We have a Winner!

The drawing is complete. The winner of our Breaking Dawn: Part 1 Quilt is Melissa Clark!!! Melissa, an email has been sent to you.

Thank you to everyone who donated to such wonderful causes.

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.

Breaking Dawn Charity Quilt: Jacob and Renesmee

Heat flooded through me, stronger than before, but it was a new kind of heat—not a burning.

It was a glowing.

Everything inside me came undone as I stared at the tiny porcelain face of the half-vampire, half-human baby. All the lines that held me to my life were sliced apart in swift cuts, like clipping the strings to a bunch of balloons. Everything that made me who I was—my love for the dead girl upstairs, my love for my father, my loyalty to my new pack, the love for my other brothers, my hatred for my enemies, my home, my name, my self—disconnected from me in that second—snip, snip, snip—and floated up into space.

I was not left drifting. A new string held me where I was.

Not one string, but a million. Not strings, but steel cables. A million steel cables all tying me to one thing—to the very center of the universe.

I could see that now—how the universe swirled around this one point. I'd never seen the symmetry of the universe before, but now it was plain.

The gravity of the earth no longer tied me to the place where I stood.

It was the baby girl in the blond vampire's arms that held me here now.

Renesmee.

–Jacob Black, Breaking Dawn, p. 360

Design and piecing by Elizabeth

One of the most interesting turn of events in Breaking Dawn is Jacob's imprinting on Renesmee. It was fun to represent in fabric. I did needle-turn appliqué, with a bit of embroidery for embellishment. I used Fairy Frost in Maize for Renesmee's locket and put a bit of gold blending filament in with the embroidery floss to give the chain and border in the locket a bit of shine. Jacob's paw print is, of course, russet and I used Jacob's font to add an embroidered quote from the book.

This quilt block is part of our Breaking Dawn Quilt for Charity. With the release of part one of the Breaking Dawn movie, we're putting together a quilt with our favorite parts from the book and we're giving it away! One lucky fan will win this quilt. Here's how it works: we are donating all the materials and time to complete this quilt and for every $5 donation you make to Alex's Lemonade Stand or one other charity to be named shortly, you will be entered in a drawing to win our quilt. More details on this will be forthcoming. In the meantime, keep an eye out as we post the progress of our quilt.

Eclipse Charity Quilt: Thanks for all the support

The Eclipse Give-to-Win is officially closed.  We'd like to thank everyone who has shown interest in our work and everyone who has donated.  We are proud of everyone involved in this project.  Together we raised $1729 for ALSF!!!  Stay tuned, the lucky winner will be announced August 10th. 

~~~

Eclipse Charity Quilt: The Finishing Touches

Ok, my last post was a huge essay....so I'm going to keep this one short and SWEET!  Here are the pretty pictures of the finished quilt, so you can see all the yummy quilting Angie did on it !

I took these photos outside with the morning sun at an angle, hoping to get that quilting to show up.  It was done with invisible thread, also called monofilament thread, so that it wouldn't interfere with the designs.  Not sure what brand Angie used, we'll have to do a post exploring the do's and don'ts of invisible thread sometime in the future .

It's a shame the camera still doesn't capture the full sparklingness of this quilt.  All the shimmery Fairy Frosts, rhinestones and beads, and thanks to that invisible thread, all the quilting sparkles in the sun! Mouse over the lower right corner for the controls to stop the slide show for a better look at the pictures.

Iris
~~~

Eclipse Charity Quilt: It's All in the Details

The most difficult aspect of this quilt was the ribbon. How can you mimic the Eclipse book cover ribbon with fabric? One that is interrupted by 20 blocks? The easiest way would have been to put the blocks together with sashing, mark up where the outline of the ribbon needed to go, cut out pieces from one color of red, and fuse them on. But then you get an outline of a ribbon, with no depth and the ribbon pieces really wouldn't form a coherent unified piece. Plus it would look like a tacky afterthought, even if it were stitched along the edges. I wanted the ribbon to look like part of the background, not slapped on top.

To achieve the look I was going for, I would need multiple shades of red in order to show that it is flowing and folding around, with lighter and darker areas. I started out by opening an image of the Eclipse book cover in Photoshop. I tried my hand with the pen tool, outlining the ribbon shape, but that still looked blocky. I then tried the magic wand tool, trying to select just certain color sections, but there are too many shades of the color in a high def image to easily select distinct sections.

