Twilight Saga Charity Quilt: Lion and Lamb

“Isabella.” He pronounced my full name carefully, then playfully ruffled my hair with his free hand. A shock ran through my body at his casual touch. “Bella, I couldn’t live with myself if I ever hurt you. You don’t know how it’s tortured me.” He looked down, ashamed again. “The thought of you, still, white, cold . . . to never see you blush scarlet again, to never see that flash of intuition in your eyes when you see through my pretenses . . . it would be unendurable.” He lifted his glorious, agonized eyes to mine. “You are the most important thing to me now. The most important thing to me ever.”

My head was spinning at the rapid change in direction our conversation had taken. From the cheerful topic of my impending demise, we were suddenly declaring ourselves. He waited, and even though I looked down to study our hands between us, I knew his golden eyes were on me.

“You already know how I feel, of course,” I finally said. “I’m here . . . which, roughly translated, means I would rather die than stay away from you.” I frowned. “I’m an idiot.”

“You are an idiot,” he agreed with a laugh. Our eyes met, and I laughed too. We laughed together at the idiocy and sheer impossibility of such a moment.

“And so the lion fell in love with the lamb . . . ,” he murmured. I looked away, hiding my eyes as I thrilled to the word.

“What a stupid lamb,” I sighed.

“What a sick, masochistic lion.”
–Edward Cullen & Bella Swan, Twilight, page 273–274

Lion and Lamb
Roaring Lion pattern by Linda Hibbert and pieced by Iris; Lamb pattern by Four Twin Sisters and pieced by Nicole as part of our Give-to-Win Twilight Saga Charity Quilt.

From Iris:
This lion is the same pattern that was used for the Stephenie Meyer quilt in 2009. I'd admired it since I first saw it and was very excited to give it a try. Originally I intended to use this in my personal Twilight quilt, but when the call for another charity quilt came, I felt it fitting to donate the lion to this cause. Having small children myself, any cause that benefits children is close to my heart.

For every $5 donation to George Mark Children's House, you get one chance to win this quilt. Visit the Twilight Saga Quilt Page for more details.

Make your donation

Twilight Saga Charity Quilt: The Meadow

I reached the edge of the pool of light and stepped through the last fringe of ferns into the loveliest place I had ever seen. The meadow was small, perfectly round, and filled with wildflowers — violet, yellow and soft white. Somewhere nearby, I could hear the bubbling music of a stream. The sun was directly overhead, filling the circle with a haze of buttery sunshine. I walked slowly, awestruck, through the soft grass, swaying flowers, and warm, gilded air. –Bella Swan, Twilight, page 259

The Meadow
Pattern designed by Cat and pieced by Jerri Lynn as part of our Give-to-Win Twilight Saga Charity Quilt.

From Jerri Lynn:
I was so happy to do this block, as it is one of my favorite scenes from all of the books combined! The beautiful design is Cat's, but I chose my own fabrics. I love the way that Cat has designed this scene, with Edward and Bella gazing at one another. This is the perfect image for the last movie, as it brings the focus of the books, the love between Edward and Bella, right to the surface.

From Cat:
I found that this scene in the book and also the movie to be quite calming. I have the characters off centre in the corner of the block to emphasize the vast openness of the meadow and to demonstrate the feeling that they could be alone with just the two of them there as if the rest of the world doesn't matter. That is the feeling I had when I read this scene in the book and I tried to capture that in the block pattern too.

For every $5 donation to George Mark Children's House, you get one chance to win this quilt. Visit the Twilight Saga Quilt Page for more details.

Make your donation

Twilight Saga Charity Quilt: La Push First Beach

I’d been to the beaches around La Push many times during my Forks summers with Charlie, so the mile-long crescent of First Beach was familiar to me. It was still breathtaking. The water was dark gray, even in the sunlight, white-capped and heaving to the gray, rocky shore. Islands rose out of the steel harbor waters with sheer cliff sides, reaching to uneven summits, and crowned with austere, soaring firs. The beach had only a thin border of actual sand at the water’s edge, after which it grew into millions of large, smooth stones that looked uniformly gray from a distance, but close up were every shade a stone could be: terra-cotta, sea green, lavender, blue gray, dull gold. The tide line was strewn with huge driftwood trees, bleached bone white in the salt waves, some piled together against the edge of the forest fringe, some lying solitary, just out of reach of the waves. –Bella Swan, Twilight, page 114–115

La Push: First Beach
Pattern designed by Cat and pieced by Jerri Lynn for our Give-to-Win Twilight Saga Charity Quilt.

