Deathly Hallows Quilt

    To explain the idea for this quilt I have to go back a few years. See I have this amazing friend Rachelle, I love her to pieces as does the rest of my family, she is part of our family now. When she needed a place to live in college we shared a room in an apartment, when she needed a job after college my Dad helped her get an interview where he works, when she needs someone to laugh with my sister Sarah is always there. So when she got pregnant my Mother and sister worked on throwing a baby shower for her. I cannot be there and am oh so sad about that, so I decided that I had to make the best gift she will get at that shower (or maybe just after depending on how fast I sew).

Ben, Rachelle and I relaxing in my bed when they came up to Alaska last summer, my only friends from down south who have made the trek up to Alaska and visited me. Yes it was where they eloped and a dream place for Ben to visit, but I maintain they came up solely because I live up here : )

    See Rachelle, Ben (her equally awesome husband) and I love Harry Potter. We take this love to a whole new level, all three of us listen to part of one of the audiobooks every single day. I am not kidding, we cannot sleep without a Harry Potter audio book. Ben and Rachelle are afraid that their child (whom I call baby BJ because it's a Barck-Johnson baby) will think Jim Dale is it's father because we listen to so much Harry Potter. This all started when Rachelle and I shared a room in college and had to put it on at night, Ben was often there too and as such a legacy began. Rachelle and I are going to take a vacation in a few years where we are going to get in a car and just drive taking whatever roads we like with no destination in mind. The main part of this vacation is that we are going to drive as we listen to all seven books. It will be amazing and fun, because we are those geeks.

     I knew that this quilt had to have a Harry Potter theme. I have some amazing Harry Potter flannel leftover from Jamie and Karl's quilt that I knew I wanted to use for the back, but I wanted a cool Harry Potter theme in the front too. A theme that would not immediately tell you this was a Harry Potter quilt if you were not an avid fan, but you could still love. I wasn't sure how to do that, especially knowing that the quilt needs to be gender neutral because they are not sharing baby BJ's sex.

      After a lot of careful thought and deliberation, I came to the conclusion that making a Deathly Hallows quilt would be the best way to go. I could make a cute quilt front with just one Harry Potter element: the Deathly Hallows symbol. This way, to those of us who know and love Harry Potter we recognize and love it as such immediately, but those who are not such avid Harry Potter fans can still appreciate a very nice baby quilt. I decided that the color scheme I would use for the quilt top was going to be yellow and grey because I have a lot of yellow receiving blankets that I want to use (like in Elin's quilt) and I am a huge fan of a yellow and grey combination.

     Figuring out how to frame up the quilt front was my next dilemma. I thought about how to best use the three different yellow baby blankets I had and decided to do yellow squares with grey boarders in the front. Then I could put a big square in the middle with the Deathly Hallows symbol. I am SO excited to get started on this quilt!!! It is going to be AMAZING!! Here is a sketch of what I am thinking of doing....

I set to work immediately. First off I had to get all my cutting done, then I could work on sewing it together, which is the fun part. I do not enjoy the cutting part, I wish all quilts could be made with pre-cut fabrics. My biggest issue is finding a way to cut out a Deathly Hallows shape to applique onto the quilt. Ideally I would have some sort of projection system that I could project a picture onto fabric to then cut out but this would be hard to do. I may just have to hand draw it and cut it that way. We shall see what I end up doing, but in the meantime here is an awesome shot of all my fabric squares all cut up and ready to be sewn...

 I got all the squares laid out and cut, and it took some time because I am a freak and don't want any of the two same pieces touching each other, which takes a bit of coordination and effort. It took me most of my day today to cut out all these squares, lay them out and sew them up. I did do quite a few other things as I always have to do when cutting fabric. I get too sick of cutting to just sit down and bang it out all at once. So I cut some then go to the gym, cut some, then run to the post office, cut some, then do the dishes; you get the idea. I am really excited to get most of the front of the quilt finished tomorrow. I am hoping to get it all finished, but that may be asking a bit too much...

 Today (after a nice long hike) I set to work on cutting the grey boarders and sewing them on. It took a bit of time to finish the top piece but not as much time as I thought. Luckily I felt I had enough time to work on quilting it together before the day was over. The back part took a bit of sewing as well because I did not have as big of a portion of fabric as I thought I did, so I had to cut up some of it to sew together. This was the biggest bit of fabric I had remaining from Jamie and Karl's quilt...

So I cut this up and sewed it together in a very fast careful manner. It may not look awesome, but it's all Harry Potter which I love. Then I taped it down and got ready to sandwich all the fabrics together...

This was a little harder than I expected only because I had to move around furniture and had very little space around the quilt in which to work. This quilt takes up almost all the free space on the floor of my bedroom making it hard to tape down. But I finally got it done and was able to sandwich the fabrics together. I used fusible batting for this quilt as it was all that I had available. It made basting the layers together a bit easier. Instead of using numerous safety pins, I just had to carefully run a hot iron with steam over it, and the heat and steam activate the glue which holds the fabrics together...

Here it is before I started quilting it all together. I think it makes an amazing baby quilt. I cannot wait to see what it will look like once I have figured out how to cut out and applique on the deathly hallows symbol. I was able to finish most of the quilting process tonight after dinner, but I ran out of thread so I will have to wait till after work tomorrow to finish the last bit of quilting. To keep with the yellow and grey theme on the front of the quilt I used grey thread when quilting it together. I decided to do straight lines on the yellow squares and use free motion quilting for the grey boarders. The applique will take care of some of the quilting process for the square in the middle, and I will likely free-motion quilt the remaining areas.

