Goblin King: Labyrinth Quilt and Stitch Along - Finished Quilt tops

I was just updating my WiPs page, and going through old posts, and I realised I never posted the images of both of the completed Labyrinth quilt tops after the quiltalong event.

I did post pics of the Black and Grey version...

Goblin King: Labyrinth Quilt and stitch along - Completed quilt top
Embroidery on white panels

But I didn't post pics of the version I was doing with the orchid / purple panels... so here it is

Goblin King: Labyrinth Quilt and Stitch Along - Completed quilt top

Isn't it amazing how much of a difference fabric choice makes with the look of the finished product?

Let's do it again... #PODQAL2018

Did you see the Harry Potter themed bookcase quilt I made and gifted recently? My post about it is here

There was a lot of work (and love) went into making that quilt, and as I was making it I felt sure that it was the only one that I would ever do. 

But I should know by now that you never say never... because I'm about to do it again!

The quilt is the Harry Potter Bookcase quilt (AKA The Project of Doom or PoD). Patterns are free and available over at my favourite fandom/quilting site fandominstitches.com. There is also a very active and welcoming facebook group. 

We're running a quilt along over in the facebook group from today right through to the end of August and I'd love for you to join in with us. 

You don't need to have any experience paper piecing, and your quilt doesn't need to be the monster size that my first one was. We're taking a choose your own adventure approach - you decide how big you want your quilt to be, how much time you have each week, what you want to include etc and there will be lots of encouragement and advice available in the group.

So head on over and join the facebook group to join in the fun (make sure you answer the question on joining, and have a read of the group rules)

https://www.facebook.com/groups/projectofdoom/


Look forward to seeing you there.


K

Project of Doom - Block details

I'm on a roll! 2 posts in one day.... image spam coming up...

As promised in my earlier post, here are each of the blocks in my Project of Doom / Harry Potter Boockcase quilt top.

The Un-bloggable Quilt - Finished gifted and now bloggable

You may have noticed me referring a couple of times to a quilt that I've been working on but not blogging about (the un-bloggable quilt). Well its finally finished and its been gifted so I can post about it now. Yay! I've been itching to share this one with you.

The quilt is the "Project of Doom" (PoD) Harry Potter bookcase quilt from Fandom in Stitches and it's taken me 18 months on and off to get this king-sized quilt pieced, quilted and finished.

So without further ado.. here it is...

Finished quilt front

Finished quilt back

I can't thank Jennifer Ofenstein and the FiS community enough for the patterns, inspiration, ideas and support as I went through the process of making this quilt. It took forever, but I'm thrilled with how it turned out.

More details on the individual blocks and the quilting process in coming posts.

Until next time

K

Two steps forward... One step back...

Do you ever feel like you're going so slow or having so many setbacks on something you're almost going backwards? Well that's how I've been feeling the past few weeks.

I have a deadline of early next week to finish one of my largest un-bloggable (for now) quilts, and that's pretty much all I've been working on for the last month so apologies for the absence. While I am not able to write much about the actual project (yet), I can use this post to vent some of my frustrations!

I made a thing! Sewing machine extension table

I've reached the stage now with a couple of my WIPs that I will soon be doing a LOT of quilting (as opposed to just piecing quilt tops).

Each and every time I've done a quilt on the Brother in the past I've cursed that I don't have an extension table to make the quilting process a bit easier. I've had a look online and at my local stores and haven't been able to find anything that comes in at under $100. With cash a little tight at the moment, and WIPs needing finishing I decided to put on my big girl DIY pants and make something myself.

So off the the local hardware store I went (twice actually!). I came home with:

• 600 x 900mm MDF customwood
• plastic cabinet legs
• 3mm plastic tubing
• Glue

A bit of measuring, cutting and gluing later and I'm done! A benchtop extension table custom made for my sewing machine (and larger than any of the commercial ones I've looked at).

Sometimes I need a little reminder that sewing and crafting tools are not the only tools in existence and this project was just the thing. All up it came in at about $35 of materials and completed in just a few hours - win!

Now lets see if it holds up to the volume of quilting I'll be doing over the next month or so.

Until next time.

