New Moon Charity Quilt: My Contribution

On August 4, 2009 the Twilight Quilters Coven announced that we would be making a New Moon Themed quilt which would be auctioned off in conjunction with the Utah New Moon Movie Premiere Event put on by the TwilightMOMS committee, Events by Alice. All of the money received for this quilt would be donated to Alex's Lemonade Stand Foundation, the official TwilightMOMS charity. And so we began to make plans and divide up blocks between ourselves.

The first block I worked on was Jacob's Sun. I wanted it to be a representation of the healing Bella was able to do with Jacob. I drew out a fun, scrappy sun and added in the soda cans. I don't think there was a specific reference to what kind of warm soda Jacob brought to the garage, but I pictured root beer or a Coke. I went with a generic label on the red can (red coordinated really well with the yellow and blue). This block is all needle turn appliqué with embroidery. I patched together some different yellows for the sun, which was really fun (I think I'm going to make a crazy quilt with scraps some time). I embroidered like an earthbound sun in Bella's font (as close as I could get to it with a needle and thread) on the edge of the sun. I wanted it to be very subtle, so I used yellow floss. I used a bright blue sky with just a few puffy white clouds in the background because everything except Jacob is so 'grey' in New Moon.

The next block I worked on was The Proposal. It is a difficult proposition to represent an abstract idea in fabric especially since they didn't actually get engaged and no rings were exchanged. I decided to use this pattern that Angie shared with me. This block is meant to represent Edward offering his (anatomical) sparkly diamond heart to Bella (not to be confused with the actual sparkly diamond heart he gives her for her charm bracelet in Eclipse). The red rose is a symbol of love. I also went with red, white and black because a lot of this quilt is earthy and Jacoby, but Edward is still there.

I used the black swirl fabric that I used in Piece, Love, Twilight: A Quilt for Stephenie Meyer for the background (sorry you can't see it in the block, it is hard to get a good photograph of it), our favorite iridescent sparkle fabric for the heart, Red Fairy Frost for the rose and a really ugly green marble print that worked out perfectly for the stem and leaves of the flower. I think that is my favorite part.

The next part of the quilt I worked on was a representation of the Quileute Wolf Pack. I used Cat's Paw Print pattern reduced to about 60%, so that the paws were about 2¼" wide. I used a fabric in the color each wolf was described as, either in the book or on the Character Bio page at the Twilight Lexicon site. Here we have Jacob (russet), Paul (dark silver), Sam (black), Embry (gray w/spots), Jared (medium brown):

Sam was to go in the middle of the 'Dangerous Meadow,' which was to be completed by another member of the group, Joyce. She sent me pieces of her fabric selection to use as a background so that Sam would fit into her block once I finished it and sent it on to her. Paul and Embry were to go in the sashing around the Dangerous Meadow block and Jacob and Jared were to go in the cornerstones at the bottom of the block and I used the fabrics we planned to use for the sashing and cornerstones as backgrounds for those paws. However, we had a member drop out at the very last minute and we needed to adjust our layout, so this set of blocks went back to the drawing board.

In the meantime, I filled in for two of the blocks which the person who had dropped out was going to do. The first was a representation of the night that Bella, Jacob and Mike Newton went to the movies.

The little movie theater was such fun to put together. The black swirl and star fabric I used as the sky came from Joyce. She sent it to me when we were trying to find a match to the black fabric we used in the Stephenie Meyer quilt for the quilt back. I love the marquee on top of the building and wanted it to look like a neon sign. I used Fairy Frost fabric (a favorite of mine ;). The colors are (from outside to center) Lipstick, Lily Pad, Violet and the center post is glow-in-the-dark Fairy Frost. I looks so cool; I wish I could show a picture of it. I also used Banana Fairy Frost for the doors and ticket window. I did hand embroidery for the "CINEMA," "TICKETS," the door handles and the little ticket window 'talk' and 'pay' places.

Here is a close-up of the movie posters, custom-made, printed on ink-jet fabric sheets and treated so they are washable:

I Googled for images to use in the posters. I know that Tomorrow & Forever is a romantic comedy, but I have this image of a windswept embrace in my head and this picture fit so well. I suppose that is one reason why books are better than movies -- we all have our own perceptions. I used Microsoft Paint and PictureProject programs to combine the frame with lights with the pictures and add in the movie titles and "Now Showing."

I enjoyed putting this block together. It is paper piecing, so it took me about 4 hours (you're probably thinking, boy she's slow! I'm thinking the same thing!). I made a few changes to it after I had it assembled. I had a second piece of glow-in-the-dark Fairy Frost across the top of the building but it made it look like the top didn't belong to the bottom. I took it apart and put in a new section with bricks and brown trim to bring the top and bottom two pieces together. Embroidery took me about 4 hours (yes, I'm really slow!).

