My Twilight Quilt: Police Chief Swan

Charlie is Police Chief Swan to the good people of Forks. -Bella Swan, Twilight, page 5

As my quilt layout evolved, I ended up with a few odd-shaped spaces to fill. Most of my quilt blocks are 6" x 6", but the 4" wide, extra-tall tree that occupies the height of two rows, left the four other rows with 4" x 6" blocks needed to complete them. Two of those 4" x 6" spaces were attached to the 6" x 6" blocks next to them and two were left at 4" x 6". As I was trying to decide how best to fill them, I thought that a police badge for Charlie might be a good representation for him. I asked Cat, my go-to-gal for paper pieced patterns, if she could help me. I didn't give her much to go on; just that I wanted a 4" x 6" block with a Forks Police badge. As usual, she really came through. She used these two images to create one amazing Police Chief Swan quilt block.



You can see that the block most closely resembles the patch on the right. I am probably going to do a little hand embroidery and add the '19' and '45' on either side of the center emblem and then do 'City of Forks' and 'WA' on the bottom. Sometime soon, I need to take my machine in for servicing, and if I go with the shop that sold it to me, it will be out for at least three weeks, so I'm saving up all my handwork for then.


I used Fairy Frost for this block -- I just had to. Silver for the badge. The fabric is two-toned underneath the monochrome 'frost.' I cut away all of the darker areas and used the lighter, brighter background areas for the badge. I wanted it to be bright and shiny. Then I raided my 'stash' for the fabrics for the center emblem. All of the fabrics used in this block have been used (or will be in the future) in my other Twilight Quilt blocks. I like that kind of continuity throughout a quilt. The trees are all made from the same eight or nine fabrics (I can't remember exactly at the moment, but I'll go count if you want). And I framed the badge with my trusty black Civil War Reproduction fabric (used throughout the quilt and as the outer border, background and cross your fingers I have enough for the binding too).

Cat did a great job at capturing the details on the badge. This pattern went together very nicely. Cat's work is pure genius, as usual. She modified this pattern and has included it as the advanced block this month in her Twilight Mystery BOM Quilt. I've seen a preview of her layouts and am using most of her advanced blocks in my own quilt layout, so I won't be following those exactly. I am following along with the beginner blocks, though, and am going to make a little wall-hanging with them. I haven't done my beginner block for this month yet, but I'll keep you posted.

Here's the layout with Chief Swan added in. I love to watch it fill in. It keeps me motivated.