Shy Guy, Link, and Joe Doctor

 My brother and sister-in-law were expecting a son so my brain went into gear on what Mario themed quilt to make for him.  His family receives Mario themed quilts and has already received a Bowser quilt and a Princess Peach quilt... and, I think, a Mario pillow... I think that's where that ended up... I don't remember...
For some reason Shy Guy kept screaming at me (does he talk?  I guess he does in Super Mario RPG)... and I thought, "Ooh, he looks easy. Fast... and I have the perfect scraps for the background and some leftover green minky. Sounds like a winner to me!
Also made earlier this year as a custom order was a Zelda quilt with Zelda, Link, and Shiek.  It was a lot of fun to design, especially Link.  That's a new pixel image for me (inspiration found on-line) and I would love to make him larger some day as a center piece of a quilt.

If you're interested in a custom order, contact me! :) 

Sleep, Baby, Sleep

As some of you may recall I made a variation of this quilt a few years ago, but with that one I did the original colors as well as made the finished strip size two inches.
Since I've done that I've been itching for a reason to do a colorized version of the quilt and decided that my brother's upcoming baby would be the perfect recipient.  Now, he and his wife are being awesome in not finding out the gender (I am being serious; I like not knowing until the baby is born) so it did make it a little interesting in deciding on whether or not to do this quilt... I mean, Kirby is a boy... but he is pink... ya know... so... whatever!   I had a cool spacey, dreamy print on had that I felt was perfect for this quilt as well as felt as the deep purple did not make the quilt have a decidedly girly feel.  Now, I could have bought the fabric in blue, but I really am trying hard to just use the fabric that I have on hand so that I don't have nearly so much in my stash.
Now I have to wait for the gifting to reveal the quilt to them... but isn't it a beaut?
The finished size is 48x58 so a tad large for a tiny baby but large enough to be used all the way through adult years- plus it is the right size for a toddler bed! Sounds like a three win situation to me!
I would really like to colorize some more from the NES Kirby, but priorities. :(
Edited: Apparently I've never posted a photo on the blog about the other Sleep quilt.  I'll have to post about that one some day.

Eggggs! Egggs! Exterminate!

Back in the day of the classic Doctor Who Daleks weren't too scary.   I mean, all one had to do was go up a few flights of steps and hide around the corner and one was safe.   Daleks couldn't climb stairs.    Apparently the writers realized this and the new generation of Daleks can now fly.   Look out, you're about to be exterminated!

  Growing up my mother and older brothers would talk about Doctor Who and the Daleks.   By the time I came around and was old enough to watch it it was no longer on tv- or at least not available via bunny ears.   One day we discovered the library had a few vhs tapes (I feel as though I'm dating myself a bit...) and we checked them out.    I remember giggling when I saw the first episode with a Dalek in it and wondered how on earth it could be sooooooo terrifying!  That being said, the new and improved Daleks are definitely terrifying.
  I'd already made a bed quilt for my mother but also really wanted to make her a lap quilt for when she watched movies.     I wanted to create something unique and after seeing the large amount of Doctor Who fabric that was available I decided to create a Dalek.    That meant opening paint and drawing away... and a lot of erasing... and reworking, and "WHOA!  Jump back Loretta! That is *way* too large for a lap quilt!"   Finally I arrived upon this and it turned out really well- except for the one pixel I apparently grabbed the wrong 1.5" square and didn't realize it until I had the quilt pinned and ready for free motion quilting.   I left it there.  It made it even more unique.
 This pattern is available for sale at here.   The finished size is 50x50.   The pattern is mostly 1.5 strips with quite a number 1.5x1.5 blocks.    The pattern works left to right so if there are 10 black pixels in a row that means one will use a 10.5x1.5 strip instead of using ten 1.5x1.5 squares.  One would want a sonic screwdriver for that!     The background has a few large chunks to save on time, fabric, and thread.  It also really helps the the background pattern to stand out.

The Sopwith Camel

Second of my Lil' Folks series is The Sopwith Camel.     Who didn't sit on the edge the seat waiting to read more about the World War 1 Flying Ace's adventures behind the enemies line?  Who else was saddened when The Red Baron shot the birthday cake that the Ace was so kindly trying to give him?

 This is the first quilt that I have cut and pieced in an almost twenty-four hour span.    If one had a free day one could easily piece the top in a day.    The top half takes a little while as it works with 1.5" strips but the bottom portion moves very quickly as one uses large rectangles.
The bullet holes were decided upon after I pieced the top... I felt the quilt was missing a bit of personality so bullet holes it was!  They didn't turn out quite how I was envisioning, but they still add nice charm to the quilt.
When designing the pattern I tried work Snoopy's grimace into a pixel but it just didn't look quite right so I decided I could stitch a grimace.  I'm really glad that I decided to go this route as it turned out so well!

The background fabric was purchased at JoAnn's.  Isn't it a marvelous background for this quilt?
The white, black, and green were all scraps from other projects- as was the batting!      It's so nice to be able to use up scraps- heh, well, can't say that I "used up" the entire stash.  That would be miraculous.

Joe Cool

Reading Peanuts was a staple in my life.   As a child my brothers and I owned many dozen of the Peanuts paperback books and spent hours reading and rereading them.   In the last year I began to start collecting books from the Complete Peanuts set and have been reading them.  It's pretty amazing how many of the strips I had read as a child- especially since the bulk of the strips were written before I was born.   I also have a sneaking suspicion that my sense of humor was greatly influenced by reading the strips.
 Over the past two years I've created many video game pixel quilts and it started me thinking about what else is already quite pixelated that could be turned into a quilt and Peanuts came to mind.     I sat down one night and began to mess around in my photoshop program and began to feel as though I were eight years old again and playing around in paint!   After some fiddling I figured out what I needed to do and inspiration for a new series of quilts was born.
Thus far I have finished two quilts and have the patterns written for two more.  There are so many ideas I have for Peanuts quilts that I have a feeling only a small portion of them will ever come to fruition.  Ah well.
I decided the first quilt in the series to make would be Joe Cool.   Partly for the fact that, hey, it's Joe Cool and also partly because I've been wanting to make my brother a quilt and his name is also Joe.   I recall that as a teen he had a Joe Cool shirt and he tended to wear it with some pride.   Who wouldn't?  Joe Cool is, after all, well... cool!
After creating so many large quilts recently it was pleasant to work on a lap sized quilt.  The finished size is 45x57.   For the background quilting I stitched paw prints.  I give myself a D- (just don't call me Peppermint Patty, please!) for them.  They're tricky little buggers!     Isn't that snuggle bubble just gorgeous?   Instead of working with 57" long strips I broke the background into large chunks.  Doing so saved so much time (and thread and fabric) and it also makes the Snoopy print stand out much better.  Of course though after sewing a gazillion 1.5" black and blue squares together I went, "Duh! Why did I not sew two 1.5x X strips together and then cut them to size?  It would have saved so much time!"  Ah well, I have another Peanuts pattern that switches between two colors pretty frequently so that pattern I amended to do this technique.  Live and learn, you blockhead.