Mail's Here Mail's Here!!

It's been a fun week at our house!  Quilt squares are beginning to come in for K's quilt (awesome peeps!!)

(Adding Dumbledore to my mermaid square really came together!!)

Oh and progress getting the map and chocolate frog box put into a square too!

Monday Mail!

Blocks are now arriving for the gift quilt I'm doing!!!  SO excited!!!

and one I made...

In the dark of the night

Why is it I always get inspired in the middle of sleeping?  Last night after finishing up some quilting and doing some necessary sewing (woot for fat quarter bag holders - I'll post a picture in a bit) I got to thinking about my Hunger Games quilt.  With my PoD2015 caught up I think I may return to working on the HG quilt.

I typically layout my quilts just using an excel spreadsheet (because I"m not very fancy).

Originally I had thought to mimic the icons from the movie with laurel leaves surrounding the square and the word district and the district number rounding it out - even going so far to actually piece (thanks to liljabs) one of the district words and then the sheer volume of work shimmered in front of my eyes and I began rethinking things.  This quilt is pretty big and adding all the extras really would make it insanely bigger.  You can see my sad little sketch here...

SO here's my midnight inspiration

I have just over half of the squares made, and I think I am going to solicit one of my friends with an embroidery machine to do the words - and I'll hand embroider the arrows - simple yet beautiful.  (Don't laugh at my drawings).  I love the visual impact of the colors against the black and don't want anything to really take away from that.  

I've also been on the prowl for a backing material - and here's a few I've been considering:

I love the arrow theme - and a part of me wants to just do a turned edge to the front to finish rather than a whole separate binding - but I'm not sure yet.  Right now I'm leaning to the red or every which way multi-color arrows.  We'll see.

Making the Mermaid - K's quilt

My friend K and I are a lot alike - we're both landlocked mermaids who wish we could spend more time at the beach and near the waves.  I knew I couldn't pull this quilt together without adding at least one personal mermaid touch - and so I hunted down THIS pattern over at fandominstitches.com and put her together.  (side note:  I would love to do a set of these, one in reverse for some bookends maybe?)

I always start by laying out fabrics to play with color and contrast.  The pattern has her nekkid-ish, so I revamped it a little and added a clamshell (that was seriously a lot of work - if I do add these as bookends on something I'm doing, I'll plan to give her a washed out green textured skin and call it a day)

3 1/2 hours of work later - and I finally got her put back together.  I always have this angst about remembering to give myself the 1/4 inch seam allowance so I can sew it back together!  but it worked.

Isn't she lovely?  She measures out about 7.5 inches tall, which made putting her in to a block with some of our fun gift quilt mail pretty easy! :)

Shhhh - a surprise in the works....

My friend K has been undergoing some pretty severe health issues for a couple of years now and earlier this year began going through multiple severe surgeries to rebuild her jaw and has had complications all the way through (read: shingles, pneumonia, multiple infections, etc.). In a visit this week her husband expressed how much depression has crept in for her, but that he just didn't know how to help her - and it hit me... She needs help warding off those dementors! She's been my biggest fan as I've created each of the PoD and multifandom quilts and every single time has said - You should make me one!

So this week I sent out a call to my fellow Doomer's to see if they'd help me put one together - it's no small feat and I am overwhelmed with the love support and eagerness of this wonderful group of women to pitch in to raise someone's spirits.  Literally in the course of about 6 hours, all but a few of the 30 quilt squares were signed up for.  K's birthday is early August, and I have no doubt that I will easily be able to get it done before then.  

A sneak peek for you at some that are already done...

Since I've been gone....

I'm currently still working on my HP Dark Arts (Project of Doom 2015) QAL and these are the squares completed in the last two weeks.  I'm still in catch up mode since I'm a little behind the rest that started back in March, but I'm really happy with the progress.

Sorting Hat with Crookshanks (Weeks 21 & 22)  Pattern slightly adjusted to line things up a little more than the original.

Rita Skeeter's and Delores Umbridge's Quills (Week 23)  I did adjust this pattern to include both of the quills that were not on the original 2011 PoD, I'm pretty happy with how it came out!

Gilderoy Lockhart's Quill and Ink square (Week 15)  Well at least that's what I'm calling it...

Voldemort's wand (Week 14) -  the new 2015 version also offers patterns for Harry's wand and the Elder wand, but I felt like if I'm running a Dark Arts theme, He who much not be named's wand made more sense.  And while you can't tell as well here - the "bone" color of the wand piece is pretty cool.

Hermione's Blue Flame in the Jelly Jar (Week 20)  I am Thrilled at how this one turned out.  I used a shimmery overlay to give that feel of glass and it turned out great!

Durmstrang School Flag (Week 19) This week's square has quite a few options and I debated hard over if I should do one of the four houses (Gryffindor, Slytherin, Hufflepuff, or Ravenclaw), Beauxbatons, the Hogwarts Crest and this one.  I just really liked this one!  Plus my first PoD has the Hogwarts crest.

All Patterns are property of Fandominstitches.com and are always free!

More HG and an idea for layout/sashing?

 I debated for a long time about the coloring for this block (District 2 - Masonry).  The original pattern has it in all grays - but I like the color contrast against the black, so added the brown handle and "rock" fabric to give it a bit of dimension.

(District 13 - Graphite Nuclear) seriously my favorite square to date on this quilt.  The pictures don't do it justice, that silvery fluid fabric is PERFECT and lends itself to a futuristic feel.  LOVE!

I've been spending a bit of time trying to figure out how I want to lay this quilt out.  Since it's still fairly new (I've not seen a completed one yet), I was toying with the idea of mimicking the district symbols like these:

Liljabs was gracious and sweet and created a pattern for the word DISTRICT

Which looks amazing - so I put it with the square like this

And then toyed around with doing some laurel leaves for the sides.  It's not circular, but would give the same feel.  I'm still not sure this is the path I"m going to take with this - but considering for now.

I feel like those leaves are too big..... perhaps a redo smaller sized....