The Coven is published!

I was contacted in November by one of the co-editors of Quilter's Home Magazine interested in writing an article about our group/blog. The article is now in their February/March 2010 issue! When she called to do the interview she woke me up so I'm not sure exactly what I told her! ;) I should note there are a couple of errors, such as those are't roses they are parrot tulips (as us obsessed fans well know), and there's only one member of our coven in Canada. And the article does not mention that a couple of the ladies that contributed to Piece, Love, Twilight are not active members, and we have two newer members not mentioned in the article, Melly and Angie who joined us when we were starting on the New Moon charity quilt. I'm a little miffed that they put a macabre looking vampire with fangs on the article since REAL vampires don't have fangs ;), but I guess it illustrates the "Bitten" title. She wanted a photo of the Coven members, but since we haven't all met in person and don't have a group picture......we will definitely have to remedy that some day!

Stephenie Meyer Quilt: Final Destination

I received this e-mail just a few minutes ago from Stephenie Meyer's assistant.

Hello Elizabeth

I just wanted to let you know that the quilt (along with the memory book) you made for Stephenie arrived to her safely. She was amazed at how stunningly beautiful the quilt was. The amount of detail and creativity that clearly went into its creation is truly impressive.

Unfortunately, the memory card does not work with our cameras but we will send along a picture to you in the near future.

Sincerely,
M
Assistant to Stephenie Meyer

Iris and I thought it couldn't hurt to ask for a photo of Stephenie with the quilt. The worst that could happen is that she could say 'no.' So, I sent her a memory card that I hoped was a 'standard' sort of card, hoping to make it as easy and painless as possible for her to get it to us. Even though the card doesn't work, it looks like she still might send us a picture of her with the quilt. How marvelous would that be?

The "Start the New Year Right with Twilight & Quilting" Exchange

Our first TQC official Exchange is here!!! Instead of adding to the stresses of Christmas shopping, we are starting off the New Year with our exchange. January 15th was the deadline for mailing goodies, and sounds like we all made it plus/minus one day, which is a miracle for me at least! :)

So as the goodies roll in we'll finally get to find out who got buddied up and what fun and creative things we all sent each other! Don't forget to take pictures ladies and share the fun....

Elizabeth's gift from Jerri Lynn
Jerri Lynn's gift from Angie
Angie's gift from Mel
Mel's gift from Wanda
Wanda's gift from Cat
Cat's gift from Joyce
Joyce's gift from Iris
Iris' gift from Elizabeth

Stephenie Meyer Quilt: An Index of Posts

In trying to keep things organized, we have created an index of the posts concerning the Stephenie Meyer Quilt, Piece, Love , Twilight. As we add more details about this fabulous quilt, the index will be updated.

Our discussion thread on TwilightMOMS
The Volturi: Clock Tower at Volterra

The Finished Quilt Top
A Quilt Story
Slideshow of the Quilt Blocks
Piece, LOVE, Twilight
Where is it now?
A Work of Art

Quilt Show Update
Vivian's Blog Post
Pacific International Quilt Festival
Visit to the Stephenie Meyer Quilt
Charity Donation Part I

Charity Donation Part II

The Quilt is in the Mail

The Final Destination

Quilter's Home Magazine Article
Letter to the Editor
Spring 2010 Quilt Blogger's Festival
Stephenie Talks About Our Quilt

Stephenie Meyer Quilt: The Quilt is in the Mail

The Piece, Love, Twilight quilt has been shipped to Stephenie Meyer. Finally! The hitch is that it isn't going directly to Stephenie. It has to make a stop at her publisher's in New York before it is forwarded to Stephenie. We hoped that we might present the quilt in person to Stephenie, trying every avenue possible. We even made a very last minute attempt to get on the Oprah show when she was on so we could give it to her there. Unfortunately, that didn't work out. So it is going by route of the United States Postal System. Stephenie's publicist, who is very kind and quick to get back to me, assured me that she will make sure the quilt gets to Stephenie. So, we're all crossing our fingers that nothing happens to it in transit.