It's not a great photo, but this is what I have finished as of today, tomorrow after work I will finish free motion quilting the remaining portions of the grey boarders. Then hopefully on Sunday before Easter dinner I can applique the Deathly Hallows symbol on. I will square it up and bind it on Monday morning before running to the post office to ship it back to Minnesota. I have to get it finished and in the mail by Monday so that it will get to Minnesota in time for Baby BJ's shower on Saturday. Hopefully I can make that deadline!!

  

A picture of the back and a close up of the front corner that shows how I am quilting it together.

 I had to work all day on Thursday but as soon as I got home I went right to work on finishing the free-motion quilting. I needed to finish around the edges and in the middle. I got so excited by how the quilt was coming together that after I finished I decided to draw and applique the Deathly Hallows symbol on the front because I really wanted to see what it would look like. I decided the only way to do the symbol was to free draw it and then use my rotary cutter to cut it out very carefully. This took a lot of time because it needed to be absolutely perfect and I am not good at free drawing things. Luckily I could use my ruler to draw the triangle and lines, but the circle was difficult because getting a perfect looking circle is not easy. I finally ending up using a thread and pencil like a compass to get a circle that I was happy with.

      I took my time carefully cutting out the symbol with my rotary cutter which was no easy task with a shape that was only a half an inch wide. I was so scared that I was going to go too far and cut right through an area I shouldn't. Luckily that did not happen and I was able to get it cut out and pinned onto my quilt so that I could work on appliqueing it. After another hour of work I finishing appliqueing it to the front!!!

         It was now about 12:30am and I had to be at work at 8am that morning, but I couldn't sleep because I was too excited about the quilt and how good the applique of the Deathly Hallows looked, so instead I took a few pictures of what I had finished so far....

I deliberately waited until I had all three layers sandwiched together to applique on the symbol. I wanted the symbol to be visible from the back, which it is if you look closely. It's hard to see from this photo but if you could see it, the grey thread around the symbol is quite visible on the back of the quilt...

Needless to say, I didn't sleep much Thursday night on account of being so excited about the quilt. I jumped up and down with excitement till I got too tired. Then I tried to go to sleep but ended up just taking short naps before waking up again to admire the quilt. When it was time for me to leave for work in the morning I packed up the quilt and take it to work with me. I wanted to square it up to get ready to bind it when I got off on Saturday, and I wanted to show it to my co-workers to see if they liked it, and it they knew that it was a Deathly Hallows quilt.

My co-workers really liked the quilt which I was glad about. I was slightly afraid that people who didn't know what the symbol on the front was wouldn't like the quilt, but they liked it anyway. They really seemed to like the Deathly Hallows symbol that I appliqued on the front even thought they did not know what it was. Yay!! It seems I had achieved success of making a Harry Potter quilt that had mass appeal, those who know Harry Potter will love it because it's a Harry Potter quilt, and those who don't know Harry Potter still really liked it!!

The next day was beautiful in Juneau, a bright blue sunny sky without a cloud in sight and I decided there was no way I could not get out an enjoy this beautiful sunny afternoon, so I took my client out to Eagle Beach for a picnic in the sunshine. Naturally, I took the quilt with me to get a bit of a photo shoot in...

The final quilt is a four foot by four foot square, quite big for a small infant yes but I wanted something that baby BJ could love for years and years to come. The size makes a perfect lap quilt for an adult, as you can see in this beautiful picture of me enjoying the quilt I made...

When I got home on Saturday night I got the fabric cut for binding the quilt, but ended up spending most of the night with my good friend Izzy making food and Easter Egg Jello Shots for Easter the next day. We made some awesome Easter Egg Jello Shots for everyone to enjoy after an Easter Egg hunt on Sunday. There is something about watching all my friends run around the yard looking for Easter Eggs like little kids that I really enjoy :)

After a great dinner with my Juneau Family I returned home to finish my quilt so that I could get it in the mail right away on Monday morning. I decided to bind it in more of the yellow flannel after a lot of discussion with Izzy about what would look best. We both wished I could have bound it in the same polka dot fabric from the center, but I didn't have enough of that left, so we decided that the yellow would be best. I got it bound and in the wash before I went to bed Sunday night.

I woke up to another amazing summer day in Juneau this morning (Monday). It was so warm and sunny that I knew I had to go for a nice long hike and take the quilt along for a photo shoot before bringing it to the post office. Yes I am a bit of a dork, but the quilt is so cool it really does deserve it's own photo shoot. After a quick hike up part of Mt. Roberts, I took it downtown for a photo shoot on my way to the post office.

     I am not sure which photo is my favorite, but there it is: my magnum opus. I am so sad that I don't have the quilt here anymore!! I know it will be loved and cherished by Ben, Rachelle and baby BJ forever but I want it back because it is so awesome!! I don't think I could ever design and make a quilt that will be as awesome as this quilt is, but I will try. If you like it please let me know, I want to know if others find it as awesome as I do. I also welcome any and all criticism of it. I know for a fact that it will be forever loved by Ben and Rachelle and there is no other quilt I could have possibly dreamed up that they would like more. To all my other friends and family members who live down south: this is what you get for making a trip up to Juneau to see me. A quilt designed especially by me for you and your family to love forever, that's right Therese and Eric, I am talking to you :) And no, Sean, Mom and Dad I will not be making an awesome quilt for you guys for coming up to visit me, you fly for free so if I can afford tickets down south twice a year, you sure as heck can take some time off work once a year to come see me ;)

    I hope people think it is as awesome as I do, if you like it please share it and let me know!! I can't wait to see what it looks like after a few years of love, the wonderful puckering you get from quilting has just started and will only get better as time goes on. Congratulations Ben and Rachelle I love you both very much and I am SUPER excited to meet baby BJ next time I am in Minnesota - or next time you come up to Alaska (which I highly recommend)...