K

Extras - Goblin King: Labyrinth Quilt and Stitch Along

Originally intended to be part of the design invitational, this pattern didn't quite get finished in time. But its done now and published on fandominstitches.com so I can share it with you all. Yay!

A huge thank you to the wonderful Jo Minvielle who tested this pattern for me in record time.

Paper pieced Labyrinth Title - Designed by me, tested by Jo Minvielle.

I designed this paper-pieced pattern to complement the quilt layout presented in the Fandom in Stitches Goblin King, a Labyrinth-themed Quilt & Stitch along.

It is an absolute monster of a block, finishing at 60 inches long by almost 15 inches tall. The intention was to create a title block that you could put inside the outer border of the quilt, at either the top of the bottom of the original layout.

If you are planning on using this block in conjunction with the QAL layout, you might want to add extra sashing around it so the spacing between this block and the character blocks doesn't look too uneven. You will also need to adjust (increase) the length of the outer border strips for the finished quilt.

Download the pattern here if you want to give this pattern a go, and don't forget to share pics of your finished work. I love seeing how others interpret my designs - no two ever end up the same.

Don't forget also, that all the patterns from Goblin King: Labyrinth Quilt and Stitch Along are available over at fandominstitches.com.

Until next time.

K

Week 21 - Goblin King: Labyrinth Quilt and Stitch Along

We're finally here! We've made it to the very centre of the Labyrinth and final week of official event patterns.

Of course the only way to finish off a 'Goblin King' event is to feature the Goblin King himself, Jareth, played in the movie by the late, great, David Bowie.

Week 20.3 - Goblin King: Labyrinth Quilt and Stitch Along

Week 20 saw the release of my Humongous embroidery pattern as well as the assembly instructions for the left and right sections of the #LabyrinthQuilt on fandominstitches.com

Again the assembly instructions require adding sashing to each embroidered block before joining the sections together.

This week we work with Sir Didymus and Ambrosius, the Firey and the Four Guards.

I forgot to take pics of the individually sashed blocks, but the joined sections can be seen below.

Week 20.2 - Goblin King: Labyrinth Quilt and Stitch Along

Continuing the assembly series - this is the second of 3 catch up posts.

Top and Bottom Section Assembly (from Week 19)

Week 19 was the start of actual sewing to put the quilt together.

A silly mistake

I was so excited to get to this part and get sewing, but when I pulled out all my completed blocks, I found several of them to be looking a little dingy. Sweaty hands + white fabric + embroidery hoop = not quite white fabric. It was irritating me. It was then that I made made a decision that I'm now seriously regretting...   I tried hand washing the unfinished blocks and of course some of the colours ran!

Wiseman's bird with reddish halo from the thread colours that have run.

Toby with some extra "shading and shadows" thanks to colour runs.

I've learnt my lesson. I'll use exclusively DMC embroidery thread from now on (only the non-DMC ones ran) and don't wash without colour catcher sheets in there (even hand washing).

Frustrated but still keen to move on to assembly I've left them as-is for now and pressed on. Hopefully a good wash once the quilt is finished and bound, with several colour catcher sheets in with it, will sort it out. It will be fabulous if that does work but as this is neither a gift or a show quilt I'll still enjoy the end product even if it doesn't.

So anyway... moving on...

Week 20.1 - Goblin King: Labyrinth Quilt and Stitch Along

The posts on fandominstitches.com over the past three weeks for the #labyrinthquilt have included not just the character of the week, but also parts of the assembly instructions for the quilt.

As you know I'm doing 2x embroidered versions of the quilt. I am determined to have one of those finished with the quilt and stitch along; the other may need to wait a bit to be finished as I have a few other projects and deadlines coming up.

I've been a bit slack in posting my pics, so I'm about to make up for that with a series of 3 posts at once and lots of pics to catch up.

Week 19 - Goblin King: Labyrinth Quilt and Stitch Along

The babe with the power!

Toby, taken from his bed by the Goblin King, is the reason for Sarah's whole journey through the Labyrinth. This week he's the feature character in the Fandom in Stitches Quilt and Stitch Along

But Toby is not the only thing going on this week! With only three more weeks of scheduled pattern releases there is so much happening it's hard to keep up.

