Free pattern: When an angel dies ...

I have been wanting to post lately, but Blogger has been giving me some real trouble.  If you notice anything wonky about the layout and photos in this posting, I offer my apologies.

If you guessed ages ago that the new free pattern is angel wings from Supernatural, you guessed correctly!  Yes, I know it is a CW show, and I realize I am 31, not 13.  But it’s still a guilty pleasure.  Ultimately, I plan on designing enough blocks that I can make a quilt.  I realize this may seem like a strange place to start, but the first time I saw the image of the angel wings burnt into concrete, I knew I needed to capture that somehow.  I had the pattern drawn out quickly, but there was some redundant piecing, and it took me a while to get around to fixing those.  But the pattern is finished and tested and ready for you to try!



The computer-generated image.

 The quilt block is 10” square.  I find that is a good size for doing intricate blocks, and it is easy enough to size it down to 5” for people who prefer working with smaller blocks.  I chose a feathery black for the wings, and a grey that looked a lot like wet concrete.


The real deal.

In some ways, this is a very tricky pattern.  There are lots of small pieces, and it wears on you to sew them after a while.  But in other ways, the pattern is not very difficult.  Once you get the rhythm of the triangles, it goes fairly quickly.  There are not too many troublesome sections to join, and there are only two colors to worry about.  The best piece of advice I can give you is to iron after every seam, and to trim your seams down to about 1/8 of an inch in the sections full of tiny pieces.  That will keep it from getting bulky.  I cannot stress the importance of ironing enough.  When I first started out, I was always tempted to skip that step, and to finger press each seam instead.  But my blocks turn out so much better and the sections join more accurately if you press each and every seam with the iron.  (And as a bonus, I find that I get my daily exercise hopping up and down from my chair to get to the ironing board during my quilting sessions!) 
 

With the size of the pieces, it was difficult to provide a pattern that was both numbered and easy to see the lines.  Therefore, I included both a numbered pattern and an unnumbered pattern in the document.  I printed out the unnumbered pages and simply wrote the numbers in myself using the key.  The one section you may have some difficulty with is Section C.  I have provided a bit of a close-up here.  If you have any paper piecing experience, you should be able to figure out the last few steps even without numbers.  Alternately, you could leave the tiny pieces of that section either black or grey, and your pattern will just look a little different in that area.  It shouldn’t be too noticeable.



I promise you will make it through all those tiny pieces!

When I showed my son the block, he insisted it was an owl.  While that was a bit of a blow to my designing ego, that got me thinking.  I took the block I had already designed and modified it to make him a real owl block.



This owl block was an unintended side trip, but I am happy I made it!

The owl will be tested and up in my Craftsy shop in the next couple of weeks, as soon as I finish Shaun the Sheep and a pile of Christmas presents.  A quilter's work is never done!  You can find the angel wings pattern on Craftsy or here.

I am currently planning my 2014 Emerald City Comicon costume, and I will be embroidering a devil’s trap on a purse, so that embroidery pattern should be along in not too long.

Which Supernatural character or symbol would you like to see next?