When I saw Kristy mention that she’d signed up for the May the 4th Mini Quilt Swap, I jumped onto the computer that very minute and signed up myself. The fact that I was moving countries in the middle of it all? Who cares! I needed to get in on this business! The result?
My partner, Amber (aka @_amber_simmons), likes the Light Side. She also listed a range of characters she likes including BB8, R2D2 and Yoda, and The Force Awakens is her favourite movie. So I decided to incorporate my new-found confidence with curves and tackle these circular characters! I drew up the design in EQ7, and printed off the circle templates to make the basic shapes.
As you can see, the final product was a little different from what I designed, starting with the fact that the templates print mirror-image by default! But the colours are the same, haha! I went for this very Jedi-esque neutral colour for the background. And the Yoda speech bubble green? I’m kinda proud of having found that in my stash. Very Yoda, it is!
As for constructing the rest of the quilt, I paper pieced the strips for R2D2’s body, and raw-edge appliqued the dark circles for BB8 and R2D2. Then filled in the rest of the space to bring it up to about 21″ square.
I then used the quilting to fill in the rest of the detail – gentle curves on BB8 to make it feel a little more three-dimensional; switchbacks to break up R2D2’s body and large pebbles on his head to represent all his buttons and eyes or whatever. On both droids, I didn’t quilt over the colourful parts (orange and blue. As for Yoda, he got some “fuzzy” FMQ, where deliberately went outside the lines to make him look fuzzier. And the background got consecutive/linked asterisks to look like a galaxy of stars/star map.
On the back, I used this fantastic novelty Star Wars print! Unfortunately, I’m pretty sure it’s only available in Japan due to licensing as the selvedge specifically includes a .jp website. The quilting also shows up rather nicely!
We also had to include a few extras up to $20. As she was probably going to be sharing it with her 3-year old son, I included some fun little extras that he might like to use, or for her to use for him like the iron-on applique patch. I just loved the light sabre pen, so I grabbed two for my own kids! Amber had also fallen in love with the fabric that I used for the backing, so I included some of that too.
I had such a blast making this project! Thankfully my son (and daughter who is in love with Yoda!) happily understood that this wasn’t for him and didn’t cling on to it too tightly 😉
Hayley says
That is very cool. We finally watched The Force Awakens on the weekend and it was so fun!!! Can’t wait for the next one
Anja @ Anja Quilts says
How cute. You did a great job.