I’d seen this really fun fabric in the Halloween fabric section at JoAnn’s. It has a soft green background and features retro pinup girls with a slight twist…they’re zombies! It was hilarious to me! However, it was also some of the more expensive quilt fabric I’d seen, especially for JoAnn’s. Well getting close to Halloween, most of that seasonal fabric went on sale, and at 60% off it finally was at a price I didn’t mind paying for it.
I decided to work in a soft light pink and a bright hot pink as a nod to fun “girly” colors and lipstick shades. Since all the figures were different sizes and scales, I knew I’d have to do something that allowed for plenty of variation and didn’t rely on straight lines.
At first, I just focused on the blocks, getting the figure outlined with plenty of space to play around in. The smaller squares came as a result of the fabric’s price. It was so pricey that I knew I didn’t want to waste any, so I started cutting out smaller images from the spaces between where I’d cut the original girls: faces, manicured hands, sassy shoes, and a brain burger were all isolated.
I liked the idea of bold black lines separating all the images. I was thinking of some of those older shows and how they would have thick black lines around the words or on the poster itself. Something like The Creature from the Black Lagoon or Attack of the 50 Foot Woman.
The result of all that black trim was a retro cinema feel with the smaller pieces actually looking like film strip!
I went in to this quilt with only a vague idea of what I wanted, and I am so thrilled with how the end result looks. I love it when a quilt helps design itself and surprises me.
