“But You Don’t Have To Take My Word For It…”

2024 Reading Quilt

In 2024, I read 25 books and I made a quilt block for each one. I gave myself a set of rules to help me determine the size, color and design of the blocks.

Once all the blocks were made, the task of piecing them together into a top felt a bit daunting. The color palette was insane and everything was a different size, so I used extra solids to fill in gaps and did my best to create harmony.

Once it was pieced together, I embroidered the book titles on in the same style as they’re shown on the book’s covers and then hand quilted the whole thing with my favorite hand quilting pattern, the baptist fan.

The final fun touch was adding in little bookish slogans and quips to the edge while hand sewing the binding down.

I named the quilt after Levar Burton’s line from The Reading Rainbow. His encouragement to make up our own minds while reading as kids is advice that I’ve held onto into adulthood.

Sewn by Meg Lindsay in 2024-2025.

The Rules

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The Rules *

Every book is a block.
The better the book, the bigger the block.
Colors pulled from book’s cover.
Title embroidered in style of book’s cover.
Block designed to highlight the book’s theme.

The Books

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The Books *

System Collapse

By Martha Wells

This is the seventh book in the sci-fi Murderbot Diaries series by Martha Wells. These books were a highlight of the year, for SURE. For this block, I chose the “Friendship Star,” because the series features a main character who is sure it does not want or need friends, and yet it keeps making them.

I made the star two-toned to give it a bit more of a galactic star look and I added the slightly contrasting squares in the background for a mechanical feel.

I read 5 of this series in 2025, so I used the same design for all the blocks.

Demon Copperhead

By Barbara Kingsolver

I thoroughly enjoyed this continuously downhill tormenting story despite how sad it made me.

The protagonist, Demon, spends some time working in a tobacco field, so I chose the “Tobacco Leaf” block. I did some custom FPP for this after heavily referencing Denyse Schmidt’s tobacco leaf quilt in her book, Modern Quilts, Traditional Inspiration.

Nightbitch

By Rachel Yoder

Sadly, this book was a miss for me. I grabbed it off a little library sharing shelf we have in our office at work because the cover and title were too intriguing to pass up. I forced myself to finish it in the hopes that the ending would bring redemption, but… nope.

I chose this block because I thought it looked like little steak fat caps in this colorway.

Rats

By Robert Sullivan

I first read this book in 2018, but re-read it in 2024 after my book club decided they might as well read it officially since they’d been hearing me gush about it for 8 years. I don’t know how to explain what is so great about this book, but you should take my work for it and check it out.

I used the Rat pattern from Happy Sew Lucky Shop and put it in a spiral in honor of the rat king (don’t google it.) The small yellow square in the center was my very first partial seam, actually. It turned out to be very simple and easy. I’m glad I sorted that out, because I had to do a bunch of partial seams when it came time to put the whole top together.

Funny Story

By emily Henry

If Emily Henry puts out a book, I’m reading it. This one was fun.

In the book, the protagonist has a house that she’s always driving past and imagining her life in, so I chose a traditional house block, using Softpaw Vintage’s house block pattern.

Eager

By Ben Goldfarb

The second animal specific non-fiction read of 2024, Eager is all about how vital beavers are to the North American landscape. It really blew my mind! Also, lots of pages dedicated to the beaver’s anal secretions. Kinda wish I could unread those bits, tbh.

I used Joe June and Mae’s beaver FPP pattern, just simplified it down to a solid brown, plus the teeth, and then I added an HST/flying goose border. This one was tricky because of the lack of color variety on the cover, but I let myself use the gold from the award sticker as a “cheat” on my rules.

Bunny

By Mona Awad

What even was this book? I did not enjoy reading it. But a lot of my friends did! So maybe I’m the weird one.

Yet another animal FPP here, this time using Rachel’s Block Party’s pattern.

The Dictionary of Lost Words

By Pip Williams

In this book, the protagonist is the daughter of one of the creators of the Oxford English Dictionary. It’s historical fiction, so the overall background story of the creation of the dictionary was somewhat accurate. That part was interesting. The rest, not so much.

I used Quilt with Kate’s Tall Tales book block and added the letter “b” from Patch + Dot’s blackletter pattern on the front because the main character has a weird thing with the word “bondmaid.”

Rogue Protocol

By Martha Wells

Another Murderbot book, another friendship star. And before you ask, yes I did watch the show. (Well, I watched the first episode.) No, I did not like it. I was so excited for Alexander Skaarsgaard to be Murderbot, but he was just way too human and emotive! Total letdown.

Ready
or Not

By Cara Bastone

I’ve read my fair share of romance, and this one had one of the more unique setups. Super fun read - highly recommend!

The novel takes place in NYC, so I chose a NY Beauty block, which I’d never attempted before. So super fun to pick out colors and make this. I see a full NY Beauty quilt in my future. I used a pattern from Humburg Creations.

The Wonder

By Emma Donoghue

I can’t with this book. I don’t even want to tell you what it’s about. Really not sure how this ended up in my queue, but its main redeeming quality was the delightful way the author described every detail of the setting.

Set in Ireland, so I pulled from the Irish chain style.

All The
Lonely
People

By Mike Gayle

I picked this up because a coworker said this book is for folks who loved A Man Called Ove, and that includes me! Spot on. This is a book that feels like it’s going to be a little one note, but it actually turns out to be rich with emotion.

I used an improv log cabin style for this one and made the center square dark brown to represent the protagonist, Hubert. The outward radiating strips represent all the hardships in his life that keep him feeling boxed in and isolated. But the log cabin block traditionally uses a red center square to represent the hearth of the home, so I liked the additional layer of meaning where the radiating strips are forming a protective circle around him as if they’re his new friends and chosen family embracing him.

