Quilt Story: Modern Batman Quilt from Simply Pieced

As a momma of two boys (who are obsessed with super heroes) I absolutely LOVE this quilt. Really, seriously. I may be making one of these very soon. I'm not just saying that. Anyway, I love this quilt!! Made by Janet of Simply Pieced I was so excited to see it linked up to Fabric Tuesday two weeks ago. Like so many of you she does a great job documenting her quilt finishes, from 2011, 2012 and 2013. I wish I had mine documented so well! Make sure to stop by Simply Pieced after checking out her feature!

I hate to play favorites, but this next quilt is probably my favorite quilt that I've made so far. Don't get me wrong, I love the other quilts. I don't usually make something that I don't like, but this one took a piece of my heart with it when I gave it to the mom-to-be at her baby shower. I should have asked for visitation rights, or to quilt-sit when they go out of town...I'm being ridiculous...sort of.

When I found out the mom was pregnant and having a little boy, I contacted the dad through a mutual friend on what they were doing in the nursery. You see, the dad does all the decorating...ALL the decorating. He's a very talented graphic designer that has an eye for fashion and color, but he's also a big kid at heart. When it came to this baby boy's nursery, the dad knew exactly what he wanted to do and was very specific when it came to colors (robin's egg blue, stop sign red and charcoal grey) and theme (classic Batman). I received these two attachments:

The first is one of the prints used in the room and the second is a diagram of the different batman symbols used since the character's creation. The dad ended up using this diagram to create an art piece above the crib, which looks awesome. The diagram was also my inspiration for the quilt. When I think of Batman, one of the first things that comes to mind is the bat signal. I liked the cityscape at the bottom of the diagram and wanted to use that design somehow in the quilt. I ended up drawing up a sketch on graph paper of a simple cityscape with the bat signal in the air. The idea of recreating the drawing as a quilt was a bit daunting, but I was determined.

When it came to piecing the front, I decided to machine-piece the buildings separately and then applique them onto the background fabric by hand. Before the buildings could be attached, I had to put the spotlight and bat signal in the sky. I ended up picking the bat-signal I associated with Batman as the call-sign. This took a lot of trial and error to get everything exactly where I wanted it. Once the bat signal and the buildings were in place, I put windows on the buildings to help bring the buildings to life. Mixing the red and blue for the windows helps bring in the nursery colors on top of the charcoal grey. I machine-quilted the quilt with horizontal lines. I knew I needed to keep the lines fairly close together to help secure the large appliqued pieces of fabric. I hand appliqued the initial onto the back of the quilt as a finishing touch.