Sunday, February 7, 2016

"Winter is Coming" - A Game of Thrones Wall-hanging

The "Winter Is Coming" quilt has been gifted, so I can share! It hung on my design wall for a couple of weeks and shocked me every time I turned around (that wolf's head is no joke - it's larger than it looks!).



 "You know nothing, Jon Snow." (*giggle*)

This quilt was made for my brother Sean's birthday upon his request. What really made this project fun is that I also appreciate Game of Thrones, its complex storyline, and actors (not so much the unending violence, though). Sean asked for the Stark family sigil (the direwolf) and the popular show/book catchphrase, "Winter is Coming."

The appliqued head came out better than I hoped. I cut it out of black fabric with my rotary cutter, loosely following the outline of a wolf's head I found on Google (though I'm having trouble finding the link now, sorry). I didn't print it out and trace because I enjoy the challenge of cutting and drawing things to scale. My first attempt didn't turn out great but the second was this!


I didn't use interfacing to give the head more stability or for bonding - mostly because I made it during the blizzard of 2016 and I couldn't go anywhere! I glued the wolf's head down and just raw-edge appliqued around it. The fraying fabric makes it look a bit rough and furry, so that works.

I thought about quilting in the details of the wolf (eyes, fur, etc.) but the black shadow on gray looked so awesomely ominous. I went with an echoing curve instead, which you can see below.

 From the back: a bit linty (that's black fabric for you) but cool quilting effect!

In a recent WIP Wednesday post, I used two new-to-me quilting motifs: sketch letter quilting (I made up a method) and brick by brick. I'm itching to try sketch letter quilting again soon - the tutorial is here in case you'd like to try as well! I used Aurifil threads the whole way through from my "basics" collection, which gets a ton of use around here.

For the background, I purposefully pieced together two different shades of gray to give the quilt some depth. Using my Hera marker, I centered the letters on the intersection of the bottom two grays. I created the letters myself with free motion. Finally, I quilted the dark gray with my own version of the "bear claw" motif by Christina Cameli for extra fierceness. Rar.


Overall, I was thoroughly pleased with how this quilt came out. My brother was thrilled and he'll be hanging it up in his bachelor pad just about now! Update: it's officially hung up! I love seeing quilts in their homes.


It's so fulfilling and exciting to be able to CREATE anything I can dream up. Well, almost anything. :)

P.S. I'll be back to blogging a couple more times this week! Yay! I missed it (I only took a week's break... sheesh... but really, I love to write).

15 comments:

  1. Terrific wall hanging and lucky brother! But let's have some respect for poor Jon Snow ;) A terrible pun by the way :)

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  2. Wow - what a great job of freehand cutting out the direwolf with a rotary cutter, that looks amazing! I hope your brother enjoys this fantastic gift a lot. :)

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  3. Wow, fantastic! I haven't watched or read GoT but this is stunning nonetheless. I love the FMQ motifs together. The bear claw is a perfect choice and I love how it contasts with the brick quilting.

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  4. Wow, really fierce and it looks great!

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  5. Marvelous! Yep, Winter is coming!

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  6. Marvelous! Yep, Winter is coming!

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  7. What a great gift, I am a big fan of GOT. Your did a FAB job with the wolf head. TFS.

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  8. Thoroughly awesome! Another fantastic finish for you!

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  9. Great finish! I love all of the different quilting designs you used on the quilt.

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  10. Great job! The back side looks so cool too!

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  11. Looks amazing! I'm super impressed with the fact that you rotary cut the head!

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  12. It turned out awesome! I love the quilting on the wolf, what a perfect motif to give moving-fur texture.

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  13. Great quilt! I'm amazed that you cut out the wolf's head freehand. I love the quilting designs you chose. Thanks for linking to TGIFF :)

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  14. Great job on the silhouette!I love seeing personal quilts like this, with rather 'unquilty' patterns.

    Ilse

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