My grandmother–an amazing quilter, among other things–taught me a little about quilting when I was a little girl, but I hadn’t done any in years.

A couple of years ago, I stumbled across a site called Fandom in Stitches, with patterns for making paper-pieced quilt blocks for a variety of fandoms. These patterns got me so excited that I actually taught myself paper piecing. I made these blocks from their paper-pieced patterns:

This one of Aslan, alone, took me WEEKS to piece together. Lots and lots of teeny tiny parts.

I even requested a design of my favorite Return of the Jedi poster from the Fandom in Stitches site, and someone whipped one up from me. Of course, it was pretty complicated and took me weeks, too:

 

I have to make a confession. After doing all this, I started to decide I really didn’t like paper piecing. It’s a little tedious for me. I was learning to do machine applique during this time, so I used a couple of the paper-piecing patterns for applique, instead. Otherwise, I wasn’t sure I’d manage to finish the quilt before I was too old to be able to see it!

 

And then, there were two blocks I made up out of my head and appliqued. The Pirates of the Caribbean block was great fun. Just free-form and fussy-cutting.

And this last one is one of the simplest, and yet, one of my favorites. I did the lily from a Fandom in Stitches paper piecing pattern that I appliqued instead, but I just winged the silver doe.

Hope you enjoyed my quilt.

It’s now hanging on my wall at work, and it certainly helps me through long work days!