The next block I filled in for was the Bella and Jacob's Motorcycles block because you can't have New Moon without them. I used the bikes Stephenie Meyer posted in the Cullen Cars section of her website; a Harley Sprint for Jacob and a Honda for Bella.

I printed the motorcycles out and then used a light table to trace them directly onto my block layout pattern. I used that pattern to create the individual pieces used in each motorcycle. I think I spent about 35 hours on this one little block. Each of the pieces was traced, cut out, fused into place and then hand stitched to keep them secure. It was a huge amount of work, but I like the end result. I'm going to be duplicating this block for my own Twilight Quilt; something to keep me busy during the long winter months.

The red fabric in Bella's Motorcycle is the same fabric I used for the borders in the Stephenie Meyer quilt. The pine needles, meant to be bracken on the forest floor, came from Wanda when I asked if she'd send me a bit of fabric she used in her Vampire Baseball block for Stephenie's quilt. She was sweet and sent along a few other nice green foresty fabrics. I added a hand-embroidered quote to this block. I used Bella's font for the quote, Only a teenage boy would agree to this. I don't think that it worked out as well as it did on Jacob's Sun. I went with a floss that is just a bit lighter than the fabric on the road, which doesn't show as much as the slightly-darker-than-the-sun yellow floss I used on Jacob's block. The stitches are so small it would have been almost impossible to take them out and had I even had the desire to try it, I was crunched for time, finishing this at the last second.

In order to better accomodate the wolf-paws into the redesigned layout I did them again. OCD much?

The original layout called for all but Sam to be put in the sashing around the meadow, so I made them larger, thinking they'd have plenty of room. When we went back and revised the layout we decided to keep all the elements inside the blocks. And so I put together a set of paws designed specifically to be set all inside the meadow. This time I reduced Cat's Paw Print pattern to 43%. Each paw is roughly 1⅝" x 1¾". I spent about 16 or 17 hours putting them together. I love the way the subtle, end-of-winter yellow-green background sets off the colors of the wolf paws. I put the wolves in an off-set V formation, as described in the book. Jacob is kind of hanging back, looking at Bella. I also did left and right pawed wolves, depending on which side of the formation they were in. This portion of the meadow was combined with Joyce's part to create a fabulous 'Dangerous Meadow.' Both Joyce and I thought that the two parts went together really well and joked that it looked like we'd been shopping for fabric together.

Despite the extremely tight schedule of three weeks to make extra blocks and ship them to Angie, who then had to assemble and quilt them and then ship the finished quilt back to me for the New Moon Event in Salt Lake, we made it! There was a lot of overnight shipping involved. Here is the finished quilt. It was sold at a silent auction on November 20, 2009 for $850, all of which was donated to Alex's Lemonade Stand Foundation. You can read about that and the other fabulous blocks at the Twilight Quilters Coven Blog. Click on the image for a closer look.

Block Credits
Miscellaneous:
Quilt Layout: Angie, Elizabeth &; Iris
Assembly & Machine Quilting: Angie
Binding: Angie & Elizabeth
Embroidered Quotes: Jerri Lynn

Blocks:
Bella's Birthday Cake: design, layout and piecing by Iris
Japanese Lanterns: design, layout and piecing by Wanda
Bella's Birthday Gifts: design, layout and piecing by Wanda
Bella's Paper Cut: modified pattern by Jennifer Ofenstein, piecing by Cat
As If I'd Never Existed: Walk In the Woods pattern by Linda Hibbert, house, truck and layout by Iris, piecing by Iris
Months Passing Without Notice: design, layout and piecing by Joyce (this block is 3-D -- you can flip the pages of the calendar)
Jacob's Sun: pattern, layout and piecing by Elizabeth
Bella's Broken & Mended Heart: design, layout and piecing by Joyce
Bella & Jacob's Motorcycles: design, layout and piecing by Elizabeth
Conversation Hearts: design, layout and piecing by Jerri Lynn
Bella, Jacob & Mike Newton Go to the Movies: pattern by Mary Ann Nelson, piecing by Elizabeth
The Dangerous Meadow: design, layout and piecing by Joyce
The Wolf Pack: pattern by Cat, layout and piecing by Elizabeth
Cliff Diving: design, layout and piecing by Angie
The Phone Call: pattern by Linda Causee, piecing by Angie
Grand Theft Auto: pattern and piecing by Cat
The Volturi: design, layout and piecing by Mel
La Tua Cantante: design, layout and piecing by Mel
The Flight Home: La Push: First Beach pattern by Cat, Airplane pattern by Penny Pennington, Carlson Pine by Patrice Trnka Adams, medium trees pattern by Liz Schwartz, small tree pattern by Linda Causee, Forks & La Push signs by Iris, layout and piecing by Iris
The Meteor: pattern by Cat, piecing by Angie
The Vote: design, layout and piecing by Jerri Lynn
The Proposal: pattern by Bobbie Osborne, piecing by Elizabeth