Here are a few last pictures of the quilt before it was sent. This is the quilt label on the back of the quilt. It has the signature of each of the nine of us who worked on the quilt as well as a list of each contributor's quilt blocks. I just noticed that it says we presented it in 2009. Oops!

Here is a section of hanging loops which go across the top of the quilt. They lay flat against the quilt back, so if she chooses not to hang the quilt, they won't be in the way. Sorry about the photo quality.
Iris put together a little scrapbook to include with the quilt. This is the front cover.

Inside the front cover is a picture of the quilt and the top part of the quilt label. Each page after that features one of our group members with pictures of her contribution. Behind the pictures is a pocket where a letter from that person to Stephenie Meyer was included if that person chose to write one.





I also included this letter of introduction:

To our beloved author, Stephenie Meyer, we, the members of the Twilight Quilter’s Coven, present this quilt, Piece, Love, Twilight.

This quilt was created by nine women who had (at the time) never met in person. We met on-line at TwilightMOMS.com. We coordinated the design via discussions in threads and private messages at TwilightMOMS. Pieces of this quilt were completed in Australia, California, Utah, Colorado, Ohio and New Jersey and mailed to Utah for assembly. The machine quilting was completed in California and the finished quilt was displayed at quilt shows in Utah and California. We shared ideas and stories and fabrics and became friends as we united to create a work of art for one of the most inspirational women in our lives. Thank you, Stephenie Meyer.

The Stephenie Meyer quilt, Piece, Love, Twilight, received an award for best group quilt at the Utah quilt show. The prize money of $100 was donated to Alex’s Lemonade Stand Foundation, the official charity of TwilightMOMS. In addition, our group made a New Moon quilt, which was auctioned off in conjunction with the New Moon Movie release. The quilt sold for $850, all of which was donated to Alex’s Lemonade Stand Foundation. You can read more about our adventures at www.twilightquilterscoven.blogspot.com.

Sincerely,
Cat, Elizabeth, Iris, Jean, Jerri Lynn, Joyce, Shannon, Vivian, Wanda

Here is the quilt ready for mailing, neatly folded and put in a plastic bag for protection.

I didn't have the right size box at home, so I went to the Post Office to get one and meant to take a picture of it all boxed up and ready to ship, but it completely slipped my mind. I even thought of having the postal worker behind the counter pose with the box for me so I could take a picture of that too, but I was so focused on getting the quilt carefully packaged and on its way that I forgot. In any case, it has been properly insured, with delivery confirmation and so we'll be holding our breath until we know it has reached Stephenie's Publicist. After that, it is out of our hands.

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

Vivian is a Grandma!

Lovely Vivian Love, who did the breathtaking freehand quilting for "Piece, Love, Twilight", our gift to Stephenie Meyer, became a grandma yesterday morning! Little baby boy Jay was born 3 weeks early in Utah Dec 30th at 2:22 am coming in at 7lbs 4oz. You can follow the link to her blog, Quilts with Love, as I'm sure the proud grandma will be posting pictures there soon. CONGRATS Vivian and the entire Love and Barnes families!

A Twilight Banner by Elizabeth

I love post-and-tell and even though I've shown you my other blocks like these, I'd still like to share because this is a and different project and it is fun to have these all in one place. As I've been working on my twin Mystery Quilt blocks, specifically the book covers, I have also made a third set of book cover blocks to put together in a little banner as a Christmas gift for a non-quilting TwilighMOMS friend. I've had to keep it under wraps, but as she's unwrapped her gift I can share now.

The Twilight Book Cover, designed by Cat. It is enlarged to 120% to make a 6" block. The fabrics in the apple were from Iris and the hands are the favorite iridescent sparkle fabrics in white and cream from JoAnn's. The black swirl in the background is also from JoAnn's. It is a little difficult to see here, and you'll get a better look at it in the other blocks. The apple stem is hand satin stitch. This is the third Forbidden Fruit block I've made.

