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!
Hi, I’m Joyce. I have been married for 29 years to Keith, and we have 5 children and a daughter-in-law ranging in age from 26 to 15. The youngest are twins. I also have a wonderful new grandson. I work part-time doing Youth Ministry and have started back to school to work on my Master’s degree.
Angie is keeping us updated on the quilt: it is loaded on the table....now just trying to figure this out. What to do, what to do??? I am using a brown bottom line on the fur side. But that is as far as I have gotten with thread selection.... We're all excited with the news that the quilting is about to commence. And we're excited to reveal this fun detail too . . . the back is furry! Angie picked out a great piece of brown minkee swirl that will look amazing when quilted and feels so soft when you wrap yourself up in it. With all the wolves in New Moon, we thought it only fitting.
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.
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