And then the Photoshop Guru (my husband) gave me a tip that was an "aha" moment. He took one look at what I was doing one evening as we were watching TV on the couch together (I rarely watch TV without doing something else at the same time) and calmly said, "just Posterize it". I stared glassy eyed at him till he told me what it meant, we looked to see if my "inferior" Photoshop Elements version had it (so far it's been able to do everything that the super expensive CS version does), and we tried it out.

I tried to find an official definition/ tutorial on what it does, but everything out there sounds too complicated or tells you how to use it for other things. And I'm not going to make this post a Photoshop tutorial, it's going to be long enough already. Basically it takes your high quality image and reduces the number of different tones in your image. It makes it look more cartoon-like. So I went from the image on top, with who knows how many tones of red....to the image on the bottom, in which I specified I only wanted 4 tones. Three tones was too simple, didn't provide the depth I was looking for, and I didn't want to look for more than 4 different fabrics to use!

So then I went shopping! For Fairy Frost! Online at our favorite place to shop for FF, Mary Jo's, of course (the shops around here don't carry more than one or two colors). At first I tried doing this combination of reds: a mottled red batik (for the shadow – don't know what it's called) with Scarlet, Blood, and Pomegranate Fairy Frosts.

As you can see there just isn't enough contrast. There is no definition between the 3 Fairy Frosts. I went looking around again, searching locally and online, and even considered just dying some of the Snow (white) FF I had, but finally found a lighter pink color called Lipstick at Fat Quarter Shop. I cringed at the pinkness of it, but one thing I have found over the years is that I tend to not use enough contrast and things look washed out. So I rearranged colors and came up with a new quadruple: the mottled red batik with Scarlett, Pomegranate, and Lipstick Fairy Frosts.

The next challenge was piecing it into the background. At first I thought I would piece it with rectangle and half-square triangles into a "rough" ribbon. I even drafted it up that way in my design (see the second picture above). The fact that it wouldn't be a solid background, but would be in the sashing between 20 blocks and 20 quotes was an obstacle. There was no way around the fact that I would be making things more complicated needing to piece around the blocks and quotes. I couldn't think of how to piece it easily, but I did find a wonderful technique for piecing curves. Fiber artist Dale Fleming has a technique called "Pieced Curves So Simple" and I looked at this tutorial on HGTV to figure it out. I'd previously done regular piecing and paper piecing but this is a whole new method, and it was actually super easy. The curves come together nicely, it was the piecing between all the blocks and quotes that had me yanking hair out!

Here is a quick overview of how the curvy parts worked: I drafted up my design to scale in Photoshop, meaning the quilt was to be 58" x 62", and my design canvas size was 58" x 62". It made for a slow file to work with, but I didn't want to deal with scaling. I had the grid showing on the file and I went through and methodically printed a paper template for each 8" x 10" section that had ribbon on it. I pinned the templates on my design wall behind the prepped blocks and sections of black/grey background fabric sashing. (And if anyone knows a quicker way than manually hitting "print" and giving it the coordinates each time, let me know!) You can see that the ribbon is made up of paper.

Unfortunately I wasn't thinking ahead and did not take photos of the process, but I'll try to describe it as well as I can and include the couple of photos I have. For each section, I cut the separate template colors apart. I used the templates to cut each corresponding fabric, with a roughly 1/2" seam allowance. Then along the inner curve I clipped the seam allowance and folded it over the paper. Using a washable fabric glue stick I lightly tacked down the seam allowance to the back of the paper template. I then lightly ironed it so that it had a crisp edge. I placed the "outer color" (which has the paper template attached) on top of the "inner" color and tacked down just that seam allowance to the bottom color (you can see in this first photo that I've re-taped the two darker reds, cut the shape of the pink and already folded it over the paper template and tacked down to the reds).

Then I peeled off the top "outer color" from it's paper backing to get to the crisp folded edge, and sewed along that seam (in the 2nd photo). Then I removed the paper backing all together, and ironed to smooth it out. I basically "built up" each section this way.

It may sound complicated, and unfortunately I don't have a "tutorial" of my own photos, but it actually is no harder than paper piecing. You just have the extra steps of cutting your pieces into a curves, clipping the seam allowances, and gluing the fabric around the edge of the paper before sewing them together.

This fourth picture shows a clipped edge already sewn onto the reds/pink with the paper removed.

