Breaking Dawn Charity Quilt

Twi-Quilters are proud to bring you the Breaking Dawn Give-to-Win Charity Quilt fundraiser.

Last year, our Eclipse charity quilt raised $1,729.00 for Alex's Lemonade Stand Foundation. With your help, we hope to raise even more than last year.

This year, we have decided to pledge donations to two charities: Alex's Lemonade Stand and Childhelp. Our group members have donated all the fabrics and supplies, as well as our time, to create this quilt, which includes scenes from Breaking Dawn, as well as autographs from eight cast members, including Peter Facinelli, who plays Carlisle Cullen and is a spokesperson for ALSF, and BooBoo Stewart, who plays Seth Clearwater and is an ambassador for Childhelp.

For every $5 donation from you, which will be split evenly between the two charities, you’ll get one chance to win the quilt. So please give generously. Donations will be accepted through January 31, 2012 and the winner will be announced by February 7, 2012.

Read more about the individual blocks:

Alice: Vampire Bat in the Belfry by Colleen
Alice's Note by Nicole
The Amazon Coven by Nicole
Aro's Gift by Angie
Bella & Edward's Cottage by Beth
Bella & Edward's Wedding by Mel
Bella's First Hunt by Beth
Bella's Shield by Iris
Bella's Transformation by Jerri Lynn
Cast Member Autographs
Cravings by Angie
The Denali Coven by Joyce
Eggs by Kate
The Egyptian Coven by Nicole
Feathers by Cat
The Hybrids by Joyce
The Irish Coven by Jerri Lynn
Isle Esme by Cat
Jacob & Renesmee by Elizabeth
Jacob & Rosalie's Rivalry by Kate
Jason Scott, Attorney at Law by Wanda
Midnight Swim by Kate
The Nomads by Joyce
Renesmee by Joyce
The Romanian Coven by Joyce
The Wolf Packs by Elizabeth

For more information about the charities, click on the buttons below.

Breaking Dawn Charity Quilt: Cast Member Autographs

Have we mentioned? We've got autographs in our Breaking Dawn Charity quilt! Eight of them! Kate went to Twi-Con and finagaled some signatures. Among them are Peter Facinelli, who plays Carlisle Cullen and is a spokesperson for Alex's Lemonade Stand Foundation, and Booboo Stewart, who plays Seth Clearwater and is an ambassador for Childhelp. Have a look at who else "signed our quilt."

The quilt is nearly finished and we're excited to show you. We'll have photos up in the next few days. In the meantime, remember that each $5 donation you make, which will be split evenly between the charities, gives you a chance to win the quilt. So give generously and give often.

A Quilt for Little Peanut

We love to quilt. And not just Twilight. In early 2010 we discovered that our cute little Mel was expecting, so we started planning a quilt for her new little one. While she was pregnant she called him, Little Peanut, so we decided on an elephant/peanut theme for the quilt. Nicole headed up this project, setting the layout, choosing fabrics for the border and sashing and assembling the blocks. She did a really fabulous job! Mel's sweet little baby boy was born on October 1, 2010. This post is long overdue, but we still wanted to share this fun group project.

Mel had this to say about the quilt, Last year, for my 29^th birthday, I received a totally wonderful and unexpected present. A quilt, handmade by my very special Twilight Quilters friends! It made my day to open up the package and find that beautiful quilt, made just for my little baby. I got very emotional, to the point where I called my husband at work and sobbed. Owen has loved his one-of-kind present from the start. (And let me share a little secret . . . I used it a few times myself! And it's really snuggly!!!) This is something I will treasure for the rest of my life, and I feel truly blessed to have such wonderful friends, even if they all live hundreds and hundreds of miles away from me.

Elizabeth
I thought a quilt with elephants needed a few jungle trees. I used a rubber stamp as my 'pattern' for the trees. I stamped the image onto paper, scanned it, enlarged it and then also reversed it so that I had trees going in both directions. I did raw-edge appliqué using Heat 'n Bond and did a machine blanket stitch around the trees. Then I did a bit of messy free-motion stitching to add a few details to them. The background fabric was a FQ that Wanda sent to me for my birthday, and I thought it was perfect for the trees. These were a lot of fun to make.

Wanda
This is tiny version of a wall hanging I made my own grandson. It's ironed on and machine stitched. The E is for elephant as you can see! I absolutely loved the peanut and elephant theme of this quilt. It was so fun to be a participant.

