Finish: Nyan Cat Quilt

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I’m so happy to have this quilt finished! I’ve been cracking up every time I work on it, but since the top was done, I’ve been itching to give it to the intended recipient. One of my thesis advisors (and the professor who convinced me to go to grad school to begin with) loves nyan cat, and would send me links to everything nyan cat for a while. Ever since then, I’ve wanted to have the time to make this quilt for him!

So first of all, here is the video link to nyan cat if you haven’t seen it before. Yes, that’s all it does.

The real impetus to start this quilt was running across Elizabeth Hartman’s postage stamp tutorial. Using fusible interfacing to keep all those squares lined up was genius! I tend to not be the most precise quilter (read: I am impatient and like to cut corners, sometimes literally), so this was a fantastic way to do this project. Next, I used this cross-stitch pattern by mogget as the starting point for my quilting pattern. I added a few more stars and cropped it a bit, but the rest of it is from there.

For the back, I went to my LQS and found the brightest rainbow fabric I could find. In the end, I think I would have liked using a solid a bit better to show the quilting lines, but seriously, those rainbow umbrellas are so fun and just a little crazy, kinda like the rest of the quilt.

For quilting, I ended up doing echo quilting and wavy lines in the background. I originally had a much more complex idea for the blue areas, but I ended up scrapping it partially for expedience and partially because I cropped so much blue out of it, there wasn’t a lot of room left to play.

The binding is done with kona black, and then I continued the pixel blocks through the binding for the rainbow, so it looks like it’s going off the edge. It’s a bit subtle, but I love the effect! I’m so happy with how it came out!

My cat loved everything about this project. I spent so much time shooing her off this particular quilt. I’m not sure if she is a fan of nyan cat, or if because of all the interfacing and seams, it made the quilt thicker. Whatever the reason, I used almost an entire lint roller throughout the making of this project!

I will definitely revisit this pixel quilt method, but the next one is for me! Now to decide…Zelda or Secret of Monkey Island?

Some quick stats:
Size: 4′ x 3′
Pixel size: 1.5″ unfinished (1″ finished)
Number of  pixels: 1728
Colors used: (All Konas)Rainbow: Lipstick, Kumquat, Canary, Clover, Turquoise, Bright Periwinkle. Pop-Tart: Pomegranate, Medium Pink, Cream. Nyan Cat: Melon, Medium Grey, Black, White. Background: Nightfall.

-Anne