To re-cap the process: I started with an image of the ribbon, I made it into a "cartoon" with only four shades of color . . . and this is the end result:

Eclipse Charity Quilt: The beginnings

As we come upon the last two weeks of our Donate to Win fundraiser for Alex's Lemonade Stand, I thought it would be fun to share with everyone some more details about this one of a kind quilt and how it came about.  If you've been reading our blog for some time you'll know that we all met just last winter/spring and in just one year we've been busy with several group projects, all through online and mail collaboration.  The first big one was the quilt we gifted Stephenie Meyer (spring/summer '09) and then our first for charity project, the New Moon Quilt (fall '09).  In February we started planning our third "big" project, also for charity and on our TwilightMOMs Eclipse Charity Quilt thread we opened a call for designs.   Eclipse is my favorite of the "published" books in the Saga, and immediately I felt inspired to make a design for the quilt.  I had seen a small wall hanging quilt in a magazine that looked nothing like I wanted, but had the suggestion of a ribbon running around blocks and felt that a ribbon had to be incorporated somehow.

My first attempt looked like this--------------------------------->
But I wasn't satisfied with how blocky it was, and no matter how much I played with the "ribbon", made up of rectangle and half square triangle pieces, I couldn't get it to look right.
But having everything revolving around a central Eclipse was something that I liked.


In the previous two quilts, it frustrated me that we had to narrow down to only a couple of quotes.  But this done for good reasons: one they were embroidered, so they had to be big enough to be feasible; and two the blocks were the star of the show.   But I love Stephenie's characters and so much of what they say.  If I could, I'd have the whole Saga quoted on my walls!  Recently I've been experimenting with printing on fabric, both the "printable fabric" you can buy, and making my own, and I thought this would be a great way to incorporate more quotes since they can be smaller and still be legible.

<----I have an Edward Cullen fan-made calendar that has this page I really like.   As a scrapbooker, having the scenes shown as labeled "polaroids"  seems so fun to me.  And it's a way to incorporate those quotes I so desperately love.

So I thought, why not make the whole quilt look like a scrapbook page: the Eclipse book cover as the "background"; the appliqued Eclipse as an "embellishment"; the blocks as the "photos"; and the pertinent quotes as the "journaling".  Here was attempt#2 -------------------->

They were the only designs submitted by our deadline and we put them up for vote.   Someone suggested changing the polaroid effect for a framed photo with a separate jouraling tag under each, which has a much cleaner, sophisticated look.  And thus the design evolved to this (with temporary "sample" blocks):

Check back tomorrow to see how the ribbon evolved from something blocky to the flowy ribbon on the Eclipse cover.
(and for some good Photoshop tips!)

