Finished! A collaboration, mother & son....

Update February 2016: I've recently discovered another blogger loved this quilt so much that she copied it, and in fact added some elements as well. I should note she has since gone back and given me credit for the quilt (thank you!), but I'd also like to point out that this is only the 4th quilt I ever made, and only the 1st one ever done by machine. I hope you'll forgive any imperfections in my quilt, and enjoy seeing The Original Legend of Zelda Quilt, actually designed by my then 12 year old son who specified which elements to include and where to place them (shown below with his quilt). Thank you!

Well, I did it! The quilt is quilted, bound, washed, dried and my son snuggled under it last night on the first really extra cold night of the year. Perfect timing!

snuggling in bed

I asked him for name suggestions, and without hesitation he said, "Legend of Zelda's Cat" so that will be the name. I need to message my good friend at Embroidery by Shawna and get her to whip up the label. She has done the labels for all my other finished quilts so far, and I absolutely love the work she does! Simple, yet very high quality, and exactly what I order!  Or, in the case of a typo/spelling error, she'll correct that for you! :)

all wrapped up

Because I am a fast and somewhat careless baster, the quilt came out a little saggy-baggy. Because it's for the bed, not a show, I don't care too much. I do plan to buy spray baste next time we're in the US, as I cannot stand the chore. No matter how well I smooth out the back, tape it to the floor, smooth out the batting, tape it to the floor, and pin, pin, pin the layers together, it still gets loosey-goosey when I start quilting. Or wrinkled and folded on the back. Probably it's the pins, too; I only own straight pins, and not very many, so......I definitely skimp on the basting step.

the loosey goosey, saggy baggy front
one son is not as tall as the other, so one side is lower ;)

I used a batting with scrim on the back, and did "stitch in the ditch" quilting on the front, going over every diagonal seam, both directions, as well as a zig zag stitch following the light green border (which wasn't caught much in the diagonals, whereas the inner pieced borders were).

The quilting adds texture to the back without actually showing up and being a distraction, which is lucky. The green flannel helped to hide the stitches, so that was good; flannel was a lot stretchier to work with than I imagined, but makes for an extra snuggly quilt, so that's nice.

the texture enhanced back (also saggy baggy...)
and our silly mutt looking on

Now that this one is done, it's on to the  next one. I short intermission while I attempt a "15 minutes of play" architectural challenge (assuming my chosen photo is architectural enough....more on that later) and then it'll be right on to my youngest son's quilt, a Super Mario themed quilt designed according to his suggestions. I hope to have his done (twin sized, not full!) before it stops being cold......

Legend of Kitty? Zelda Cat? This quilt needs a name.....

Well, the front is done. The back is done. The quilt is laid out in the floor, ready to be basted and quilted. Whew! What a chore this quilt has been!

The front was not too difficult, until I did the colored gem stones (called Rupees) on the sides; I made them the wrong size at first, because I didn't follow directions. Oops. No problem, I recut the fabric, fixed 'em up, and used the mistakes to make small ones to go across the top as a little extra touch. Cuteness!

wrong-sized rupee pieces on the left, right-sized rupee pieces on the right

the finished front
the side borders are the right-sized rupees;
the top border is a mix of colored rectangles and the wrong-sized rupees

Then I had to hand draw and machine applique this sword. Apparently it's a major part of the game, is called the Master Sword, and has many variations depending on which particular Legend of Zelda game you are playing. My son wanted the version from Twilight Princess (for Wii), so we searched images and I drew it to the best of my ability and then cut and sewed and here it is. The Artist, age 12, is happy, so I'm happy.

close-up of the detail on the hilt/handle of the sword
I outlined the sword/appliqued by using a tight zig-zag stitch
then I stitched a straight stitch to mark all the detail lines of the handle
also shows a close-up of the top border - you can just see the rectangles/elongated diamonds

The back is also made to his specifications, but I don't think I'll do a 2-sided quilt again any time soon. I'm seriously fretting over thread color and such. I really only have one color thread available in the right amount to quilt a whole quilt, and it's gray; I'm not excited about the quilting lines showing up all over the back of the quilt, since the back is really a front, just put on the back. But, what can I do??? I don't know, so gray it is. I think the gray will blend enough into the cat portion that it hopefully won't be distracting. We shall see.