From Jerri Lynn:
What I love about this block is that it gives you an overall picture of what it might be like to stand on the beach of La Push, looking at the trees, the shore, and the mountains in the distance. I see this as a beautiful sunny day there, one of the rare ones where the vampires definitely need to stay inside!

From Cat:
This was the first Twilight themed block that I designed and I still love it. I wanted to capture the rugged coastline and cliffs that surround the bay and the forest that edges towards it. I also wanted a block that captured all of this without being overly complicated. I was happy with the result and with the use of the right fabrics you can really develop the features.

For every $5 donation to George Mark Children's House, you get one chance to win this quilt. Visit the Twilight Saga Quilt Page for more details.

Make your donation

Twilight Saga Charity Quilt: Vegetarian Vampire Eyes

I watched as his golden eyes grew perceptibly darker day by day. –Bella Swan, Twilight, page 70

Vegetarian Vampire Eyes
Pattern designed by Cat & pieced by Nicole as part of our Give-to-Win Twilight Saga Charity Quilt.

From Nicole:
I love the vampire eyes, and Cat had created a paper piecing pattern for it, which I LOVE. So, I went with the “veggie” vamp eyes. It has a nice topaz-y color, and I used both the white glittery fabric for around the eye and the gold glittery fabric for the flesh of the vampire.

From Cat:
This pattern was done with the “vegetarian” vampire in mind and their topaz coloured eyes, but it works equally well in red. The pattern is a lot easier than it looks as it done without the need to join multiple pieces of paper, but it is still quite striking as the eye looks out at you.

For every $5 donation to George Mark Children's House, you get one chance to win this quilt. Visit the Twilight Saga Quilt Page for more details.

Make your donation

Twilight Saga Charity Quilt: Bella's Truck

The thing, I thought to myself… it had possibilities — as a nickname, at the very least. –Bella Swan, Twilight, page 7

Bella's Truck
Designed and pieced by Nicole as part of our Give-to-Win Twilight Saga Charity Quilt.

From Nicole:
I wanted to make sure that Bella’s truck was included in this quilt. I knew that trying to paper piece it would be a trick in itself. So I went with appliqué. I found the “right” truck; Bella in the book is given a ‘50s Chevy, but the movie had a ‘60s Chevy. They are very different. Since we were going with our favorite scenes from the books, I wanted the book truck. With Forks being full of trees, I wanted the background fabric to have trees. She had a red truck, so obviously I had to use a red fabric. I chose one that looked more “rusted” but it was actually shimmery! Then I just layered them together and satin stitched around the pieces. Different sizes to outline the truck.

For every $5 donation to George Mark Children's House, you get one chance to win this quilt. Visit the Twilight Saga Quilt Page for more details.

Make your donation

Twilight Saga Charity Quilt: Give to Win

When life offers you a dream so far beyond any of your expectations, it’s not reasonable to grieve when it comes to an end. –Bella Swan, Twilight, page 1

In January of 2009, a group of TwilightMOMS began discussing and working on Twilight themed quilts. By March of 2009, The Twilight Quilters Coven was officially formed and we began plans for a group quilt for Stephenie Meyer. Since then, we've changed our name to Twi-Quilters, have made seven group quilts, continued work on our individual quilts and formed life-long friendships. Three of our group quilts have been auctioned or "raffled" off and all the proceeds given to charity. We are proud to show our eighth quilt and to give you an opportunity to win it, all for charity, of course.

Our group members have donated all the fabrics and supplies as well as our time, to create this beautiful quilt, which includes our favorite scenes from all four of the Twilight Saga books. And we're going to give it away to one lucky fan! For every $5 donation from you, which will be donated directly to George Mark Children's House, you’ll get one chance to win the quilt. We hope you'll give generously to this worthy cause. Donations will be accepted through March 9, 2013 and the winner will be announced by March 15th.

Over the next few weeks, we'll give you a close-up look at each of the blocks in this one-of-a-kind quilt, so make sure to check back often!

Make your donation

The Twilight Saga Charity Quilt

“Twilight again,” he murmured. “Another ending. No matter how perfect the day is, it always has to end.” –Edward Cullen, Twilight, page 495

The final movie in the Twilight franchise, Breaking Dawn, part 2 is set to be released in just under a month. In conjunction with this culminating event, we are pleased to announce the Twilight Saga Charity Quilt. Here's just a teaser ...

The quilt will also include one embroidered quote and five blocks from each of the books, depicting our favorite moments in the Twilight series. Watch for more about this quilt coming soon.