Continuing the NQC Quilt Block Challenge Quilt

Continuing from last week's post where I made a gaggle of flying geese to lengthen the NQC Quilt, this week is all about making the quilt wider.

The geese I made last week will be flying across the width of the quilt. But when I tried also laying out some geese flying up and down to widen the quilt it was clear that wasn't going to work. The geese going both side-to-side and up-and-down made it really hard to focus on any one element. It was as if the geese were trying to draw the eye both everywhere and nowhere at once.

Lots and Lots of Half Square Triangles - Trying the 'Magic 8" Method

The two NQC Quilt Block Challenge quilts I've been working on have seen me making lots and lots of Half Square Triangles (HSTs) over the past couple of months.

For the main blocks I used a traditional two-at-a-time method of making the HSTs. But I wanted to use lots of smaller HST blocks for the sashing and border on the blue/grey yellow version of the quilt.

The volume of HSTs I had in mind for the additional parts of the quilt meant that I either needed to spend weeks sewing, cutting and ironing blocks, or I needed to find another way to get them done more efficiently.

Week 18 - Goblin King: Labyrinth Quilt and Stitch Along

We're getting so close to the end of the Labyrinth now - Week 18 and and only about a month to go until we're all done.

I still don't think we've seen enough of the Goblins of the Labyrinth yet, so I'm excited that this week we've got another couple to choose from.

This week's patterns have been designed by Kylie Pecarina (paper-pieced) and Jennifer Ofenstein (embroidery) and are available now on fandominstitches.com.

Here are my two versions of the embroidery pattern.

Week 18 - Goblin 4 (color version)
Designed by Jennifer Ofenstein, stitched by me
for the Goblin King: Labyrinth Quilt and Stitch Along

Week 18 - Goblin 4 (mono version)
Designed by Jennifer Ofenstein, stitched by me
for the Goblin King: Labyrinth Quilt and Stitch Along

Week 10: NQC Quilt Block Challenge

All nine (18) blocks have now been completed and its time to put these quilts together.

The Christmas quilt top has come together really quickly - 3 inch sashing between the blocks, join the blocks into rows and then join the rows into a completed quilt top. Easy Peasy!

Here's the quilt top done - the breeze came up and fluttered the top around just as I took the pic, but you get the idea. All that's left to do with this one is to choose a backing fabric and quilt it.

NQC Quilt Block Challenge - Christmas Quilt
Made by Me

I've got some plans for additional stuff with the grey/blue/yellow quilt. That one is taking a bit longer to complete and I'll be sharing progress on that one over the next few weeks,

Until next time

K

Week 17 - Goblin King: Labyrinth Quilt and Stitch Along

"Well, the only way out of here is to try one of these doors!"

"One of them leads to the castle at the end of the labyrinth, and the other one leads to.."

"Ba-baba-BOOM!"

"Certain DEATH!"

As you can see, this week's character as we travel ever closer to the end of the labyrinth to the is the enigmatic Four Guards.

Block 9: NQC Quilt Block Challenge

It's finally here - the last week of blocks for this challenge!

Aside from a bit of whining mid-way through, I made it through all nine blocks without too much drama.

So here they are, all nine finished blocks.

I'm actually looking forward to the quilt top assembly.

Block 7	Block 8	Block 9
Block 4	Block 5	Block 6
Block 1	Block 2	Block 3

Block 7	Block 8	Block 9
Block 4	Block 5	Block 6
Block 1	Block 2	Block 3

Week 16 - Goblin King: Labyrinth Quilt and Stitch Along

What is the point of a Goblin King if there aren't goblins to rule over?

Until now we've only seen a couple of the goblins of the Labyrinth. We know they're hiding in there somewhere so this week its time to reveal some more.

Block 8: NQC Quilt Block Challenge

These blocks feel like they are getting easier and easier.

Week 8 blocks are done!

Block 7	Block 8
Block 4	Block 5	Block 6
Block 1	Block 2	Block 3

Block 7	Block 8
Block 4	Block 5	Block 6
Block 1	Block 2	Block 3

Only 1 block left!