Saturday, August 4, 2012

Summertime Stars/Marvel Comics Quilt

My second quilt was inspired by the Marvel Comics fabrics found at Fabric Worm fabrics that came out with the Avengers movie. I loved them, their bright colors and large scale.  I had to have them, looked at them everyday on line and waited just long enough till they were sold out (mostly, I did purchase some yardage from FW).  Loser!    Then I had to stalk them on Ebay and buy up what I could find at Fabric Depot along with some complementary ditsy quarters that would balance out their large scale.

Now, what to make....something for and super heros lover.  Perfect birthday present for my bedroom, I mean my 8 year old nephew's bedroom.  I missed out on being a little boy who worships super heros.

I picked this pattern from Fig Tree Quilts  that I originally planned to make a 4th of July quilt for myself. 

Super easy to cut out, you just copy the pattern three times and make 3 stacks of 10.
Make the cuts and then take the top star off the stack and put it aside.  It will be the center of the last square. 

The hardest thing to do was to get the large scale super heros to not be cut up too much in the star. 

Then over the actual 4th of July weekend, I spent a bunch of my time off just sewing star after star and listening to NPR.

This quilt is pretty fast to piece together.  Then with the help of my assistant and his armadillo, I laid out the squares trying to balance the obnoxious color and scale.  And not put any patterns that were the same next to each other.   
You will see that I didn't succeed in the final version.  I got two in the bottom corner next above each other, oh well.  It's so crazy you kind of don't notice.  I backed it with black and hand quilted around each star in a contrast color.  I used primary blue, red, green, yellow and also black and white.
This is a feeble attempt to show the quilted stars on the backing.   It's pretty subtle.
The binding was hand stitched as well and I machine quilted along all the seams of the squares. 
Here's my assistant on the final quilt, showing off new hair cut and still obsessed with armadillo.
At the birthday party opening his gift, my nephew Gray.
Nephew suffering through a hug from me in front of quilt.
Happily enjoying quilt on bed. 
At some point I need to make a quilt for myself!