After seeing Melinda's (Quirky Granola Girl) Patchwork Death Star, I knew immediately that I absolutely had to make one for my Star Wars loving sister-in-law, Shelley.

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Melinda kindly provided the paper pattern for the Death Star on her blog and I downloaded it immediately. Then the very next day, I was at my quilting guild's sewing day and scored some great grey scraps (whoop!) and the plan came together very quickly.

That one section looks really green in these pics, but it's more of a grey!

The pieced segments are basted to paper (I used a glue stick) and then you hand sew them together, which was a bit fiddly, but didn't really take that much time. I changed it up a bit, because Melinda actually pieced the background sections to the Death Star, but I appliqued the star right on top of a large square of background fabric. I was thrilled when I found the background fabric, and I love it's blue hue which gives the whole pillow a nice "spacey" feeling.  I can't think of another way to describe it! It's called "Texture" by Janet Clare for Moda.


After appliqueing the star on, I layered the top with batting and a backing fabric and started quilting. I used a variegated grey/white pearl cotton to hand stitch the stars, an outer running stitch, and the detail in the circle for the super laser. I used black pearl cotton for the line that goes around the middle, which Wookiepedia tells me its an equatorial trench. I used Aurifil cotton quilting thread to machine quilt the black rings in the background, and the grey stitching in the segments. I don't know a lot about death stars, but I followed Melinda's example, plus googled and viewed plenty of pictures.


The back is a from the Ghastlies collection by Alexander Henry.  The zipper was supposed to be a hidden, lapped zipper... but I forgot how to do it.  I decided to go for it anyway and it didn't quite work out as "lapped" as I would have liked, but it's not too horrible ;).


The pillow was for Shelley's birthday, which isn't until next Saturday, but I just couldn't wait to get it to her. So after quilting guild today, I drove there to pick up my son, whom she was babysitting for me, and gave it to her right away. I'm very happy to say that I got the squeals and reaction that I was hoping for. She loved it!!!  And... so do I. Very happy day!


I can add this to my collection of other geeky projects, like the Minecraft Lapis Lazuli block, and the Lego Sewing Machine.


Thanks for looking, leave a comment!