Star Wars: Episode- Done!

So I'll spare you all the Star Wars quotes and allusions this post. Well..as much as I can.

Finished it is! (promise only this one)

Yesterday I put the binding on and it and was done. Not a moment after, my son took possision of it. I almost didn't get any pictures. But pictures I have! (OK I lied, last one promise)

I used mainly Kona solids for this quilt and a grey Star Wars print that I found at my local fabric store. Usually, I find that novelty prints are not that great in quality, but this Star Wars fabric feels and drapes great.

I used patterns from Kristy at Quiet Play to create the faces (you can find them here). For the light saber and the Death Star I had to strike out on my own and create my own patterns to paper piece- old school, by drawing then out on paper (I really need to get some software to fix that). Anyway, look back here to see more of the genesis of this quilt.

When it comes to quilting I'm always caught between wanting to do very dense, complex quilting and wanting the quilt to be soft and comfortable (as dense quilting tends to make the quilt more stiff). In the end I did some straight line quilting on this quilt. I though striaght lines match the industrial feel of the greys, blacks, and blocks. I downloaded a Star Wars font and traced out my son's name on the quilt so that it's his (keeping in line with the fact that we put his name on everything, which helped yesterday when  he lost a boot at school).

For the light saber, I found this variegated thread at my local thread store, a.k.a. my mom's- really sometime remind me to show you her thread stash, it's epic. I have yet to get on the Aurifill bandwagon, mostly because I'm a spontaneous thread shopper and when I need thread I need thread like right now. And none of the shops around here carry Aurifill, so I've stuck with Gutterman. Is there really a difference? I'd love to know. Maybe one day I'll pony up the cash and have enough forethought to find out. Anyway, the thread provided a little variety to the red in the quilt.

I tried at one point to add some pink strips along the edge of the light saber to make it pop, but the man in charge vetoed that idea (ever since he wore a pink shirt to church and one of his friends told him he was wearing a 'girl' colour, he has shunned pink- grrrrrr, I'm not even going to voice my thoughts on that because not enough words can explain how I feel about someone teasing him that he is wearing pink...and, AND calling it a GIRLS colour... oh seriously, I have to stop here).

Deep breath.

So, I pulled a few props for some of the shots of the quilt (rest assured we have many, many Star Wars 'props' around here). It was great to see the pieced blocks up against the 'real' thing. They really look quite similar. I was afraid I had put too many or not enough lines on Yoda's face, but I think it worked out just right. If you're interested in how I did the faces, I put up a tutorial a while ago.

I'm so glad this quilt is done (never mind it was suppose to be done by Christmas). And it's the first finish on my new FAL Q2 list!! I feel like I deserve a ceremony- just insert me right along Chewbacca (video courtesy Jesse Mohler, YouTube).



Linking up with TGIFF and Quiet Play