The New Moon Book Cover, designed by Cat and enlarged to 120%. The red fabric is the same as in the apple, from Iris, and the few pieces of dark burgundy are from Wanda. Thanks girls! The white is Snow Fairy Frost and the green in the stem is a marble print that I used for the stem and leaves in the proposal block in the New Moon Quilt. This is the eighth Broken Petals block I've made, one trial block at 100%, four blocks at 80% for the SM Quilt and three at this size.

The Eclipse Book Cover. I did this the same way I did the ribbon on the SM quilt, using the actual book as the model for it. I even used a left-over piece of ribbon from the SM quilt. In addition to the ribbon in the SM quilt and this block, I've made two other 6" ribbon blocks.

Cat's Breaking Dawn cover, enlarged to 120%. Although all of Cat's patterns are fun to do, this one was particularly fun for me, though I'm not sure why. I just really enjoyed doing it. The chessboard squares are Natural Fairy Frost (a favorite!) and I traced the chess pieces directly off the book cover. The chess pieces are made from the same pattern I used for the SM quilt, and did them at the same time. The queen is Snow Fairy Frost and the pawn is Red Fairy Frost. I've done three of these blocks.

The picture is a little distorted, but here is the finished banner, which I named Twilight. I should have called it Twilight Obsession, but didn't think of it until too late. Angie did a beautiful job machine quilting it for me. Thanks so much, Angie! We're already in cahoots for her to do the quilting on another project, a High School Musical Quilt for my daughter. The banner idea was Iris'. We were talking about our mystery quilts and how to fit in the book covers. She only included the Twilight Book Cover in her mystery quilt and at the time I was debating about using her awesome placement idea or putting each of the book covers in the four corners of the quilt. She said that she was going to make a book-cover only hanging, either in a banner, like this, or with two covers in the top row and two covers in the bottom row. I filed that idea away and thought it might be a great gift for a fellow Twilight lover.

The red fabric is left over from the Stephenie Meyer quilt. The borders around the 6" book cover blocks are 2" and the black borders are 4", I think. I worked this one out as I went, something I don't usually do, and I didn't write it down for future reference. Oops! I like to have a layout marked to scale on grid paper so I can make sure everything fits. This seemed like a straightforward design, so I worked out the details as I went. When I bound it, I included loops for hanging. The loops lay flat against the back of the banner, so if she wants to use it as a table runner, she won't have a problem hiding them. I brought in extra lighting to try to get a good picture, but the contrast between the black and white confuses the camera and so it is difficult to get a picture that isn't really dark. If you want to see a bigger view of it, just click on the picture.

Angie did a great job with the quilting. She did accent quilting around each of the Book Cover pieces. Then in the borders, she used a really fantastic sort of filigree pattern. It is very striking. Here is a close-up of that (click on the picture for an even bigger view).

She quilted in a complimenting pattern in the red frames around each block. Here is a close-up of one side (again, click on it for a bigger view):

This is what it looks like all the way around. The photo isn't the best (I was in a hurry to get it in the mail and only took one picture of the frames), but I hope you can see how cool the design looks around the blocks. You can also see the accent stitching that she did on the book cover elements in this block.

The quilting really makes this runner spectacular. Thanks for a great job, Angie!

Twas The Night Before Christmas - Twilight Quilters style

Twas day turned to Twilight and all through the threads,
not one quilter TM was ready for bed,
Our clothes were all laid out with care,
in hopes that we'd slip out to New Moon knowing Edward would be there.
Hurrying and gathering our kerchiefs and caps,
last on our mind was a long winters nap.
When out in the driveway there arose such a clatter,
the neighbors came out to see what was the matter.
And what to our wondering eyes did appear,
but a shiny silver Volvo to take us there!
With a handsome hunk driver so lively and quick,
we knew it a moment it wasn't St. Nick!

