more toward the "quilt" end of the spectrum than the "librarian" end, but, on occasion, I do let my inner librarian/information specialist speak.  In this post, I talked about the unique and useful information provided by tracking one's blog. The importance of titling and tagging a blog were the subjects of this post.  My first experiences with Twitter are discussed in this post.  Banned Books Week rated a post, too. This post involves my responses to a reading meme.  You can look through the labels to the right for other library-related topics.

Technology and social media figure into what I do every day.  When I create a new blog post, it's automatically Tweeted and appears as a wall post on my Facebook page. I keep up with news and what's happening in the various blogospheres with Google Reader.  A digital camera is always in my purse as is my iPhone.  

I love reading about how many school librarians are using cutting-edge technologies with their students and it makes me wish that my own students had more access to technology.  The digital divide is unfortunately very real and it's going to take lots of money to make things more equitable.  I've had two very different job experiences as a library media specialist--the first in a small, rural corporation with lots of technology and a strong budget for materials and the second in a sprawling, urban corporation with very little technology and an almost non-existent materials budget. I'm sure the SLIS students will have lots of good questions.  Hopefully, I will be able to provide some insightful answers.

Pennants and porch quilting: a weekend round-up

The morning has been spent moving between Safety Pin Studio and the screened porch.  I made the bias tape for the pennants since I had all of the "READ" pennants finished.

Here's the R going on the raw edge of the bias.

Once the pennants are sewn down to the raw edge, it is pressed up and the other raw edge (that's been pressed under one-quarter inch) is brought over to cover the first stitching and pinned down.

The second edge of tape is topstitched through all the layers and grommets are added to each end so the string is ready to hang.

Making some personalized wedding decorations

Since these pennants are meant to be a surprise for Anna, I'm scheduling this post for the week of the wedding. I've been seeing pennants on so many of the blogs and I got to thinking that it would be a great way to decorate the screened porch along with the little Japanese lantern lights.

I drew an isoceles triangle as a pattern and started through my stash of purple fabrics. I decided to alternate light and dark for the pennants and the letters and the lining of the pennants.



I ironed Wonderunder© on the back of fabric scraps to cut out the letters.



I made a length of continuous bias tape from which to hang the pennants.
They say "Best wishes Anna & Matty!" A pennant with a heart separates the first two words and the ampersand separates their names.



Here are all the rest of the pennants cut out and waiting to be sewn together.



All finished! The top row shows the pennants from the back and the bottom row is the front sides.

Anna came up with a very clever design for the table tents.  She and Matty decided to name the tables rather than just put numbers on them.  They are named after places that are special to both of them.

This is one of the table tents all finished.

Anna punched all the holes in the programs and hammered the snaps, too.  I trimmed them all.

A stack of finished programs.