It all started at QuiltCon in Austin, Texas.... I was shuffling along (incognito of course, quilters tend to freak out over zombies - I think its a bit discriminatory - but thats another blog post)... and I see this pixel quilt of Jensen Ackles from Supernatural hanging in one of the booths.
Ok you gotta admit - this quilt is kick ass to say the least! This beauty was created by the talented Stacy -- @hushrules on Instagram. At risk of being mowed over, I stood there and gawked for a while at the awesomeness of it. The proprietor of the booth came over and struck up a conversation. Her name was Andi and she owns a super cool business called YouPatch. What YouPatch does is take a picture that you choose/submit and create a quilt pattern from it. They have video tutorials and very detailed instructions so that pretty much anyone can follow along and create a masterpiece. I knew right then, that at some point, I wanted to make one of these amazing quilts!
Fast forward to present day (as fast as zombies can forward anyway).... here I am getting ready to attend the Walker Stalker Con in Atlanta this October and I wanted to take something outrageously cool to get Norman Reedus to sign. If you will remember from my past posts, we attended the Walker Stalker Con in Orlando and got to have a photo op with him, but unfortunately didnt get to have an autograph. Maybe this worked out for the best, because it gave me time to create something! So I started digging for a terrific picture of Norman to send Andi over at YouPatch to work her magic on! This was harder than I thought... how does one choose a picture of Norman anyway - I mean, they are all so good?! Finally, I settled on this one...
I sent it off to Andi at YouPatch and this is what she created...
So off I go..... here are the progression pics.
This was the most incredible experience! Andi was very supportive through the progress and commented on my Instagram feed many times. I felt very accomplished when this bad boy was finally pieced together! Here are a few more pics of the completed top!
As any true fan knows... Norman is a big Kiss fan -- always posting some Kiss pics on his social media feed etc. So in chatting with some friends on Facebook (The Bitchy Stitcher to be exact - and if you haven't checked out her blog, OMG are you missing out! Megan is HILARIOUS! Be sure to nab her book too, you will not regret it -- Quilting Isn't Funny)-- I decided to "funny up" the back a bit... sounds like me huh? So this is what the backing looks like.
So now that I have the top and the back pieced, what next.... Sending it to a long arm professional to quilt, thats what?! No way I am tackling this baby myself and risking screwing up all of my hard work (damn fingers keep falling off at the wrong times, it would suck...) So guess who I am sending it to? The perfect person! Stacey - @hushrules!!! The very person whose creation got me started on this journey to begin with! She did such an amazing job quilting her Jensen quilt that I am very confident that my Norman (see what I did there?) is in the perfect hands! Did I mention that Stacey has since been able to actually show her amazing creation to Jenson Ackles himself anddddddd get it autographed?!!! Check out her Instagram -- so cool!
So here we are.... waiting for the quilt to come back from the long arm master and excitedly waiting for October to get here! I really hope that I will be able to follow in Stacey's footsteps and get my pixel quilt autographed by the man himself too! It will hang in my sewing room in a place of honor to inspire me that even though a project looks daunting (and lemme tell ya the - what seemed like millions - of little pieces did seem daunting), that if you set your mind to it, you CAN do it! I have not even been sewing for 2 years yet, did I mention that? Yep... never touched a sewing machine before that! So, if you persevere and have determination, you can do anything -- and the biggest piece of advice that I can give a new quilter is this... Believe in Yourself!!! Don't listen to anything that makes you question yourself! If you ever need a pep talk, just shoot the Zombie Quilter an email and I promise to hook you up! ;-)
Zombie drool and brains....
ZQ