As always, our goal is to raise money for a worthy cause. We're donating our time and materials and for every $5 donation you make to our charity, you'll get one chance to win the quilt. We've chosen George Mark Children's House to receive your contributions. Details on donations will be announced soon.


In the meantime, here's a little something to tide you over. I mean, can you ever see enough?

Quilter Spotlight: Twilight Saga Quilt by Dot

“Don't be afraid,” I murmured. “We belong together.”
–Bella Cullen, Breaking Dawn, page 85

Twilight quilting is an occupation near and dear to our hearts, so it is always fun to find a fellow quilter with the same passion. We are excited to share with you the beautiful Twilight Saga Quilt by Dot, who also let us interview her and has given us permission to post the photos of her quilt.

Twi-Quilters: Who is the quilt for?
Dot: There was no question from the beginning of the idea to make the quilt that it would go to my daughter, Kate, and granddaughter, Elizabeth. It is now in my daughter’s possession and I know she is going to take good care of it. And of course I have “visiting” rights to it, lol.

Originally Kate offered me the books to read. I was immediately hooked. The three of us and my husband and younger grandson Joseph went to the movies together, and during the making of this quilt I just had to buy my own copy of the books. I am constantly struck by the beauty of this love story, so skillfully written. I am now rereading the books for the third time and they are just as exciting as the first time I read them.

Twi-Quilters: What was your favorite part about making this quilt?
Dot: My favorite part about making the quilt was working with my daughter and granddaughter to pick out the blocks that they would like to see. They collaborated with me in the pattern choices. The brainstorming session with them was a lot of fun. We checked out the Fandom in Stitches site and found most of the patterns there and continued the search until I found what we wanted and adjusted the patterns as I needed.

Twi-Quilters: Do you have a favorite quilt block?
Dot: I think my favorite block was the Quileute Tattoo. I cannot imagine anyone doing this as a 5” block, but I enjoyed the challenge of getting to all to fit together as a 12” block. It wasn't until after it was all quilted and I posted the pictures in Flickr that I realized that there is a glaring error in the block! A black tail on the bottom left side. It amazes me that we could have all looked at that block before the quilt was constructed and none of us saw it! Normally something like that would drive me to distraction if it wasn't fixed, but I don’t feel that compulsion for some reason.

Twi-Quilters: How long did the quilt take you?
Dot: I began thinking about doing the quilt in 2011. I kept checking out the Fandom site and of course had to watch the movies to get colors set in my mind. Kate also had the books that were published about making the movies and helped me with color selections and ideas. Finally this Spring I started to make the blocks. My first one was Bella and Edward laying in the meadow. Originally this block had a lot of flowers, but eventually I trimmed the meadow and added woods. The wolf blocks were next. It was a real challenge to find the hairy fabric in my stash. Actually, except for the backing, all of the fabric came out of my stash.

Dot: I would guess that from the first block to the quilting took about three months.

Twi-Quilters: What is your favorite book in the Twilight series?
Dot: My favorite book would probably be the second one. It was the hardest one to read because of the pain Bella went through, but, again, it was written so beautifully I could feel her pain. Showing the passing of the months with just the name of the month on the page really struck me as ingenious, as did the scene with Bella and her grandmother. The ideas in the writing were so fresh I couldn’t read fast enough but yet didn’t want the book to end!

Twi-Quilters: Which team are you (Edward, Jacob or Switzerland)?
Dot: Although I suspected that Bella loved Jacob before she knew it, I would have to admit I wanted Edward to win. After all, he waited 100 years to find Bella.

Twi-Quilters: Who is your favorite character in the books?
Dot: How in the world could I pick one favorite character? I loved all of them. Jacob was so unassuming. Alice was so endearing, Emmett was so accepting and fun. Jasper was always so serious! But this was Edward and Bella’s story, so they would be my favorite characters.

Twi-Quilters: How many times have you read the books? Seen the movies?
Dot: As I already mentioned, I’m reading the books for the third time right now. I would guess that just while I was working on the blocks that I probably saw all four of the movies at least 50 times and I’m anxiously awaiting the premiere of the final movie.

Twi-Quilters: Anything you’d like to share with us about Twilight, your quilt, or quilting in general?
Dot: I’m sure Stephanie Meyer can never hear too often how wonderful the Twilight series is. I’ve enjoyed every book, every movie, and every step of constructing this quilt and designing the layout for the blocks . I loved brainstorming with my girls and showing them blocks as they were finished. I was surprised when I looked at the picture of your quilt that you had quotes on it. I really thought I had an original idea! My quilt wouldn’t have been completed without the quotes. Edwards’ toast to his beautiful bride had to be immortalized.