Counting the Cost

By Jill Duggar

Loved this memoir! I never watched their TLC show, but I saw the documentary about them and this book was a great companion read to that.

It was weirdly hard to land on a design for this one. I kept wanting to showcase Jill and all her siblings and parents together and set her apart somehow, but the number of people in the family wasn’t allowing for very even groupings. Ultimately, I’m very happy with where this ended up. I represented her as the center star, shining bright. The surrounding star is made with a low contrast grey to the white background. It is not visually prominent, but the center star is still contained by it and always will be.

Down WithThe System

By Serj Tankian

This was my favorite read of the year, hands down. What an absolute gem of a memoir! If you listen, you must pull the audio and hear it from Serj himself. Beautiful.

Serj spends most of the book talking about his Armenian heritage and educating about the genocide that happened there and what’s been going on in the aftermath. I searched for images of Armenian textiles and found some beautiful embroidery. I recreated a tiny element from one in the form of patchwork to create this star in a circle.

Wicked

By Gregory Maguire

Everyone was talking about Wicked, so I figured I’d read the book. Not at ALL what I was expecting. Gregory Maguire is wacky.

This block is called the “Fancy Contrary Wife,” and I thought the name and the pretty look with the rough edges captured Elphaba’s essence pretty well. I made some changes to what I think the block is supposed to look like so that I could incorporate more color and give Elphaba a bit more complexity. I liked how the book cover was sparing with the green (unlike the musical marketing), so I did the same with my block.

Exit Strategy

By Martha Wells

#4 in the Murderbot series. These covers were all tricky to pull colors from, but I love how they’re all same same, but different.

Fugitive Telemetry

By Martha Wells

This is #6 in the Murderbot series. The next one is set to release next May and I’m hype!

Raw Dog

By Jamie Loftus

This could be my #2 favorite of 2024. The whole time I was reading this book, I was questioning its existence. Why did this get written? Who asked for it? Similar to a hot dog, this book is a smorgasbord of random shit. And yet, it’s incredibly good.

I fear the design is quite self-explanatory. I used this free pattern by The Weekend Quilter.

All Fours

By Miranda July

This book is utter madness. I loved it.

The block is called “Road to California,” which made me laugh because in the very beginning of the book (not really a spoiler because it happens so early, but stop reading if you don’t like anything at all spoiled!), the protagonist begins her road trip from California to NYC and only gets as far as the next town. “Road to California” seemed apt. This was also the last block that I completed, and I loved the idea of doing some simple, meditative patchwork as the final step.

The invention of Hugo Cabret

By Brian Selznick

I got this book at my book club’s December book swap in 2023 and it was my first read of the new year. I was excited about it because my friend who brought it said that she really enjoyed reading it with her son at bedtime. I read it solo last year because I wasn’t sure if my son was ready for it yet, but just this month we started it! He’s loving the illustrations.

I can’t find the name of this block, but I chose it because I was able to make 12 points in gold, signifying a clock face. Clocks are a huge part of the story. This was the first block I made and I remember being really excited about how well the concept and theme and pattern came together. Didn’t hurt that the cover had so many colors to eyedropper.

Dear
Edward

By Ann Napolitano

This book was okay. Kept me interested during, but just enough.

It’s about a boy who is the sole survivor of a plane crash. In the book, an artist creates a memorial for those lost in the form of giant metal bird sculptures. I decided to make two columns of flying geese to represent the birds, and I made Edward’s bird a different color, just like it is on the cover.

Network Effect

By Martha Wells

#5 in Murderbot Diaries. Most of the books in this series are novellas, but this one is a full length novel. Very satisfying to dig in.

Another “Friendship Star.” I didn’t point it out before, but the author’s name is set in a more bright color than the cover’s image, and I used those colors for the center and corner of these blocks.

There There

By Tommy Orange

I wanted to like this one more than I did. I’m glad I read it, but it didn’t live up to the hype in my mind.

I wanted to do some sort of American Indian style block for this one and landed on the “Cheyenne Block,” which is what the outer yellow and orange circle is. I picked it because the author is a citizen of the Cheyenne tribe. Then I decided to add a star in the middle. This is probably my least favorite block on the quilt, tbh. Similarly to the book itself, the finished block didn’t live up to my hope for it.

The Ruin of all Witches

By Malcolm Gaskill

I read this because Kate Beaton put it on one of her book lists. I liked it, but I was hoping for more drama! I guess Puritans are kinda lame.

Only two colors on the whole cover!!! I decided to do some improv piecing to represent what quilts would have been like in the years that this book writes about. Purely function, no artistry. And my version probably still has more pizzaz than it should to be realistic. For all the blocks, I chose a thread color for the embroidery that was used in the block itself. I didn’t want the stitching to pop out too much. However, it’s a bit sad how much this one blends in because it’s definitely the prettiest title!

North
Woods

By Daniel Mason

This book was so good! I listened to the audiobook and I definitely could have listened to that narrator for twice as long. Unique premise with a concept that threatens to be so uninteresting, and yet I was locked in the whole time.

I used two different apple FPP patterns for this one. The whole apple by Full Bobbin Designs and the core by Tomte Studio. This one is definitely my favorite embroidered title on the whole quilt.

My bestie and fellow guild member, Shauna Birkett, did me a solid by taking my big bag of scraps from the front and piecing together a beautiful quilt back.

I told her to do whatever she wanted, and I knew she’d do something great because she’s a killer at a scrappy improv back. I was correct to trust her with it!

(She was also behind the idea to add the “2024” blocks to the front! I used Patch + Dot’s blackletter pattern for those.)