Joyce
To make this design, I looked at quite a few pictures of real and cartoon elephants. Elephants have fairly simple shapes when broken down, so it wasn't very hard. I loved the background fabric because it was so bright and fun and looked 'jungle-y' to me. The elephant pieces were cut out and fused, then appliquéd. I added the eyes, and the block was complete. I think he's cute and fun (and will probably get into some mischief)!

Nicole
I did my block with a free pattern I found online. It was originally for a political elephant, but I used green and blue instead of grey and red! I just thought he was a cutie. It was one of my first advanced paper piecing squares.

Joyce
Since he was her 'little peanut,' I wanted to make a pile of peanuts. I drew a variety of peanut patterns in different sizes and shapes, then sorted through all my yellows and browns (and took a little shopping trip, too) looking for 'peanut-worthy' fabric. For the background fabric, I used a dotted swiss from my stash. I chose a 'grassy' print for the peanuts to rest on, then arranged and rearranged the peanuts until I was happy with the design. I appliquéd them layer by layer until it was complete.

Kate

Iris
My little guy was inspired by some baby blankies I've seen lately and a stuffed animal picture I saw online. Very contemporary, minimalist elephant. And he had to have a little birdy buddy cuz I'm into birdies lately and I wanted to add some diversity to the quilt. I used a white on cream background I've had for at least 10 years, purchased at a JoAnn's, and the other fabrics came from my LQS within the past year. Very contemporary boyish colors, which I don't get to use much having two daughters! Both elephant and birdie are raw edge appliquéd using my favorite double sided fusible web, "Lite Steam-A-Seam 2," and blanket stitched with the machine. I really enjoyed making these cuties!

Jerri Lynn (Grey Elephant)

Kate

Angie
I made the 'silly peanut'. I had such a hard time finding a pattern I wanted to use and I don't have ANY pattern designing skills! Plus, Mel is the silly one in our group so I just knew I didn't want to do something ordinary. I found a pattern that was intended for making a Father's Day card out of paper and and fudged it as appliqué. I used a new technique that I learned in a workshop a few months back to mimic needle turn, then I cut small 'spots' and raw edge stitched them to the body to create some depth. I was going to stop there but the card pattern had arms and legs that stuck out and flopped around so I used some ultra suede and made some that sort of resembled limbs. You would think that I would think to myself, "is this going to make it hard to quilt?" But I didn't. It was my problem to quilt it anyway so at least I only made it harder on myself .

Cat
For this block I used a modified version of a Margaret Rolfe pattern. Margaret Rolfe is an Australian quilt pattern designer and a lot of her patterns lend themselves to being done using American Paperpiecing* or foundation piecing techniques.

The main part of the elephant is done using one of my favourite batiks. The pattern effect of this fabric gave me the feeling of wrinkled elephant skin. For the background I wanted something bright and vibrant with an almost circus feel. I also wanted something to feel like it came from the Twilight quilters group in a subtle way. I could remember on the chicken themed quilt made for my Eoin (pronounced Owen) earlier by the group, that one of the ladies had a chicken driving a silver car. That was my Edward chicken in his silver volvo! So for my the ribbon motive on the red background made me think of the Eclipse Ribbon without being overty Twilight themed. That was my little subtle Twilight imput to the quilt.

*I live in Australia and in Australia a lot of books call the British Paperpiecing methods as Paper Piecing, although the two methods are quite different.

Jerri Lynn (Grey Elephant)

Wanda
This polka dot elephant is an iron on version of a block I saw in a book of vintage quilts. I thought it was so whimsical and cute and loved that I found the polka dot fabric for it. I stitched around it with my machine and voilà it was done!

Angie
To quilt it, I did a swirling pano pattern that covered the whole top. I knew I wanted to use something soft that a baby would like to touch on the back. The fabric stores where I live leave something to be desired so I couldn't find a minkie color that I liked and I loved the idea of a silky backing so I opted for a lightweight satin on the back. I know that the color is not exactly 'baby-like' but I thought it complimented the front. I hope he gets lots of fun out of it!

And here is the Little Peanut, with his new quilt.

Breaking Dawn Charity Quilt: Aro's Gift

The present itself was not overtly threatening. Extravagant, yes, almost frightening in that very extravagance. The threat was in the parting line of Aro's congratulatory note, written in black ink on a square of heavy, plain white paper in Aro's own hand:

I so look forward to seeing the new Mrs. Cullen in person.