More rapid than eagles the vampires they came,
And our driver hummed and called them by name,
Carlisle and Esme, Rosalie and Emmet, and Alice and Jasper will meet us in minutes,
Away from the porch and away from the wall,
They'll all be at the theater in the mall!

"As dry leaves that before the wild hurricane fly",
It felt as though the Volvo would take to the sky
So away we went and away we flew,
With the car full of quilting friends, and well you know who!
And then in a twinkling we heard a sound,
The prancing and pawing of a wolf around,
I opened the window and put out my head,
Poor Jacob was running alongside with dread,

Edward was dressed in designer wear,
And so would his family when we got there,
A ring box for Bella he held in his pocket back,
Meanwhile Jacob was concentrating on his pack.

Once at the theater the Volvo came to a stop,
He parked where he wanted and just hissed at the cop,
We all got out just in time to see,
As he stood in the forest asking Bella his wife to be.

Back to the car with no driver so quick,
We saw immediately we'd been tricked,
No Volvo anywhere, just the family car in site,
With a ticket on the windshield, oh that's a big bite!

We sprang to grab the ticket with a naughty whistle,
This was a thud in our hearts, not the down of a thistle,
But we exclaimed as we drove out of site,
Merry Christmas to all and to all a New Moon night!

~ by Wanda, 2009

New Moon Quilt: The Flight Home

I believe some of this was posted previously but lost in the unfortunate incident we had in Oct. Anyway, here is The Flight Home block I created for the New Moon quilt. I started with the La Push: First Beach block designed by our wonderful Cat Magraith and avaliable at sewhooked.org under guest designers. Cat, thank you for bringing a little bit of magic into my life with all these fantastic PP patterns! And thank you Jennifer for your great website chock full of PP goodies!!!

Then I found this cute Airplane pattern available at Paper Panache. I actually have a degree in Aeronautical Engineering, and while it's true what they say, use it or loose it....I still get a thrill at seeing airplanes, so this one was a fun piecing! I loaded it up with 3 shades of gray/white, all sparkly since it's still high up in the air where the sun could be hitting it above the cloud cover!

I used 3 different tree patterns: The Carlson Pine from Forest Quilting is the tall guy. I just extended the trunk a bit. The two medium bushier trees come from a book I have, "Paper Piecing the Seasons" by Liz Schwartz. It's one of those books that was a gift 10 years ago and I'm not crazy about much in it, but it surprisingly has turned up a couple of good nuggets! The smallest tree was a share by Angie, I believe. It is from 365 Foundation Quilt Blocks by Linda Causee.

Then it was on to the signs. My vision when I signed up for this block was always to have an airplane coming down between La Push and Forks, to show Bella being caught in the middle of her "two good things". But originally I wanted the two signs to be right next to each other under the plane. Well, after I pieced the tall tree I realized I wanted to make it taller, so I just added to the trunk. But then that looked bad, so I decided that I'd relocate the Forks signs to cover it up, and also I didn't really want to cover up half of the smaller tree! I grabbed photos of the two signs from online, resized them, and raw edge, machine stitch appliqued them on. Not crazy about how the Forks sign turned out (I really wanted to use that green star fabric, because it reminds me of Charlie, but overall just not happy with fabric choices), but really like my La Push one. Although the tree behind it bugs me, came out crooked. :(


One last note. The whole thing was a mish-mash of components to begin with, and then I ran into a little problem after I'd completed La Push, the airplane and two trees. I realized I was running out of sky fabric, quick! I didn't want to re-do everything, so my solution was more mish-mash! I actually took apart one of the trees to salvage some of the sky, used a grayer batik to make the right third look like a storm was coming in from the east, and frugally finished piecing the rest. I even dug into my trash for scraps I'd previously thrown away just to crazy piece some of the sections under the airplane! I wasn't even sure if I'd be able to join up La Push with the rest of it! I guess that quote is true, "when life throws you scraps, make a quilt" ! =)