Stephenie Meyer Quilt: The Volturi: Clock Tower at Volterra

A deep, booming chime echoed through the square. It throbbed in the stones under my feet. . . . I started screaming as I ran.

“Edward!” I screamed, knowing it was useless. The crowd was too loud, and my voice was breathless with exertion. But I couldn't stop screaming.

The clock tolled again.

. . . “Edward, no!” I screamed, but my voice was lost in the roar of the chime.

. . . The clock tolled, and he took a large stride toward the light.

“No!” I screamed. “Edward, look at me!”

He wasn't listening. He smiled very slightly. He raised his foot to take the step that would put him directly in the path of the sun.
–Bella Swan, New Moon, page 449-451

The Volturi block has turned out to be my favorite that I designed and pieced for the Stephenie Quilt. Elizabeth originally suggested a tower to represent the Volturi, but it wasn’t in the original quilt plans. That kept gnawing at me. I felt that we needed the Volturi represented; they are an integral part of the Twilight world. One member had a baby and unfortunately but understandably chose not to participate, which left her block, the Wedding Flowers up for grabs. Since Shannon was already working on the Bella and Edward’s Wedding Dance block that gave us the perfect opportunity to substitute, and I greedily excitedly volunteered.

I have some wonderful architectural fabrics that I thought would be perfect! And right at that time filming in Montepulciano was in full swing…. I was inspired! I looked at the photos of the tower in Montepulciano and Volterra and really loved the filming location best. It was very inspirational to have great photos of the building with the flags and the custom built fountain. The challenge was to translate that wonderful setting into a 5” fabric block!

I pulled out my old engineering graphing paper one afternoon and drew it out, then laboriously went about figuring out the dimensions of everything. That was tough for me because I had to use increments of ⅛”, which my brain is not used to doing! I finished with dimensions around 11pm and while I was already tired, I was too excited to stop there! So I stayed up till 5:30 am cutting and piecing as carefully as I could. Of course I had to do a few re-calculations, some reverse sewing. There were many tiny pieces to cut, A LOT of fussy cutting, and I hit my low point at 4 am trying to piece a ¼” half square triangle for the alley/side building roof. But when I finally crawled in bed the block was pieced. The next day I toyed with printing out a real clock face and fountain top, but decided in the end simple pale fabric looked better and I embroidered the clock face, fountain, windows, door arch, and flagpoles with the machine, then the water sprays by hand.

My husband, who did read the books and liked the story well enough but doesn’t understand my obsession with it, suggested I put a sparkly figure in the alley!

Next step is to resize to 6” block to include in my individual Twilight Quilt. I might sketch it on the computer this time to make it easier to share!

Originally posted block on TwilightMoms thread: “A Quilt for Stephenie Meyer”

Iris