Before the blog: Star Wars mini quilts

 Hello everybody!

Looking at cosplay stuff has me thinking about my fandoms a lot, and I realised I hadn't shared on here the Star Wars mini quilts I have made.  There are two of them, both from a swap called 'May The 4th Be With You' hosted by Jen @justjoshincreates on Instagram. The idea is you make a mini quilt and get it to your partner in time for Star Wars Day (4th May). A mystery person from the same swap group sends you one by the same date. I participated in this swap in 2017 and 2018.

The one in 2017 was my first ever miniquilt swap. I chose it for two main reasons. The first is because Star Wars. The second is this swap allows a decent amount of making time - it starts at the end of January with posting the finished package in mid-late April, so you get around 10 weeks in which to make it. This is important to me, as I was making everything by hand at that point, and that's slow. It's normal for swaps to only run for about 3 weeks, which is fine if you are working on a machine, but not doable by hand. Even so, I found it difficult to finish on time. Although that may be because I was also working full time, looking after a toddler and a baby and in the early stages of pregnancy again.

My partner's mosaic and description of what she wanted wasn't very specific so I could pretty much choose something to suit myself. I was just getting into EPP, and I conceived the idea of a hexagon based Princess Leia portrait. Here's my initial sketch and paper pieces mock-up.

I already had a good space fabric left over from making a baby quilt a few years previous, so that was an easy choice for the background.  I thought the buns were a bit too wide as 1-inch hexies. So when I got together the paper pieces, I changed them to honeycombs. This worked well, but to make it fit in with the 1-inch hexies around the face, I made two irregular hexagon pieces.

I didn't have suitable fabrics for the hair or the face, so I went to Bramble Patch to buy some. The brown was very easy to find, but locating a suitable skin colour proved much trickier. In the end I chose a pale pink.

With all the fabrics together, it was a pretty simple task to piece the portrait and appliqué it to the background. Here's a pic of the piecing in progress. I did the EPP portion on the train as part of my daily commute.

Then quilting. I hand quilted, so I could do swirly patterns on the buns easily. I drew this myself on a piece of tearaway paper, so I could get the shape right. I do wish I had done more quilting on the background, but I didn't have the time.

I debated adding some sort of embroidery for facial details, as you can see in the pic below but I couldn't come up with anything that worked, and as blank faces were already a feature popular among other crafters in the group, I thought it best left blank.  For the border, initially I was planning scrappy with the brown, pink and white colours. But my test pic of this showed that wouldn't work, it looked washed out and like a bad Neapolitan ice cream.

I decided on a starry pink fabric instead, which I also used for the binding and backing.

And here she is finished! I call her Hexie Leia. I am proud of it, and would love to make another one for myself, and maybe write it up as a free pattern, but I never seem to find the time.

On top of the main quilt, we were required to send a few small 'swap extras'. These could be made or bought, but were meant to be inexpensive.  My partner put several mini quilts with lettering or quotes in her mosaic. As I wasn't doing that with the mini quilt, I thought it would be a nice thing to do with an extra. This cross stitch book mark is entirely my own design, and I am really proud of it.  Rogue One was still quite new at the time, and I love the character of Churrit Imwe and the way he walks unscathed through cross fire saying this. I am also tempted to make this design into a free cross stitch chart.

Here's the full package I sent.  

My partner was very happy with it. And as it was a swap, I got to receive a mini quilt myself! I put in my mosaic that I liked the women of Star Wars, so my secret partner Irina (@zephyrskies made me this lovely foundation pieced Rey mini quilt. She dealt with the face issue by printing a face onto some fabric. 

She also made me a little Leia pouch as an extra which I have been using ever since to carry my handsewing projects around with me. 

And just for fun here is the pouch at the 2019 Festival of Quilts, pictured with a cute duck quilt by the same quilter.

So onto 2018! I enjoyed the swap so much, I decided to do it again!

I found the commitment much harder this time around, as this time around I had a newborn baby and was buying a house for the first time. I nearly pulled out of the swap several times, but I did manage to stick with it.

My partner posted a pic of a pixellated Storm Trooper helmet, so I decided to work with that. I did three sketches for variations on this and posted them on Instagram: They are Finn (with blood streaks added - this was not long after the release of The Force Awakens), Sunset stormtrooper with an ombre backgrounds, and Rainbow Splatter Stormtrooper, with extra colours splattered all over it.

The feedback from the group was mixed in terms of which one they liked most, so I made an executive decision and went with the rainbow splatter, using my favourite Libs Elliot fabrics. Here's a couple of pics of my fabric pulls.

In hindsight, I wish I had gone with one of the other designs. There were just so many little pieces, and almost no ways of simplifying it by changing some of the squares to rectangles.  The purple was a little dark and blended in with the black. And while I love the print I used for the background, it was a bit busy, and made it hard for some people to see the design clearly.

But, bit by bit, it came together.

I wasn't sure what to do with the quilting. I didn't want to make it feel busier than it already was. I sewed inside the outline of the black eyepieces, and around the outside of the helmet and then pinned it to a curtain in my lounge and left it for a few days to see if it needed any more than that. After those few days, I decided I really like just that simple quilting, especially the outline which helped the helmet to stick out from the background. I finished it off with a plain black binding.

For the backing, I used a fat quarter of Star Wars fabric that had been a swap extra from my partner the previous year - you can see it in the right hand side of the pic of the full package from her.

So here's the finished bundle I sent! I call the piece Rainbow Splatter Stormtrooper. This was so fiddly that I am not tempted to make it again, although the idea of making a Finn one or a sunset one does appeal. 

For an extra, I made a cross stitch hoop. This is not a Star Wars alien, but a moogle from the Final Fantasy series of videogames. I chose this as my partner had the word moogle in her Insta handle. I found the pattern on Pinterest.

And of course I received a miniquilt myself! I had admired a BB8 miniquilt the previous year, so my partner, Donna, took that idea and my love of bright backgrounds and made me this - pictured here with the extras she sent me.

Both miniquilts received from my partners now hang in my sons' bedroom. My eldest in particular is a big Star Wars fan (he has gone crazy about The Mandalorian). Part of me would really like to join in again if it is running this year, but I think it's better if I just spectate. I can always make something for myself if I am missing it that much.

And as a quick bonus, here are two Star Wars hexie flowers from the 2018 #fussycuttingsewalong. The theme for the month was Love. The first one had the prompt of central motifs and the second one was pattern matching. I made these at the same time as the second of these two swaps.

So that's all the Star Wars for today! Thanks for reading!