Iris

~~~~

Eclipse Charity Quilt: Help Us Spread the Word

No doubt, you've seen the movie by now and so you're more excited than ever about getting a chance to win our Eclipse quilt! We donated our time, talents and materials to create this quilt in order to raise money for Alex's Lemonade Stand Foundation, a charity close to the hearts of the Twilight Fandom. We're collecting donations for ALSF and in addition to your donation (for which we are very grateful), you can also help us by spreading the word! Blog about our quilt and grab one of our buttons to display in your sidebar.

Small Button - 150 pixels wide

<center><a href="http://www.twilightquilters.org/"><img border="0" src="http://img706.imageshack.us/img706/7400/eclipsebutton.gif" /></a></center>

Large Button - 220 pixels wide

<center><a href="http://www.twilightquilters.org/"><img border="0" src="http://img39.imageshack.us/img39/7400/eclipsebutton.gif" /></a></center>

We are accepting donations through August 1, 2010 and the winner will be announced on August 10, 2010.

If you blog about us or even just display our button, leave us a comment with a link to your blog and we'll stop by and visit you!

Presenting: The Eclipse Give-to-Win Charity Quilt

We've given you a little preview of this special one of a kind Eclipse quilt we've been working on, and now it's time for the grand reveal!


This special quilt is being given away to support Alex's Lemonade Stand Foundation, a charity close to the hearts of the Twilight Fandom. See Peter (the embodiment of our beloved Dr. Carlisle Cullen) Facinelli's promotional video for ALSF below.

Give to win? How does this work? Simple! Donate $5 to ALSF through our PayPal button here on the blog or on the Eclipse charity Give-to-Win page and you’ll get a chance to win this original, one of a kind beauty.

This is a once in a lifetime opportunity for any Twilight Saga fan! A handmade, Eclipse themed quilt made by the members of the TQC, and just in time for the movie release! To make it extra special, the quilt has 3 autographs from the saga's actors: Peter Facinelli (Carlisle Cullen), Chaske Spencer (Sam Uley), and Daniel Cudmore (Felix)! For every $5 increment donation, you get a chance to win. Give $5, get 1 chance; give $20, get 4 chances, etc. (so the more you give, the more chances you get to win!). Donations will be accepted from June 4, 2010 until August 1, 2010. The winner will be announced on August 10, 2010. We promise to not share your personal info with any other party. Your name will be posted on our website if you are the winner, but nothing more. So remember to make sure your contact info is correct in your PayPal account so we can contact you if you win. Please give generously! And who knows? You might have this gorgeous quilt in your hands!

Twilight Quilters Coven
Angie, Cat, Elizabeth, Iris, Jerri Lynn, Joyce, Kate, Mel and Wanda

Stephenie Meyer Quilt: Charity Donation Part II

We entered the quilt we made for Stephenie Meyer in the Springville Museum of Art Quilt Show. Our quilt was awarded Best Group Quilt, with a prize of $100. As a group, we decided that the money should be donated to Alex's Lemonade Stand Foundation, the official TwilightMOMS charity. We decided that this was indeed a worthy cause.

This letter from the ALSF organization came this week. Although I'm sure it is a letter they send to any donor, I thought it was worth sharing.

Dear Twilight Quilter's Coven,

Thank you for your recent generous donation of $100.00 to Alex's Lemonade Stand Foundation.

As you may know, Alex's Lemonade Stand was founded by our daughter, Alexandra "Alex" Scott, who was diagnosed with neuroblastoma (a childhood cancer) just two days before her first birthday. By the time she was four years old, Alex knew firsthand of the challenges faced by children with difficult to treat cancers. She set out to change that -- one cup at a time -- by raising money for childhood cancer research through a lemonade stand in our front yard. Her front yard lemonade stand became a yearly tradition and her efforts inspired a national movement. At the time of her passing in 2004, at the age of 8, Alex's efforts had raised one million dollars to help find a cure for the disease that took her life. Her front yard stand has now grown into Alex's Lemonade Stand Foundation, a national charity dedicated to Alex's vision of finding a cure for all children with cancer.

Your generous contribution has a direct impact on children with cancer. The money raised since Alex's first stand in our front yard has funded over 100 research projects at hospitals across the country, filling critical gaps in the process of bringing new treatments to children with difficult to cure cancers.

No one can express what your support of Alex's Lemonade Stand Foundation means to children with cancer and their parents better than Sue Levine, whose son battled an incurable cancer for several years, "To me it is astonishing what a 4 year old created that helped literally keep my son alive."

With your help, we will continue to astonish parents and bring hope to children with cancer. Thank you for making a difference.

Gratefully yours,
Liz and Jay Scott -- Alex's Parents

Stephenie Meyer Quilt: Charity Donation

