Amanda's Harry Potter Quilt

By far the most fun quilt I have worked on! Made in 2015 49" X 67"

We decided to make Amanda (my wonderful daughter-in-law) this quilt at her visit at Thanksgiving and she helped with a few blocks, then had to return home. My daugher, Monica, and I decided to finish it and give it to her at Christmas as a surprise.

There was no particular size the quilt was to be. No measurements to follow. The subject was wacky and fun! Got to use all that weird fabric in my stash! We would do a block, slap it up on the wall and go to another, adding things as we thought of them and putting books between as needed.

Most of the quilt is fused and then machine appliqued with clear zig-zag thread. There are a couple of leaning books that I used "Picture Piecing" on. The rest was just sew a scrap on and whack it square.

We tried to incorporate everything we could from the movies into the quilt. We would get an idea and then pull up images from the movie. I would then draw the image out and then transfer that to fabric. Then I added lots of permanent marker with cross-hatching to add detail.

The quilt was inspired by the Harry Potter series and by images of other bookcase quilts I have seen on the internet and at quilt shows. Jennifer Ofenstein (http://sewhooked.com/harry-potter/) even has free pieced patterns on her site. Susan Owenby's quilt (http://theboredzombie.com) was my favorite. The witch and the earphones are her design. She has incredible details.

But the BEST THING was that we worked on the project together.

The feather fabric for Hedwig came from an OLD printed goose pillow you were to stuff. Sometimes when you save "everything" it comes in handy!

We used markers to indicate lettering on our quilt. We printed out titles in different fonts and used a lightbox to draw them.

Monica did most of the lettering and was deemed "librarian".

This is actually the second monster book I made. My daughter informed me that my first attempt resembled a hamburger. So, I did it again. The eyes glow in the dark. The rat and snake were painted, then appliqued on.

I added some personal pictures in Amanda's quilt. This photo transfer image was from a Harry Potter themed party she had. The Bertie Botts beans and the Chocolate frogs were painted and then appliqued on.