Dot: I feel honored that you like the quilt and hope that others may be inspired to finish theirs.

More about the blocks:
Dot: The Golden Onion Award was an idea I played around with and finally made using a picture of an onion that I found online. It’s back stitch applique.

Dot: The Dream Catcher block was made from a wreath pattern from EQ7. Then I hand stitched the webbing in the center, and after the quilt was done, I added buttons from a collection of antique buttons my dad gave me before he died.

Dot: The paper pieced rings and baseball field were from Paper Panache. I changed the diamond ring to look more like the oval ring Edward gave to Bella when he asked her to marry him. The second pattern was Baseball, Bat and Home Plate Paper-Pieced Pattern.

Dot: Three of the applique patterns were from the Four Twin Sisters site: White Tailed Deer, Black Dress with Roses (revised by me to look more like the white wedding dress in Bella’s nightmare the night before the wedding), and Grand Piano, all done with back stitch applique.

Dot used the following patterns from Fandom in Stitches in her quilt:

Broken Petals
Charlie's House
Charm Bracelet
Diamond Heart
First Beach
Forbidden Fruit
Forks Badge
The Forest
Graduation
Jacob's House
Lamb
Lion
The Meadow
Quiluete Tattoo
Topaz Eye
Torn Ribbon
Victoria
White Queen
Wolf

See all of Dot's photos on her Flickr photostream.

Teaser

No longer just a nightmare, the line of black advanced on us through the icy mist stirred up by their feet.

We're going to die, I thought in panic. I was desperate for the precious one I guarded, but even to think of that was a lapse in attention I could not afford.

They ghosted closer, their dark robes billowing slightly with the movement. I saw their hands curl into bone-colored claws. They drifted apart, angling to come at us from all sides. We were outnumbered. It was over.

And then, like a burst of light from a flash, the whole scene was different. Yet nothing changed—the Volturi still stalked toward us, poised to kill. All that really changed was how the picture looked to me. Suddenly, I was hungry for it. I wanted them to charge. The panic changed to bloodlust as I crouched forward, a smile on my face, and a growl ripped through my bared teeth.
–Bella Cullen, Breaking Dawn, page 367-368

On November 16, pandemonium comes to a theater near you.

A Thousand Years

And all along I believed I would find you

Time has brought your heart to me

I have loved you for a thousand years

I'll love you for a thousand more

–Christina Perri, A Thousand Years

Jon Schmidt and Steven Sharp Nelson are a couple of guys who know how to make beautiful music. The Piano Guys, as they are called, release a new video bi-weekly on YouTube. I love everything they produce and today's release is no exception. Not only is it an amazing piece of music, but has a really great Twilight connection (you can see someone even got cutesy with the Zephyr font on the album art). They've put together an arrangement of Christina Perri's A Thousand Years from the Breaking Dawn soundtrack and it is beautiful.


Available for purchase from The Piano Guys or on iTunes

Story behind the song:
Our kids give us great inspiration for our music. When Jon's 17 year-old daughter said how much she loved this song, Jon decided to try it. He experienced a flood of inspiration. "Never has a piano part come together this fast" Jon says. Steve experienced similar inspiration while composing the cello parts. Since the lyrics suggest a bride walking towards the groom in a ceremony we thought we would include a quote from the Bridal Chorus by Wagner in the climax of the song (it is carefully disguised).

As it seems to always go, Paul and Tel didn't find the spot until they spent 9 hours driving around southern Utah the day before the shoot looking. After getting a little discouraged by not finding anything that great, they just happened to check out a little hidden spot right near Baker Dam and thought it was perfect for the song. The next morning we all loaded up the piano and headed out there to film, but after getting the Truck and Trailer stuck and waiting for the sun to move, we didn't get started filming until that evening having about 3 hours of light. It was so fun to film and play in the middle of the trees!

Credits
A Thousand Years written by CHRISTINA PERRI, DAVID HODGES
Published by SUMMIT BASE CAMP FILM MUSIC, EMI BLACKWOOD MUSIC INC, CHRISTINA PERRI D/B/A MISS PERRI LANE PUBLISHING
Arrangement produced by Jon Schmidt
Arrangement written by Al van der Beek, Jon Schmidt, & Steven Sharp Nelson
Performed by
Jon Schmidt: piano
Steven Sharp Nelson: acoustic cello, & cello-percussion
Music recorded, mixed & mastered by Al van der Beek at TPG Studio
Video produced by Paul Anderson & Tel Stewart