Twilight Obsession: A Banner

As I've been working on my twin Mystery Quilt blocks, specifically the book covers, I have also made a third set of book cover blocks to put together in a little banner as a Christmas gift for a non-quilting TwilighMOMS friend. I've had to keep it under wraps, but as she's unwrapped her gift I can share now. I know I've posted my other blocks like these, but it is fun to have them all in one spot and this is a separate project, after all.

The Twilight Book Cover, designed by Cat. It is enlarged to 120% to make a 6" block. The fabrics in the apple were from Iris and the hands are the favorite iridescent sparkle fabrics in white and cream from JoAnn's. The black swirl in the background is also from JoAnn's. It is a little difficult to see here, and you'll get a better look at it in the other blocks. The apple stem is hand satin stitch. This is the third Forbidden Fruit block I've made.

The New Moon Book Cover, designed by Cat and enlarged to 120%. The red fabric is the same as in the apple, from Iris, and the few pieces of dark burgundy are from Wanda. Thanks girls! The white is Snow Fairy Frost and the green in the stem is a marble print that I used for the stem and leaves in the proposal block in the New Moon Quilt. This is the eighth Broken Petals block I've made, one trial block at 100%, four blocks at 80% for the Stephenie Meyer quilt and three at this size.

The Eclipse Book Cover. I did this the same way I did the ribbon on the Stephenie Meyer quilt, using the actual book as the model for it. I even used a left-over piece of ribbon from the Stephenie Meyer quilt. In addition to the ribbon in the Stephenie Meyer quilt and this block, I've made two other 6" ribbon blocks.

Cat's Breaking Dawn cover, enlarged to 120%. Although all of Cat's patterns are fun to do, this one was particularly fun for me, though I'm not sure why. I just really enjoyed doing it. The chessboard squares are Natural Fairy Frost (a favorite!) and I traced the chess pieces directly off the book cover. The chess pieces are made from the same pattern I used for the SM quilt, and did them at the same time. The queen is Snow Fairy Frost and the pawn is Red Fairy Frost. I've done three of these blocks.

The picture is a little distorted, but here is the finished banner, which I named Twilight. I should have called it Twilight Obsession, but didn't think of it until too late. Angie did a beautiful job machine quilting it for me. Thanks so much, Angie! The banner idea was Iris'. We were talking about our mystery quilts and how to fit in the book covers. She only included the Twilight Book Cover in her mystery quilt and at the time I was debating about using her awesome placement idea or putting each of the book covers in the four corners of the quilt. She said that she was going to make a book-cover only hanging, either in a banner, like this, or with two covers in the top row and two covers in the bottom row. I filed that idea away and thought it might be a great gift for a fellow Twilight lover.

The red fabric is left over from the Stephenie Meyer quilt. The borders around the 6" book cover blocks are 2" and the black borders are 4", I think. I worked this one out as I went, something I don't usually do, and I didn't write it down for future reference. Oops! I like to have a layout marked to scale on grid paper so I can make sure everything fits. This seemed like a straightforward design, so I worked out the details as I went. When I bound it, I included loops for hanging. The loops lay flat against the back of the banner, so if she wants to use it as a table runner, she won't have a problem hiding them. I brought in extra lighting to try to get a good picture, but the contrast between the black and white confuses the camera and so it is difficult to get a picture that isn't really dark. If you want to see a bigger view of it, just click on the picture.

Angie did a great job with the quilting. She did accent quilting around each of the Book Cover pieces. Then in the borders, she used a really fantastic sort of filigree pattern. It is very striking. Here is a close-up of that (click on the picture for an even bigger view).

She quilted in a complimenting pattern in the red frames around each block. Here is a close-up of one side (again, click on it for a bigger view):

This is what it looks like all the way around. The photo isn't the best (I was in a hurry to get it in the mail and only took one picture of the frames), but I hope you can see how cool the design looks around the blocks. You can also see the accent stitching that she did on the book cover elements in this block.

The quilting really makes this runner spectacular. Thanks for a great job, Angie!