The Castle, a Quilt

The latest of my applique quilts for my friends children.  Sadly I don't mean that it has just been finished but rather it was the one that the recipient had to wait the longest for.  It was not completed until after his 8th birthday.  Although in mitigation I offer the following:

• His sisters quilt  "Willow Fairy" took much longer than anticipated.
• On this occasion the parents did not have any preference for the design. Leaving me for too much choice.
• I lost a year, nothing drastic I just somehow managed to make him a year younger than he actually was. (If I could really do that for people I would make a fortune) so in my mind I was well on track for a before his birthday finish.
• My original simple thoughts got a bit more complicated, I do that sometimes.

As the young gentleman in question was fond of the Harry Potter books I originally planned to do an owl design.  Similar to the one carved into my Halloween pumpkin.  A slight variation, to add a scroll into the owls claws to make it more Potterish.. I had the design sized up the background material picked however, the material for the owl was just not coming together and I started to have second thoughts.

In an earlier post I described a toy castle I made (with help for my father) out of a bought plastic portcullis,  a cardboard box, bits of wood and pipe lagging . That castle was a gift for the same boy this quilt would be for.  His father assured me the castle was still popular some years after that initial Christmas unwrap so I started to think about castles.  "Castle toy post"

Much as I generally dislike repeating a design I could not get The Castle by T.W out of my head.  The finished cross stitch now hanging on my wall kept it at the forefront of my mind. Finding the pattern used for the duvet cover and the  remains of the watermark material sealed it.  A second applique inspired by the T.W design started to take shape. 

The Castle 

There were of course some changes from my first homage. The moon in this case is white satin giving an nice sheen.  I had by this point started including wadding in the applique (the previous one was flat) and of course there was the added dimension of the quilting both on the central design and out onto the quilt as a whole. 

Circles to emphasise the moon and waves to set the island into a sea.

As with his siblings quilts the back had a simple geometric design into which his initials could be included.  Although admittedly this quilt with the addition of a bit more padding is less reversible than the other three. 

Here it is held up by the recipient, only his fingers on show (pending at some point his permission for the full picture, he was smiling).

I made him a matching cushion, as I had for his siblings, it was a bit slow in reaching him and therefore made it, as a last thought entry, into the local show that year.  And it won, it had his name on one side and a small silhouette of a dragon in flight, the other side was log cabin.