the back, angled body
I outlined the entire cat in a tight zig-zag stitch to give it a little more definition
the frame is made of assorted cat print fabrics

The back is a cat; I free/improv pieced the cat, partly out of necessity -- I didn't have a single piece of orange big enough to get the width I needed for that cat. The cat had to be big enough to make the flannel last for the whole quilt, because between designing the quilt & buying the fabric and then starting the quilt, my husband decided I should make the quilt for a full sized bed (which our son hopes to get upon our return to the US) vs. a twin sized bed (which he has right now). So everything had to stretch without buying more fabric, as I'd spent way too much as it was.

So, the cat was improv pieced, mostly using the techniques that Victoria Findlay Wolfe talks about in her blog & in her book "15 Minutes of Play."  Fun times, that! Since it was for the back, I really let myself be free and have fun, and I think the result is good.

The cat had started off squared up, we didn't like it, I peeked at the instructions and saw, oops, it was supposed to angle down, so I appliqued flannel over the body and WOW! what a difference that made! Woot! So then I just kept going with the face and the ears and the whole thing and had so much fun. It tossed all the measurements out the window as far as my EQ7 instructions, because nothing ended up "the right size" BUT wonderfully it did end up that I had exactly the amount of flannel needed to make it the same size as the front of the quilt. Whew! Thank goodness for that!

the cat, before I angled the body

So, now it's lying in the floor waiting for me to go baste the layers together and get quilting, but while I do that, a question for you --- what on earth can I name this quilt??? I like to put labels on with official quilt names, and somehow "Legend of Zelda Quilt" doesn't seem totally appropriate given that it's also a cat quilt. So....ideas??? Would love your comments/feedback!

If it helps, the front is modeled after my son's favorite video game; the back is a cat from one of his favorite book series, and also cats are his favorite animal as well. So -- name this quilt!

PLAYing around with the back of the Legend of Zelda quilt....

The front of the Legend of Zelda quilt is done; pics coming soon, but my son also wanted a pieced back --- specifically, a cat.

No problem. I have EQ7 so I chose a simple cat block and made a medallion quilt design, a simple strip border to frame the block, and then the rest is the green backing flannel. I finished the front of the quilt last weekend, and got ready to cut orange fabric for the giant cat.

Except, the cutting directions were all bigger than the pieces of fabric I had. Yikes. What to do???

Well, luckily I've been reading the blog of Virginia Findlay Wolfe, author of "15 Minutes of PLAY," a lovely book all about improv piecing and creating what she calls "made fabric" from scraps and such.

The point of her actual book (which I received in e-format as a Mother's Day gift! yay!!) is to be creative, let the fabric tell you what it wants to be, etc. Don't cut and piece with a goal or end result in mind. -ahem-  Well, I had to break the rules and instead followed two of the main principles she mentions --- Use what you have, make what you need.

all the strips

Inspired by her book and blog, I cut all the orange fabrics into wonky strips. Then I set about sewing them back together into rectangles more or less the right size. My original plan was to then cut the precise pieces that I needed, some of which involved printing templates to get oh-so-precise triangles and all. -ahem- again. No thank  you.

separated into dark orange and light orange (more or less...)

Instead, I sewed and sewed and sewed until I had three gigantic rectangles and a smaller one. Body, body, body, head. Then I sewed two sort of triangley shaped bits for ears, and a long narrow-ish bit for the tail. Then I brought over widths of the green flannel and cut and sewed and cut and sewed some more until I had a head strip, an ears strip and a tail strip, and then I put it all together and wound up with this somewhat wonky, but still fairly adorable, improv pieced quilt cat.

one very wonky, very improv, stripey strippy orange cat

On to the border/frame and then the rest of the back, and maybe, just maybe, by this time tomorrow I'll have a finished quilt, front and back, to show off. Maybe. Wish me luck!

Legend of Zelda: Progress, and Un-Progress....