After completion, we entered the quilt we made for Stephenie Meyer in the Springville Museum of Art Quilt Show, which ran July 17, through September 2, 2009. There were 93 quilts accepted into the show and the committee awarded 19 ribbons. Our quilt was awarded Best Group Quilt, with a prize of $100. As a group, we decided that the money should be donated to Alex's Lemonade Stand Foundation, the official TwilightMOMS charity. The donation was finally made on November 19th at the Utah New Moon Movie Premiere in Utah. Amy (L), one of the charity coordinators for the event accepts the check for $100 made to Alex's Lemonade Stand Foundation. We are delighted to give this money to such a worthy cause.

New Moon Quilt: Charity Auction

Our beautiful New Moon quilt was donated to the TwilightMOMS New Moon Movie Premiere Event in Utah on November 19th and 20th. It was part of a charity silent auction. We are pleased to announce the the quilt sold for $850.00, all of which was donated to Alex's Lemonade Stand Foundation, the official TwilightMOMs charity. The quilt is pictured here with Laura, one of the charity coordinators and the winner of the quilt. Attendees at the event were able to bid in person and those unable to make it out to Utah were able to bid on-line. Volunteers kept the bidding current on-line and at the event so that there was no confusion of the last highest bid for all the bidders. By the end of the night on the 19th, bidding was up to $550 for the quilt. The 20th was a quiet day for bidding, but an on-line bid at the in the last few minutes prompted Laura to action in the last seconds, with the winning bid of $850.

In addition to our quilt, there were several other items up for auction. The combined total of the action final prices was approximately $1900, all donated to Alex's Lemonade Stand Foundation.

The Silent Auction table at the New Moon Event where we also displayed the Stephenie Meyer quilt.

The Alex's Lemonade Stand Foundation donation station, where Twilight themed wristbands were available for purchase for $3 each. The proceeds went to Alex's Lemonade Stand.

Event attendees getting their wristbands.

Some of the charity auction items; a Peter Facinelli autographed photo, a Wolf Pack Gift Basket, a Twilight Gift Basket, and a movie date with the Event's Edward look-alike.

More auction items; a Twilight themed gift basket, a Cullen Themed gift basket, a ball cap embroidered with the movie filming date and location signed by Edi Gathegi and a pair of Chuck Taylor Converse shoes. The shoes pictured are Voluri themed, but the winner of the auction was to receive a pair in their size and painted by Punk Your Chucks. They sold for $300.

Another view of the New Moon quilt. Elizabeth volunteered at the silent auction table all day on the 19th and for the last two hours of the auction on the 20th. Both those who were bidding and those who just stopped by to look had so many positive compliments for our quilt. It was fun to stand by anonymously and hear what they had to say about our handiwork.

Pictured here are Elizabeth (L) and Joyce (R) next to the quilt. Joyce and her daughter Joan drove out to be at the event, the only members of our group other than Elizabeth who were able to make it to the Event.

New Moon Quilt: Finished

On August 4, 2009 the Twilight Quilters Coven announced that we would be making a New Moon themed quilt to be auctioned off at the Utah New Moon Movie Premiere Event in Salt Lake City, with all proceeds going to Alex's Lemonade Stand Foundation. For a while, it looked a bit dicey, but we've made it to the finish line and have a lovely quilt that we hope will bring a nice donation for ALSF.

The quilt arrived safely in Utah today and is currently in the possession of one of the members of the charity committee on the Events by Alice team. The charity portion of the Utah New Moon Event will be spotlighted tomorrow, November 17, 2009 on Good Things Utah, a local morning TV show. It will then be returned to Elizabeth for a few finishing details, including a hanging sleeve and a label for the back of the quilt.

The silent auction (on-line bidding was available) will begin on Thursday, November 19th at 3:00 pm and end at 7:00 pm on Friday, November 20th.

Click on the picture of the quilt for a bigger view. You can read more about the construction of the quilt and see close-ups of each of the blocks by clicking on the links below:

Our discussion thread on TwilightMOMS
The Quilt Layout

Quotes

Bella's Birthday Cake

Japanese Lanterns

Bella's Silver Gifts

Bella's Paper Cut

As if I'd Never Existed

Months Passing Without Notice

Jacob's Sun

Bella's Broken and Mended Heart

Bella & Jacob's Motorcycles

Conversation Hearts

Bella, Jacob and Mike Newton Go to the Movies

Dangerous Meadow

The Wolf Pack

Cliff Diving

The Phone Call

Grand Theft Auto

The Volturi

La Tua Cantante

The Flight Home

The Meteor

The Vote

The Proposal

The Quilt Top in Progress

On the Quilt Table

Machine Quilting in Progress

More Machine Quilting

Less is More

Getting Closer

A Few More Finished

Machine Quilting Finished

Charity Auction

New Moon Quilt: Machine Quilting Finished

Angie finished the machine quilting and sewed the binding on the quilt on Friday and sent it to Elizabeth via Priority Mail. It is due to arrive tomorrow. Elizabeth will turn the binding and stitch it down on the back. The quilt will hopefully be featured on Good Things Utah, along with Lisa Hansen, TwilightMOMS creator, as a final bit of publicity before the big Utah New Moon Movie Premier Event in Salt Lake City. The quilt will be auctioned off at the event, via silent auction (on-line bidding available) and all the proceeds will be donated to Alex's Lemonade Stand Foundation, the official TwilightMOMS charity.

Angie posted the last couple of completed blocks before she send the quilt off. Here they are:

