Tuesday, September 17, 2013

R2D2 meets Andy Warhol

My son has wanted a movie inspired quilt for his room since he was in high school (which has been over 12 years).  All this time I've been thinking about it, searching for patterns or inspiration, and wanted to make sure it didn't look cartoony or kid-like.   He's always liked the Star Wars saga and loved to build with legos so when I found the free Legos Star Wars patterns at the Craftsy web site, I got right to it.  The designer put up several characters like C3PO, R2D2, Princess Leia, Luke Skywalker, Chewy, Yoda, etc... but my son's favorite character is R2D2 and I thought this would be perfect to repeat.  


Paper-piecing is a technique I am very familiar with, remember my orange slices runner?  It's not quite done yet, still deciding on the machine quilting to do.  But it is in my pile to be completed, I will be tackling with that this fall.  If you're a beginner, you may find this block to be challenging due to the small sections to sew, but my advice is do some planning, take your time and relax and have fun!  Practice with some scraps you don't really care about and if they work out the first time, put them in your orphan block basket to use at another time.   If they don't turn out right, no problem, they were just scraps anyway.   
Andy Warhol kept coming to mind when I was in the planning stages of this quilt.  You know, the soup cans and Marilyn Monroe prints he is famous for.  The colors he used in each frame are vibrant and unusual which is very striking.  So, I wanted to incorporate this concept.  
 The wall space my son has is limited, so instead of changing the size of the block (the pieces are very small to begin with), I only did 6 blocks instead of 9 which would have made the quilt square. 
The machine quilting was done simply by free motion technique using smoke monopoly thread sold by Superior Threads.  It is heat resistant and will not melt or become brittle with age like nylon thread.  I put a simple label on the reverse side.  Now, fingers crossed, he will like it.  ;o)
 
 
 
 
 
 

Catherine's Wheel

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