oh! the big red letters stand for the jell-o family

Recently Jen commissioned me to make her 7 Jell-o books to give to her nieces and nephews at their family reunion in July. I was excited to do it—Jen is one of my favorite people and I would do almost anything for her anyway—but was a little worried that, knowing me, it would take the whole month of June to get all seven done. However, I was glad to be wrong! I made the first two a couple days ago, and the first ones always take the longest: you have to figure out all the measurements, the length of the thread, the binding stitch, and do all the prep work, like cutting the flaps off the boxes, etc. Once those are done it's (supposedly) easier to finish up the rest. My problem is that even if I like doing something I can get bored with doing the same things over and over again and get frustrated that it's taking me so long.

Luckily my ward has a quilting/craft night once a month and my friend Tara reminded me about it so I went. It started out as just me, my mom, and Tara, but as the night went on three more women showed up and it turned out to be not only lots of fun, but also super productive! I finished the last five books in only three and a half hours. That includes the time spent cutting the pages to size, punching the holes, and dying the red thread. Not bad!

I'm not sure how great these pictures are, but I'm quite satisfied with how the books turned out. I'm even excited to do more!

It's a rainbow!

A close-up of the spines. I'd seen this stitching pattern on some date books that Purgatory Pie Press did and I really liked it. I had to make up how to do it since it's different than the standard long stitch binding, but it didn't take me as long as I'd thought it would and I think it came together pretty well! I stitched some boxes with white thread and some with red, but I think (sadly) I do like the white ones better: because each box has two red lines on the spine, the red thread gets sort of lost in the bustle.

The books open pretty flat which is a nice characteristic of this kind of binding.

Jell-o!