Got Lucky

Fabric for Andrea

I was a woman on a mission this morning. I went online, found all the images from the Kalico line that i wanted, printed them out and headed down to Joann's. They had almost the entire series that I wanted to use! I couldn't have been more excited. The bag of fabric was in my car all day and my brain stayed in the car with it.

Explains why I was feeling a bit fried by lunch time.

But buying the fabric and having the pattern settled doesn't mean I'll be jumping into this one any time soon. I still have yet to finish Uncle Jim's Super Mario Bros. pillow. Sadly, this is another item that lost it's history in the Great Blog Deletion catastrophe of 2010. But like all projects it has a beginning that started on graph paper and trolling the internet for ideas.

You wouldn't believe the stuff you come up with on the intewebs with the right set of key words. "Quilting" and "Mario" alone came up with so many things!. After flicking through some images and realizing that I'm going to have to make a set of these someday, I picked some images that I liked and doodled them out. I really dig the invader from space.

I chose to do the project in flannel. Everyone loves flannel - it's soft, cuddly and, most importantly, machine friendly. I had just finished backing Tim's star quilt with blue flannel and wrapped myself up in it for a test nap. I love flannel!

The general construction of anything that comes for the 8 or 16-bit era of computer games is ridiculously simple. Pixels with pixels and off you go. There's hardly any thought process to it which is why I think I'm going to end up making a series of these to line my couch while I'm still at an age where I can get away with that.

I thought I would start with the most boring part first. The GAME OVER side is just black and white. It's a really bad picture...despite the fact that they are smart phones they are still no great shakes at photography. This is when I realized that camera phones just don't cut it and it was time to actually go dig out my camera.

All the pieces are cut to 1.5x1.5" squares. I think it's the smallest box work that I've done so far. Despite that I'm pleased with how it's coming along. Aside from one major earthquake down there on the bottom I can look at this and see how but better I've gotten. Those lap quilts that I made last Christmas for some co-workers were just...well, fabric and bile thrown together. Such is my judgement now. Had you asked me last xmas I would have said that I was immensely proud of them.

By the second night I had all the lettering done and had to continue to the filling up the corners with black.
ZzZZZZzzzZzzZzzzz.....

But that is where the project stands now and over the course of this weekend the weekend I'm hoping to put a serious dent in it's overall progress.


On a sort of related note, I have a list at my desk of all the stuff I am making. There are a few blank spots on my list. Dad, Grampa and Decker are always tough. But whilst day dreaming at my desk I thought of a tutorial that I saw not too long ago - this one doesn't even involve a sewing machine! I guess you could call them little fabric pine cones. They are adorable. Previously I had also thought of giving table runners that I had seen in a tutorial I found through Amy Smart's Diary of a Quilter Table Runner Tutorial but giving just a table runner would be kinda lame. I think the little cones will make a great addition to give along with the table runner.