LET YOUR FREAK FLAG FLY!

I love to collect printed banner flags of bands I like (because FABRIC!!), but I don't have room to hang them all up. I had a pile of them just sitting around gathering dust, when it occurred to me: KILLER LAP QUILTS! Just add a border to enlarge it a bit and add some contrast. I was able to piece the batting together from large scraps, and fabric off the bolt was just wide enough for the backing. This first one is of my favorite band, MOONSORROW (Finland).

Not gonna lie, I'm pretty stoked about this idea :) They're quick and easy to make, and are perfect for showing off your amazing musical taste while keeping warm on the couch, in the car or at the multi-day music festival! I will put together a tutorial for the sewing challenged, eventually :)

It's the INSANITY QUILT!!

What do you get when you make a Black Metal "crazy quilt"? A 3rd place ribbon at the AAQG quilt show, apparently :)

This is a 12" square block that combines traditional crazy quilting techniques with metal imagery and a limited black, white and silver palette. I used hand embroidery, embellishment, photo printing, and ribbon embroidery over a foundation-pieced background of black silk, satin and velvet fabrics. Most of the beads and decorations were found on Etsy. The photo is of the Norwegian black metal band Immortal, on printable fabric. I sewed this mostly on my breaks at work, over a few months. I'm really happy with the result, and I guess the judges were too! I don't think I would ever make a full sized one though....that would be INSANITY!

EMBROIDERMETALMATION is sweeping the nation!

Sometimes, the universe just randomly combines a few of your favorite things. Case in point: this EMBROIDERED video by British heavy metal band Throne. Over 3000 drawings were first animated in Flash, then converted to digital (machine) embroidery. That's 12 frames/embroideries per second!

THRONE - 'THARSIS SLEEPS' (OFFICIAL VIDEO) from Nicos Livesey on Vimeo.

And as an added bonus, they are selling the individual frames here!

They see me Trollin'

In addition to quilts, I enjoy making plush dolls and animals. Not too long ago, I finished a cute troll doll that I had been working on sporadically for over a year. I had found this baby yeti pattern by the talented Jennifer Carson, and thought it would be a good place to start. I modified it a bit to add the tail and other details. He has jointed limbs, and the "hair" is real Tibetan lambskin mohair.

As I worked on him, I thought he was starting to resemble the bass player for Finntroll (another one of my favorite bands) so I decided to make him into a heavy metal troll :)

I got a denim doll's jacket and cut off the sleeves, and sewed a Finntroll patch to the back. I made a tiny spiked bracelet for him and (this is my favorite part!) added a talking doll voice box with 10 seconds of recordable audio-so of course he sings part of a Finntroll song!

And even better, Finntroll came to my area on tour in December, and I got to meet them! They thought my lil troll was pretty cool :) How awesome is it when you can have fun making something, and more fun later showing it off!