Iris' spectacular Bella's Birthday Cake block with beautiful roses quilted into the background.

Iris' As if I'd Never Existed block. This is the largest block in the quilt and so it is difficult to get a good picture or the entire thing at once. Angie quilted in some amazing details, like siding into the house and a pretty design in the grass.


Jerri Lynn's Vote block, with accent stitch-in-the-ditch quilting.


Joyce's Dangerous Meadow is combined with Elizabeth's Wolf Pack to create a complete block.

New Moon Quilt: The Quilt Top in Progress

Angie, our assembler/quilter extraordinaire has received all the quilt blocks and is busy getting them put together while juggling kids, her personal quilt business and life. She hopes to have it completely assembled and ready to quilt tomorrow afternoon. And she promises to keep us updated with photos. It is so fun to see all this hard work come together in a tangible way. We've all quilted our little hearts into our blocks and it is really exciting to see them as part of the whole.

I also wanted to re-cap the destiny of this wonderful quilt. Our group announced on August 4, 2009 that we would be making a New Moon themed quilt to be auctioned off at the Utah New Moon Experience in conjunction with the New Moon movie release. Time and materials would be donated by each participant and the entire amount the quilt receives at the silent auction will be donated to Alex's Lemonade Stand Foundation, the official TwilightMOMS charity. With just over a week left until our deadline, it looks like our quilt will be finished just in time. Each member of the group has put forth an amazing effort to produce this one-of-a-kind piece of Twilight memorabilia. To quote TQC member, Joyce, "I hope you like the blocks - and potential buyers . . . bid high and bid often!!!!!"

New Moon Quilt: It will be as if I'd never existed.

As if I'd Never Existed by Iris

"It will be as if I'd never existed."
Those were the words that stopped my heart cold and sent me into a two week depression the first time I encountered them. I was in such denial for most of New Moon (the whole day it took to read), seriously thought it would only be a day or two then he would be back....a part of me is still shocked each time I read New Moon.


This was not originally my block to complete, nor was it my original idea to use the elements I used, but I'm happy with the results and tried to put my own touches on it.

I Started with the Silver Linings pattern shown here. The skill level is "challenging". Well, that it is! Especially since I didn't follow it exactly because I wanted to show that progression of time from when Edward leaves to when Sam finds Bella. The pattern itself, 10" x 16", came printed on velum. There are 8 subsections that need to be completed first, then each regular section A thru U. Planning ahead was challenging, with those subsections, trying to figure out where to place the lighter grays/greens, then where to start the medium tones, to finally end with a section of blacks.

For the left half, I took a picture of Bella's house used in the movie, printed it out roughly the size that would fit on that space, then just drew the lines directly on the printout.

Miraculously it ended up dividing nicely, with standard sized pieces (no weird eighth's to contend with). I was really happy to find a few fabrics in my stash that I thought were perfect for her house, the green with stars for the stairs and gray with lines and stars for the downstairs curtains (I think of depicting Charlie with stars, for obvious reasons), the roof tile fabric, and the white on cream fabric that I used for the "yellowed lace" curtains of Bella's room. At first I made her house section with just the gray sky but side by side it didn't meld well together, so I took scraps left over from the woods and just fudged on some more trees/leaves bracketing the house. Then I tried to make the ground under the house match up the woods part.


For the wolf I took this aqua wolf magnet that my neighbor (closet Twifan) had brought me from New Mexico and just traced it on solid black fabric. I don't care for the magnet itself, but it sure came in handy for this project! For Bella's truck I printed out the picture from Stephenie Meyer's website (inverted), stuck it on the back of the Lite Steam-a-Seam 2 (my adhesive of choice as you all know) and just cut the pieces out. I was in such a hurry when zig-zag stitching the appliques by machine that I forgot to use stabilizer. But it only puckered up the wolf section slightly, which was a section with lots of seams from the piecing. I also lost the "perfect" headlight buttons I pulled out from my stash two seconds after I'd pulled them out (not an uncommon occurrence for me!), spent a frantic couple minutes looking for them but had to finally put on other buttons or else I wouldn't make it to UPS on time.

For the quote I was concerned about two things, stiffness of printable fabric and not being able to print white/cream letters on an inkjet. My solutions, I used printable silk charmeuse sheet instead of cotton sheet, and I actually scanned my background, typed the text in white over the scanned photo, and printed that on the off white charmeuse. Then I suffered a moment of panic when I thought to help "set it" with bubblejet rinse, and all the ink started to run off! I quickly took it out of that solution and soaked it in Retayne for 20 min instead.

This was definitely the hardest design I've ever had to sew. And to do it in a very short time. And it was the hardest one to give up!