The Joy of Reading

My son Nick has been a voracious reader since first grade. All through elementary and middle school he read everything he could get his hands on. He's cut back a bit on the pleasure reading in high school due to the large amount of assigned reading that he's had to do, but he still finds time to get lost in an exciting tome once in a while. He has probably read every single Star Wars novel ever published and owns more than 100 (!) of them (he's always used his spending money mostly on books, computer software too). I bet you didn't realize there were that many Star Wars novels in existence...

I found this center panel at one of my favorite quilt shops when Nick was in middle school and finally finished it in the summer of 2006 when he was just about to enter high school. The books and lamp are paper-pieced; then I embroidered the titles of some of his favorite books on the spines and used several of the fancy stitches on my machine for embellishment. It's been hanging on the wall in his room ever since. You should be able to click on the photo for a closer look if you like.

(Here's where some bragging comes in...) I guess Nick's love for reading has paid off -- when he took his SAT's last spring, his score on the reading/English section of the SAT reasoning test was a perfect 800!
P.S. I guess I need to work on a math-themed quilt for him as well...last week he found out that his score on the SAT math subject test (a separate test from the "normal" SAT math section) that he took last month was also 800!