Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone

Many years ago, a little 10-year-old girl in grade 5 named Dayna had a friend named Julia. Both were avid readers, both had ties to England through their nanas. When Julia brought back a new book she'd read while on Christmas vacation in England in 1999, called Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, by an unheard of author, J. K. Rowling, she loaned it to Dayna to read. It wasn't available in North America as yet. Dayna almost literally fell into the story, talking non-stop about a character named Harry and magic and his awful aunt and uncle and a school of magic where he was going to go and his friends Ron and... Hermy-OH-knee? (what kind of a name is that?) and something about an owl and a special magical train... 

As Dayna's mum, I thought, "Who would name a main character, a kid, Harry?" first of all, and then, "Just what IS all her fixation and waxing poetic exactly about?" And so, one day when both girls had left for school, but I was part-time and didn't have to start teaching until block 2, I picked up the book, standing in our new-built house in Calebo Estates, Sherwood Park, Alberta, leaning against the kitchen counter by the door to the attached garage, such a clear memory. I started reading it, and... guess what happened? Yeah, I was nearly late for school, I got so completely pulled in. I got Dayna's obsession.

Her obsession that has lasted to this day, 28 years later.

Sidenote: When we told Dayna's nana about this incredible book, she schooled me: (I can still hear her: Her-MY-uh-knee! Have you not heard of Hermione Norris?! --no I had not, nor had I ever heard that name, and I'd read a lot of English authors, and watched a lot of English TV shows. Sorry Mum.)

Hermione fabric

I searched through my orders from four quilt shops I'd frequented over the past several years, going back to 2017, I couldn't find a record of just when I bought this digitally printed 10" layer cake of Harry Potter fabric. I am pretty sure it was from Connecting Threads, but I didn't find my order. I do know I bought it sometime in 2018 maybe 2019 because we were in our current house. I was so pumped when I saw this fabric, could hardly wait to surprise her with a quilt... and yet the stack has sat, because I did not have a pattern in mind, and I was also in the throes of being an Island Batik ambassador. I trusted I'd find an appropriate one. 

Well, after making Zephyr, and really liking how it turned out, as well as Kitty Karma, I knew it would be one of those layer cake patterns since the fabric does not get chopped up. I ran both by Dayna and asked her which one she preferred. She'd already seen the stack because I'd inadvertently left it sitting on my longarm table, and when she'd come upstairs to see Bella, she spied the stack immediately. She was dead chuffed by it, as my mum would say. So I confessed that I'd intended to surprise her, only now she'd seen it, I could tell her the new part of the surprised: I intended to make two, one for her and one for her good friend and sister aficionado of all things HP, who I'll call Tee.

Tierney's quilt

Both would be lap quilts, finishing at 40" square. The stack was 42 squares, which I thought might make for a bit of an overwhelming quilt for busy prints. If I added four squares to each set of 21 squares, I could get two quilts. She loved the idea.

Now I do have one complaint about the fabric: Gryffindor should be red red, not fuchsia. The other three house colours are fine. I did wonder if a digitally printed fabric would feel rough, but this fabric is just as soft as regular fabric.

Tee and Dayna have had a trip to Harry Potter World in Paris planned for their 40th birthdays, for I think maybe four or five years now. So I thought they each needed to have a quilt.

The two quilts side by side, with Zora and Rufus photo-bombing lol

Making the back would also end up being pretty special. My quilt backs are not usually as planned and symmetrical as Kelly's (@myquiltinfatuation) as I just build them on top of the quilt while it's on my design wall, making the best use of the yardage and chunks.

Nothing is sewn yet, just pinned in place.

To use the maximum amount of the black Tour Eiffel print on Tee's quilt, I even did a y-seam and managed to align the towers pretty closely two more pieces along the side.

Here it is loaded. Some seams are pressed open; most are pressed to one side.

A Laurel Burch rainbow angel kitties print I've had forever, originally bought with the idea of cross-stitched ornament backs, but sparingly used every since for only special people, filled in a small area on both quilts. Here is a closeup of Dayna's.

The two side by side:

They are similiar but not identical. I originally had looked through my stash of backing yardage but nothing spoke to me. Then I had the idea to use France fabrics. I had a fair bit of the black Tour Eiffel fabric left from making the 'black with a pop of pink' tote bag back in June, and I always knew I'd use the Anna Maria Horner Fibs and Fables print since it looks like stained glass windows in a castle. I found small amounts of another Tour Eiffel print on white and a black French text print. Two much-loved and slightly hoarded Laurel Burch fabrics, one a rainbow Christmas cats, the other an 'ancient' Christmas angel kitties, extended the required width, along with another Cartes Postales France print.

It feels so good to have used up the entire layer cake, all of both Tour Eiffel prints, the French text print, and the Fibs and Fables print.

I needed a wee bit more width beside the white Tour Eiffel fabric in Tee's back, so I was pretty chuffed to be able to put to use this strip of leftover friends-themed text fabric, a wide back from my 150 Canadian Women quilt.

Perfect for Dayna to give to her friend. You can see the rainbow dogs print I added into her backing. She is a dog mum.

As for the quilting, I opted to do a jigsaw-style large meander over the entire quilt, though I did anchor each quilt with two horizontal lines of stitch in the ditch along the seams. I used a black and grey variegated thread by Connecting Threads which actually blended in quite nicely over nearly all of the prints. It pops a bit on the two white fabrics, but not jarringly.

Each quilt got a different binding, machine sewn to the back and topstitched on the front this time. You can see Tee's above, pops of yellow and purple. Here is Dayna's. Both were .3 metre chunks I'd picked up somewhere, ages ago, maybe with kaleidoscopes in mind, Tee's a Northcott print, and Dayna's a Kaye England one for SSI. There's only a 5" x WOF piece of each left now. Into the scraps box they've gone.

Dayna's binding--love the little pops of pink and lime.

Instead of cloth labels, I wrote on the Cartes Postales fabric.

This size is what I love to use in yoga, but they also work as 'on the couch, ready to pull onto your lap' quilts.

Ready to launder and give to Dayna once she and Tyler are back from attending a Lions game in Munich, Germany. No, they didn't go just for that, though that was the impetus. They're doing tourist stuff, of which one activity involves a castle in Austria, before and after the game on Sunday.

Quilt Stats:

Size: 40.5" square

Fabric: Harry Potter by Camelot Fabrics, digitally printed

Batting: Quilters' Dream 100% wool in Dayna's; 80/20 black cotton/polyester in Tee's

Backing: stash

Quilted: on Avril, Dayna's: 23 510 stitches; Tee's: 22 515

Threads: pieced on my 1947 Featherweight with Gütermann cotton; quilted with Essential 100% cotton variegated; Fufus rayon by Floriani in the bobbin

Linking up

Songbird Designs

Quilty Girl

From Bolt to Beauty

Quilting & Learning: What a Combo