I’ve been wanting to make a Star Trek quilt for a long time. I do have some actual licensed fabric, but I wanted to make something a little more organic for this first attempt. I knew I wanted the major players of the original crew going from Kirk on through Chekov. I made silhouettes for each of them. I ended up redoing Bones and Sulu because their silhouettes were missing their character.
Sulu really took some thinking. I’ll admit I was trying to keep them as a general figure and not specific to an episode, but I broke that rule for Sulu and gave him back his sword from the episode “The Naked Time.” I did opt to leave his shirt on, though!
Making sure I found a blue and yellow hue that matched the uniform was important, and I ended up being pretty happy with my selections even though they were a mottled pattern instead of a solid color.
To get all seven silhouettes in, I ended up having to make this a twin size. I’ll experiment with making a lap size one before too long.
This is the first quilt I’ve made to sell that I’ve considered keeping instead.
The Yellow Daisy Festival Online Market begins on Tuesday, Sept 8th. In anticipation of this, I’m making some posts about the quilts I have ready to go. Each day I’ll feature two or three quilts and tell about their process and what I like most about them. These and other quilts can be found in the Quest Quilts shop on this website or in my Etsy shop.
These quilts were made using one of my favorite forms – the silhouette. I’ve used it for many quilts before these, and I just love it. The idea that you can convey detail and form with just an outline fascinates me.
The wine quilt was one of two that I had made, but the other one sold rather quickly. This one can be draped across a couch or even hung on a wall with the proper curtain hardware. It features a wine bottle and white wine glass silhouette with complimentary wine-themed fabric. In the black area I kept up the theme with a vine quilting pattern. I love this style of quilt and think it would fit in nicely with any wine-enthusiast decor.
The next silhouette set features the often overlooked viola. I like having a silhouette inverted set and think it lends some fun and style to any decor. This set already has a hanging sleeve attached to each hanging. These are meant specifically to be wall hangings. They would look great in any musician’s home or in a school orchestra room. The cool blue, green, silver, and gray tones help it maintain a gender neutral look.
I’ve had a wine-themed jelly roll for a while now and finally figured out how I wanted to approach it. I’m proud to say I free-handed the wine bottle and the wine glass. I added a burgundy border around them to make them more lap quilt size instead of wall quilt size. One of them was claimed pretty quickly, but the other one is still up for grabs.
Christmas is here, and I can finally make a post about one quilt in particular. I couldn’t make a peep about it anywhere on any of my social media outlets because the friend it was for was privy to all of them.
While visiting over the summer, a friend joked after seeing my other Star Wars silhouette quilts that I should make one with Darth Vader in the corridor – the scene in both Rogue One at the end and in Star Wars: A New Hope at the beginning. A little while later, his sweet bride sent me a picture, asking about getting it made into a twin-sized quilt in the style I’d done with the others.
The original image
Well I LOVED the idea of all that red fabric, and I liked how it turned out as a background pattern for sure. The silhouette was very simple, especially compared to the Rey and Kylo Ren quilt I’ve done a couple of times before. I stuck with my usual style of using crepe back satin for the light saber. I’ll forever love that fabric.
The biggest surprise with this quilt was it was my first time using wool batting. I’d heard of it before, but that was about it. And let’s face it – I live in Georgia. We don’t need wool blankets except for on a handful of days at best. I was surprised at how light it was. In fact, I halfway wondered if it wasn’t actually polyester. I did some research and tried out the “burn test” on a small patch. Sure enough, it burned and singed instead of melted, so it was the real deal.
I made the quilt and then got really scared at the idea of washing this thing. I have sinned against wool in the past, and I was nervous about repeating that mistake. I finally decided I would rather wash it and take my chances with me first before sending it off to my friends. So I washed it on the coldest, shortest, gentlest cycle my washing machine had to offer, and then I hung it out on my back deck to dry. I’m proud to say that there were no casualties in the making of this quilt – cotton, wool, or otherwise.
This quilt was made as a surprise for a friend expecting her first child, a daughter. This friend is a dedicated Disney aficionado, and I knew right away I wanted to do something related to Disney. But focusing on one princess seemed…inaccurate. This friend loved all things Disney, so I decided to go for several at once. I sent her a message asking who were her favorite Disney princesses, and she replied back with several. To her credit, she had to have known I was up to something but didn’t ask any more questions despite my strange messages to her.
I’d seen on Pinterest a quilt with a little boy silhouette holding balloons, and I remembered the balloons being a big part of that Disney World experience. I decided to go that route. I purchased several pink fat quarters and made the balloon shapes. That step was easy enough. The girl and princess silhouettes took some more thought.
I looked around at a LOT of little girl silhouettes before settling in on this one. In the end, I picked this one because you could see the cute, wispy pig tails, and it made me think of some spunky girls I’ve known, but you could also tell she was wearing a pretty fluffy and fancy dress. I liked the balance in there and felt that any daughter my friend had would have a similar dynamic.
The princess profiles were easy to find, but they didn’t want to translate to fabric all that well. To be honest, there were a couple of points where I thought the girl was just going to have to hold regular balloons sans princess. It was the lips and chin that didn’t want to work with the fabric and sewing machine, and in the end I took another friend’s advice and simply smoothed out the lips and chin, letting the hair, brow, and nose do most of the defining. For the most part it worked. If you look closely, you can see another princess added in for Daddy – Disney’s newest acquired princess – Leia Organa.
Funny enough, one part I was having to focus pretty hard on was the strings. I couldn’t, of course, have real strings hanging loose. That wouldn’t be very durable, and this quilt was for a baby, making them a safety hazard. So I decided to use an extra wide stitch and keep it simple. I wanted to make sure the strings looked natural and relaxed like they can with actual balloons. I was relieved when they turned out well.
This quilt was a first for me in another technique as well. I used a pink bobbin and black top thread while quilting the silhouette. The backing was such a pretty pink that anything distracting from it would have been a shame, but the black silhouette also needed to stay clean, so I held my breath and gave it a go. I was so thrilled when I realized I didn’t have to chose between ruining my top or backing!
After all that I quilted it together with a small stipple pattern. I’m happy to report that the quilt gets regular use!
I put the silhouettes of mommy’s favorite princesses on there and included Princess Leia for daddy.
Quest Quilts 
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