The gift was presented in an ornately carved, ancient wooden box inlaid with gold and mother-of-pearl, ornamented with a rainbow of gemstones. Alice said the box itself was a priceless treasure, that it would have outshone just about any piece of jewelry besides the one inside it.

The necklace was simple—gold woven into a thick rope of chain, almost scaled, like a smooth snake that would curl close around the throat. One jewel hung suspended from the rope: a white diamond the size of a golf ball.
–Bella Cullen, Breaking Dawn, page 531-532

From the beginning of signing up for this block I didn't really ‘feel’ it, ya know? I opted to take this block because someone needed to do it and I had gotten the block I really wanted and knew exactly how I was going to do that one. This one did not come so naturally. I did know that I was going to a jewel, I even knew what I was going to use for it. I have this prism that hangs on my studio door and in the afternoon it shines rainbows on my cutting table. As much as I would miss it, I just

thought it looked like the jewel that was described in the book. Anyway, I put it off and thought and put it off. Then the deadline was getting close so I had to bite the bullet and just make the thing.

I looked around for a paper-pieced pattern for the box but just couldn't find one. My idea was to make a box and put a velvet lining on the ‘inside’ and then attach the prism in the middle. Well, I just couldn't find a pattern I wanted so that put me off for a few more weeks because I felt stumped again. So I decided that I would appliqué a box instead and then keep my idea of adding the ‘jewel.’ I don't know why by I kept coming up with this sort of engagement ring box in my head so that is what I tried to make. I used a black velvet with a gold sort of hinge on a pink satin background, I thought the pink satin would represent the wedding part of the gift. Well, it ended up looking like a morbid clam. It was hideous! I showed it to my hubby and said ‘what does this look like to you?’ If he had just been able to identify it as a jewelry box, I might have kept it. He just stared at it like a dog does when you whistle at it and said ‘I have no idea.’ I immediately threw it in the trash and went to bed. The next morning I decided to start over. I grabbed my copy of the book and found the description of the box and decided to go more literally with the design. I saw an old sort of pirates chest type design with jewels embedded in the wood. Since I can't draw to save my life, I started googling clip art for pirate's chests and found a few that I liked and took different elements from them and put them together to make a pattern. I used some fabric that was the border print for the New Moon quilt for the wood grain and some other random browns.

Then I ran off to the craft store to try and find something to accent it with to give it that sort of gilded gold feel. I found the ribbon and scored double with these ‘jewels’ on a string for the trim too. So I get the box made, and go to add the prisim and low and behold, the one thing I was sure about just didn't work. So it was back to the craft store to find something that would. I added the chain and the note and called it good.

I know that was a long winded story, thanks for hanging with me for it.

Breaking Dawn Charity Quilt: Cravings

“Bella, love, we're going to ask you to do something monstrous,” [Edward] said, using the same adjectives he'd offered me. “Repulsive.”

Well, at least he was giving it to her straight.

She took a shallow, fluttery breath. “How bad?”

Carlisle answered. “We think the fetus might have an appetite closer to ours than to yours. We think it's thirsty.”

She blinked. “Oh. Oh.”

“Your condition—both of your conditions—are deteriorating rapidly. We don't have time to waste, to come up with more palatable ways to do this. The fastest way to test the theory—”

“I've got to drink it,” she whispered. She nodded slightly—barely enough energy for a little head bob. “I can do that. Practice for the future, right?” Her colorless lips stretched into a faint grin as she looked at Edward. He didn't smile back.
–Jacob Black, Breaking Dawn, page 242

Pieced by Angie

I have wanted to do this block for a long time so when we got to the planning stages of this quilt I was doing the "me me me" dance when we were picking who was going to do this block. I have to say this part of the book gave me the heebies, I think that is why I wanted to do it.

When we saw the Glee Slushy block on Jennifer's site I knew it was perfect. Then when I dragged my husband to this AWESOME fabric store while we were on our Anniversary weekend trip in Tennessee back in August, this red sparkly bolt literally jumped off the shelf and flopped around in front of me. I also picked up a great black with gold filigree stuff on it for the background but alas, it just didn't work in the block. I felt like it was too dark so it got nixed. Instead, I rummaged through my batik stash and came up with this great swirly beige. To have some depth and shading in the top part (and I was hoping to make a sort of lid look), I used the back side of the red fabric that is in the cup. The last touch to this block is the 'Starbucks' green straw. I dug around for what seemed like an hour in my scrap bucket to find this green but I am glad I did.

That's all I can really say about this block, I hope you like it as much as I liked making it. ;)