In a galaxy far far away....

I'm sorry all of my posts have been so sporadic, I feel stymied on my quilt and I'm so close to finishing I just needed to walk away from it a bit because I felt it was becoming quite the obsession that I needed some perspective. I still have about 8 more quilt squares to complete until I am ready for final assembly. I have also been job hunting like a fiend and that has taken up the greater part of my time of late. However, I was doing a little embroidery today and thought it would be a good time to update my blog. After this post though, I think the only fandoms I have remaining are The Chronicles of Narnia, Battlestar Galactica, Sherlock and Star Gate. I also have yet to find a place to get a custom piece made for middle square.

But I digress, lets talk Star Wars. What would my nerdy quilt be without Star Wars? This particular franchise has the most quilt squares because it is so incredibly epic. George Lucas revolutionized science fiction and the world of special effects when Star Wars first came out in the late 1970s. To this day, it is completely relevant and does not seem hokey at all. This is the most epic battle of good versus evil, the rebel alliance versus the empire. So many political and social parallels can be drawn from the world of star wars. My quilt squares are a mix of just fabric, applique and embroidery. So without further ado:
The first two are just some nifty fabric I found at JoAnn's.

Fabric applique of the Millenium Falcon:

I thought about filling in the details of the droids but that would have been incredibly labor intensive plus I was not confident in my own skills:

I love how Yoda turned out! I was going to fill him in with a nice satin stitch but I thought he looked nice against the white fabric, plus satin stitching uses up an insane amount of thread:

This is my fabric applique Ewok, cutified. 

And my fabric applique wookie that is also cutified:

A light saber, and I found this DMC metallic type green embroidery floss. They make a glow in the dark floss that would have been awesome but they didn't have it in store and I didn't feel like ordering it online:

Storm Trooper:

Of course, Vader had to be a part:

And there you have it. My Star Wars quilt squares. 

I would like to take a moment to discuss how incredibly upset I am that J.J. Abrams has teamed up with Disney for the next installments of Star Wars. Come on Lucas! What is going on? This is going to be an abysmally disappointing disaster. We might as well make Patton Oswalts dream come true: 

Next Post: The final pieces! (As there are only a few dedicated to each of my remaining fandoms, once I finish them I will make one final post with my remaining quilt squares before I reveal the final product!) 

Fabric Applique/Superhero designs.

Fabric Applique is a great way to embellish your quilt and is much quicker than embroidering and I'm sure when it comes time to actually do the quilting when it is all assembled, it will be easier to quilt through applique than hand embroidery.

Applique comes from the French Appliquer, meaning "to put on" which has origins in the Latin applicare.

So all applique is is the process of fusing a cut out fabric pattern to your larger fabric for your quilt. If you look up ways to do fabric applique, you will find a lot of different things. A lot of people advise, drawing the reverse image on the back of your fusible adhesive then attaching it to the wrong side of your fabric then cutting it out and flipping it over and you have the right shape you wanted. I found this to be an extra un-needed step. In order to do this, you must find or draw your image. Either use a light source to trace the reverse image or scan it into your computer and use software to make the mirror image then either print it out or trace it. I don' t have the time or the patience for all of that.

I simply find the image I am looking for either draw it or print it out. Once I have my image, I tape it to the front (or right side) of my fabric, then I cut out the size of fusible paper I need and stick it to the back of my fabric (DO NOT PEEL THE PAPER OFF YET!). Then I cut out the entire thing, either with scissors, if it is a simple design, or with an exact-o knife or fabric/rotary cutters if it is a more intricate design. I use Pellon brand EZ-steam fusible paper, like the one found below:
http://www.joann.com/ez-steam/2962462.html#prefn1=isProject&start=36&q=pellon&sz=18&prefv1=false

Once your design is cut out, remove the tape and the paper from the top and you should be left with your cut out fabric and the attached adhesive on the back. Next thing you do is remove the backing from the adhesive and place it where you would like it to be on your fabric square. Then simply follow the instructions of your adhesive to adhere it to your fabric with an iron. Usually, it requires you to take a damp cloth and place it over what you are ironing and then iron it to your fabric square. Then voila! You have just done fabric applique.

These are my 6 superhero themed quilt squares. I went with X-Men, Superman, Batman, Spiderman, The Avengers, and Captain America. Speaking of X-Men, check out the trailer for the new X-Men movie. It looks pretty sweet!:



You can applique things on top of each other. The Captain America symbol for example is the small blue circle appliqued onto the larger red, onto the larger white, onto the largest red with the star appliqued in the middle and then the entire thing is appliqued onto my quilt square. I like using a nice blanket stitch around the border of my applique to make it pop a little more. Here is a good instructional video that I watched to get down the practice of blanket stitching:



Next Post: Lord of the Rings!

Doctor Who!

After I completed my Harry Potter quilt squares, I decided to start on my Doctor Who ones. Oh, Doctor Who, how I love you! What to use? There were some obvious choices, of course. The Tardis, a Dalek, a Cyberman, a Sonic Screwdriver....but what else? I decided to go with an embroidered "wibbly wobbly timey wimey" which comes from one of my favorite Doctor Who episodes, from the David Tennant era entitled: "Blink". I believe this is the first episode of the "new Who" where we see the weeping angels for the first time and young Sally Sparrow must figure out how to get the Doctor out from 1969. The clip which this famous quote comes from is below:



If any of you have been living under a rock and don't know what Doctor Who is, or you have heard of it and have never watched it, check out this comedic Fine Brothers video describing 50 years of Doctor Who in the amount of time it would take you to make up your mind to stay in all weekend and watch Doctor Who to see what you have been missing!



But I digress: back to my awesome Doctor Who quilting squares, I ended up settling on a total of 7:

 The cyberman and the bowtie were my first attempts at fabric applique. My next post will be to address the way I found the easiest to do fabric applique.

 The Dalek, has both split stitching and french knots for the circles. I think I'm progressing nicely!

 I need to finish the blanket stitching around my tardis, but this was another fabric applique.

Finally, my sonic screwdriver is a nice example of how satin stitching can really make things pop, however, be aware of the amount of thread necessary to do this. The embroidery floss used was the DMC light effects embroidery floss. This floss is a little pricier (about 2.50 per skein, as opposed to the average .40-1.00 per skein) it is also a little more difficult to work with as it's not cotton and tends to tangle easier.

Next Post: Fabric applique!