Pocket Full of Monsters
August 2020
Patterns for quilts can come from a variety of atypical places. I often notice quilt designs in tile installations. My grandson has a math activity book that has Pokemon characters drawn in grid format, which on seeing it, I instantly saw quilt potential.
At the beginning of the pandemic, my daughter asked me about doing a sewing project with her and my grand-kids via video calls. Since my grandson is currently into Pokemon, I had her send me the Pikachu picture from his activity book, and I then cut the needed pieces from fabric I had in my stash. Each week I would mail them two rows which they would sew together. The pieces were 3.5″ which by placing into two stacks, fit into a standard #10 envelop. I added card stock on either side of the fabric to add rigidity. My grandson enjoyed ‘decoding’ the pieces each week – sort of like a puzzle, figuring out where each piece needed to go.
When they finished the Pikachu portion, my grandson asked, “what do we do with it now”? He felt that using it as a blanket at that point seemed like it was going to be too rough and scratchy on the back – the seam side 🙂 We discussed using it as a wall hanging, a quilt or a quanket and he decided he wanted it finished into a quanket.
They returned Pikachu to me for adding the borders, binding and backing. Luckily I found the Robert Kaufman Pokemon card panel from Hancocks of Paducah which was perfect for the border! I say ‘luckily’ because before the pandemic, I probably would not have known this particular fabric existed as I rarely purchased fabric online. I would just run down to the local fabric store to get something that worked with my design and I’m pretty sure they would not have had this fabric. In the first few months of the pandemic, running down to the fabric store was not an option. Since March, I have shifted pretty much all of my fabric and notions purchases to online, with trips into my local store being the rarity.
Love Hugs 