Project Quilting 15.2: Sky Color

This week's Project Quilting project took a bit of a turn.  After I did a paper piecing piece in the last challenge, I decided I wanted to go simpler this time.  My plan was to make a mini mini quilt and do something pixelated.  Of course, I decided all this before I even knew the theme of the challenge, which was revealed to be "Sky Color" at noon last Sunday.

I didn't want to do a sunset scene, but I started by googling "pixelated sunset" for inspiration and fell in love with the color scheme of this picture.  Purple it was.  From there, I googled "purple Perler beads", thinking I could find an easy pixelated pattern to make with fabric. My favorite picture in the search results was this adorable little Perler bead Furby.

I loved it, but I don't really have any personal connection to a Furby and I wasn't sure if I really wanted to make a mini quilt featuring one (though it would have been tiny and pixelated!).  I took a break and I came across the perfect solution: our stuffed Chattermax!!

If you aren't familiar with Australian children's programming, Chattermax is a toy on the preschool show Bluey.  He is inspired by Furby and very loud and obnoxious.  My (not preschool-age) kids put the show on as a joke after several of the youTubers they like made episodes about Bluey and we all ended up thinking it is adorable.  Every single time I hear Bluey say "Chattermax, why are you under the sink?" it cracks me up.

I started with an image of Chattermax on a plain black background, an homage to the silhouette of the trees in the sunset pictures.  I then ran it through a website that will transform any image into a cross-stitch pattern.  This gave me a base counting image to go off of when piecing Chattermax.  I started with his feet and worked my way up because I correctly anticipated that the feathers around his eyes would be the hardest.  I'm not entirely happy with how they came out, but it's stilly and fun and recognizable as Chattermax, so I am happy with it as a tiny complicated thing I improv-pieced in three days.

I lightly quilted Chattermax in coordinating colors, then did a grid in the background to go along with the pixelated theme.  I knew all along I was going to brown-bag him so he would be floating on his black background, but my machine prefers to have fabric on the bottom so I did use a fabric scrap below him.  The only quilting I did after I turned him was to outline his whole body and beak.

I really wish I could have found some bathroom sinks to back him with, but that's a little too niche!  I'll end this post with one slightly over-exposed picture of the finished Chattermax so that you can see how all the quilting turned out in the end.

My teenage son was disappointed that the quilt was so tiny - he was hoping for a full-sized Chattermax quilt!  This may be fun to revisit with larger pixels (and I would do them all individually; I combined them in this project because of the short timeline) and more time spent on making sure the feathers around the eyes turned out correctly. But for now this tiny quilt brings me immense joy and I am happily linking it up with the Project Quilting 15.2 challenge page as well as with Quilting JetGirl for my favorite finish of January 2024.  Thanks for stopping by!