We all do it, right? Finish a step and realize we've made a mistake somewhere along the way??? Well, that's where I'm at right  now with the Legend of Zelda quilt. Made a lot of forward progress, then some more, and then realized that most of the "some more" has to be undone and fabric recut and pieces resewn. Oops. What's that saying, measure twice, cut once? Let's add 'and make sure you count the right patches, too...."

First the forward progress -- the middle/main section of the top is done. yay!!

the main portion of the front of the quilt
being held by the recipient-to-be son :)

This wasn't without a little mini-oops, but  mostly it went together easily. I only had to fix this one thing. Since I didn't plan out the yellows, and was actually going for a scrappy look, it turned out that all but one worked out to be nice and unscrappy. So, the one had to be reversed so that the pairs lined up correctly, and it looks much better, almost making the yellow triangles seem to glow, which is nice.

Oops. Let's move those bold dots down to the bottom.....

Now the not-so-forward progress -- the side border pieces all got cut, and chain pieced, and half need to be undone because I made too many middles and not enough tips of the colored diamonds (called "rupees" in the game...). Plus I didn't believe the cutting directions, and couldn't get the template to print right, and so I tweaked the cutting directions and wound up with pieces way too small. Oops again.

Mistake One: the tip bits are too small.
Mistake Two: I made double what I need of the middles, and half what I need of the tips.

Here's hoping the undoing and redoing goes along quickly; this is a 2-sided quilt, so I still need to get borders on the front before I can start on piecing the back!

Up Next -- the Legend of Zelda Quilt

This quilt is a special order for my middle son, The Artist.  He described to me exactly what he wants, came along on fabric shopping day and chose his fabrics, and is having a ball watching the stack of triangles turn into his quilt.

I love that he has the confidence to design things himself, and the confidence in me that is his unwavering faith that I can of course pull off his design, no problem. And I so enjoy bonding with him over the design & construction process; so fun to have a special thing that only he & I share; the rest of the family enjoys the fruits of my labor and will cheer and nod and ooooh & aaah when prompted, but my middle boy, he truly gets it. Such a joy to share that with him!

His request for this quilt (it will be bed sized when finished) was simple enough --- the "Tri-Force" symbol from the Legend of Zelda video games, in a field of green. We will also be appliqueing a particular sword but that part is not drawn out yet; I'm going to have him help with that part when we get there.

Legend of Zelda Quilt Design (original design)
front of quilt

He also requested cat fabric. The  original plan called for a border on the front made of cat fabrics, but then we learned we'll be moving later this year and he will likely upgrade to a full sized bed rather than twin, so the pattern had to be adjusted. Of course I'd already bought the fabric based on calculations for a twin sized quilt, and had spent way too much --- he picked out the fabric, which was imported, which means it was quadruple the price, which, well, adds up to way too much. So there just was not fabric money left in the budget, and so the carefully chosen, heavy flannel for the back had to grow....how to make that happen without spending more money?

Thank goodness for EQ7 design software! I was able to play with several different ideas, check the fabric requirements each time, try again, keep playing....yes! A design that results in a full sized quilt, not twin, yet without changing the yardage requirements for the fabrics I purchased (I will instead supplement with fabrics from my stash).  The end result was that a black border was added to the front, using leftover fabric from the Comic Strip Quilt just completed, as well as a border made up of gems from the game called Rupees. These come in a rainbow of colors, so scraps will be perfect! Yay!

Then the cat fabric border got moved to the back and will frame a pieced cat block (oversized), which will set into the flannel backing and thus "grow" that fabric so that I don't have to buy more flannel or have competing cats & video games all on one side. Whew!

blocks, stacked  & pinned in row order according to the drawing, waiting to be sewn
blocks are oversized (finish at 12" squares) to speed construction

I started cutting triangles on Monday, and today I have all the blocks made for the center of the front, and will get them into rows and hopefully all together as a top. Next week, cutting those rupee blocks and making those side borders....with any luck, this will come together quickly and he'll have it ready for his bed before it gets too cold here -- southern hemisphere, so we're in autumn and heading into winter, or what passes for winter down here.

Follow along; it should be a fun quilt to work on!