The first block that I completed for my Twilight quilt was called "Where Bella Rests Her Head" and had a little representation of the four places Bella spent a lot of her time in the book -- Charlie's House, Jacob's House, The Cullen's House, and the little cottage where she and Edward lived after they were married.
It was a most marvelous idea and I held onto it through the first and second incarnations of my layout. It was the very last of the original blocks to go. It was too small to fit into the third layout, and so I either needed to add borders to it or re-make it to fit. I decided to keep the ideas in this block but discard this particular layout of it. I kept the Swiss Flag (now a Shield) and turned the four empty corners into more useful space; a couple of the spots going to forest*, and the others to blocks my layout was missing. I replaced the simple houses with fancy ones, starting with patterns from EQ5. I tweaked and re-drew the patterns until I had the perfect houses for Charlie, The Cullen's and Bella & Edward's Cottage.
This is Jacob's House. I'd originally planned for this to just be a house because it only occupies one 6" x 6" area. But there was a bit of forest* by each of the other houses (they occupy a little more space in the quilt) and I really wanted this house to have a little forest* in it too. So with some encouragement, I altered my pattern, scaling back the house and adding a tall, skinny tree*. I think they both fit perfectly in this spot -- the house isn't too small and the little bit of forest* makes it fit right into the setting. The current tree* count for the quilt is 7494.
I love that the tree is a little wonky, that it leans a little. The tree in the other block (remember, I'm making two of these quilts) is a little straighter, but I liked the crooked one for sew-and-tell.
Here's the layout filled in with all the blocks I've completed so far.
Up next? Charlie's block, I think.
*Key: 1 Paper Pieced Tree = 500 Trees in the Forks Forest
1 Raw-Edge Appliqué Tree = 150 Trees in the Forks Forest
1 Raw-Edge Giant Cedar Tree = 6 Giant Cedar Trees around the Cullen's House
1 Paper Pieced Palm Tree = 147 actual Palm Trees on Isle Esme
love how you leaned the tree
ReplyDeleteAnother cute creation!!!
ReplyDeleteWow, this is really coming together nicely! I don't understand what you said about the tree count being over 7,000 though. Could you explain that for me?
ReplyDeleteSince there are quite a few trees in this quilt and they each take so long, I assigned each type of fabric tree a representation value for actual trees. There are really only 37 trees (so far), but if you use the 'key' at the bottom of the post and count up the different kinds of trees and multiply them by the number of trees they actually represent, you get 7494: 588 Palm Trees on Isle Esme, 3900 trees in the general Forks area (borders of trees on the top and bottom), 6 giant cedars (to the left of the Cullen's house), and 3000 more trees around the houses (assuming that each house is surrounded by a little patch of forest).
ReplyDeletePerhaps I overestimate the actual tree value when compared to the time it takes to make one quilt tree and my joke isn't so funny?