Epic Embroidery of Evil

Here's a crazy quilt-style embroidery hoop I made for a friend who's really into black metal. It's hard to tell in the photo, but most of the embroidery and trim is silver metallic. Incorporates some old fashioned ribbon embroidery flowers, and  fabric with black metal musicians on it. (Spoonflower is a hell of a place.) My friend was suitably impressed. \m/  >__<  \m/

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!

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!

New York knitter Karabouts has made some grim and frostbitten amigurumi dolls! Check out the adorable corpsepainted black metal guitarist, bearded Viking and more at her website!