Harry Potter Quilt (at the LG Members Show)

After working on it, on and off, since 2019, my daughter, Alison, and I finally finished our Harry Potter quilt this year. To celebrate, we put it on display in the Larson Gallery Guild Members' Exhibiton which opened last weekend.

with our quilt at the opening reception for the members' exhibition

The Members' Exhibition is an annual exhibition of work made by members of the Larson Gallery Guild (or, in other words, people who support the gallery). This means the work tends to run the gamut between professional, amateur, and experimental. I remember one year when a local painter showed a wheelchair entirely covered in googly eyes. I don't know that I'd enter this quilt in a juried show, as it isn't my normal "work" but this is a perfect opportunity to show off this collaborative piece that has been in progress for so long.

postcard for this year's membership exhibition

The Membership show runs June 14 through July 12, at Larson Gallery on the west side campus of Yakima Valley College. The gallery is open Tuesday - Friday 10-5 and Saturdays 12-5. Admission is always free, and this year's show seemed particularly strong to me, with a wide range of media and work that looked much more professional in quality than some years.

Alison explans an idea to me during our first planning/sketching session in March 2019

Alison and I first started sketching our plans for this quilt back in March 2019 (I had to go back and look at the dates of the photos to check). Alison was in elementary school, had been doing 4H sewing for several years, and was finishing up her third quilt (the first one was doll sized), when we started discussing what we wanted to do next.

After the doll quilt, which was made of squares, Alison created two quilts using designs by Elizabeth Hartman. The first one was a small Fancy Forest quilt. For the next one, she used the fox design from the Fancy Forest pattern to make a larger fox quilt (adding glasses onto three of the foxes). Because she was a kid, I also attended the 4H sewing sessions and helped with the quilts, as well as her other projects. We both learned a lot through doing the Fancy Forest and fox quilts. These quilts both used pieceing, where rectangles and squares of fabric are sewn with straight lines or diagonals to create different shapes. Then the fabric is folded overwith the cut edges hidden behind. 

Alison's Fancy Forest quilt in progress

We wanted to make our own design for the next quilt, based on Harry Pottery imagery and using the piecing and folding techniques we learned in the Hartman designs. The first pieces or imagery we made for the Harry Potter quilt were the broomsticks (we made two for the quilt and a third as a gift for a friend). The broomstick bristles were based on the top of the hedgehog or thistle from the Fancy Forest quilt, with some modification for where they attached to the handle.

a Ravenclaw broomstick pillow for a friend

Fluffy, the three headed dog from book one was based on Hartman's fox head, again with a modified bottom. We had just finished making 42 fox heads, so these three heads came together fairly easily. We didn't use any of her designs directly, but modified several into the shapes we wanted.

Fluffy, Hagrid's three-headed dog, in progress

As we started sketching the quilt design, we discussed what imagery would lend itself to techniques we already knew or could borrow from our experience with the Hartman quilts. Hedwig obviously could be done like the owl, the glasses (Harry's and Luna's Specrespecs) could be based on the owl's eyes. The lion's head (from Luna's hat) and the niffler were more distant, but still based on some of what we learned in the Fancy Forest quilt. For others, we just made them up as we went along. Someone recommended that we used paper piecing, but it was the pandmic and we didn't have anyone to teach us, so we just kept doing it our way.

The nitch, niffler, and Hedwig, in progress

After the original sketch, in which the imagery was decidedly not to scale, we sketched most of our designs to scale on graph paper. This helped us plan for size of elements and seam allowances. I think we skipped this on some of the last pieces we made, like the castle and the snake, but if we did skip it, it was probably because we forgot about the earlier process and because the straight seams and large sizes didn't require it quite so much.

one of the 3 heads of Fluffy, with plans for how to design the tongue

As we started actually making each of the designs, they grew and changed as we stumbled, learned, and adapated to what we were able to do. We also learned what we didn't realized we needed to know when we went to put everything together. The adapatations we made as we went along meant that things changed in size, and sometimes color, in ways that required us to move farther and farther away from the original design. Now looking at the finished quilt, I notice where the spacing between elements varies (unlike in our sketch) or Hartman's quilt designs.

Our original sketch, which we photocopied and colored in during planning

Looking back at the original sketch, I can see that we stuck pretty close to the original plan in a lot of ways. Our original plan had about 41 separate elements (I'm counting three elements in the bookshelf, and all the Skiving Snackboxes as one element) and 41 in the finished quilt. Our original layout had the snake (Nagini) spanning the entire bottom of the quilt, with Trevor the toad underneath the snake's head and the diadem above. In both quilts, the sword is positioned so that it is about to cut the snake's head off.

the bookshelf with books, a penseive, and Crookshanks, the cat

Periodically, after finishing a batch of pieces, we laid out the elements on the floor, both to celebrate our progress and to reconsider orientation, color, and spacing. Color spacing, I think, was what led to the chocolate frog and Trevor the toad switched places in the final design. We also had to start thinking about how to sew different sections together (without trying to sew around corners).

I'm not sure if this was an organizational plan or jsut what we'd made so far

When we started the quilt in 2019, we wanted a challenging quilt that would allow us to come up with our own designs. I loved Harry Potter before Alison was around. I read the first three books while living in Japan. Because we had a limited number of books in English, there was a lot of sharing of books. For the last 2 or 3 books I attended book release parties at bookstores, one I remember reading in the car after midnight as I accompanied my husband as he drove around Wisconsin to deliver lost luggage from the airport.  When Alison was old enough, I read the first ones to her, and we read the later ones to each other. Reading the books together and talking about the stories translated well to designing the quilt together. 

Alison would often sew while I pinned or prepared the next set of pieces

Unfortunately, at some point, I started to feel funny about sharing our progress on the quilt (and my general love of Harry Potter), because at some point after we started working on it, the author decided to reject the themes of her books and start using her platform and fame to say hateful things online.

Scabbers and the grid plan for his creation

For the Members' Exhibition, we've titled the quilt "We started this before she was a TERF." I was actually surprised during the reception that people mostly didn't know what we were talking about. TERF stands for "trans exclusive radical feminist" or, specifically, someone who considers themselves a feminist but doesn't like trans people. (By "doesn't like" I guess I mean that this person doesn't think that trans people should or do exist and thus have rights including access to bathrooms and/or healthcare.)

testing options for thread color around the appliqued puking pastilles

I believe the author started her descent into the anti-trans world by voicing opposition to trans use of womens' bathrooms, but since then she's doubled and tripled down on saying mean things about trans people, extending that to saying mean things about people who support trans people and, more recently, using her buckets of (mostly Harry Potter) money to fund anti-trans legislation in the UK. Also recently she decided to say mean things about asexual people, which seems to simply be an expansion of the unnecssary hate. Why?

documenting the completion of the deathly hallows

So, now we're in a world where I feel compelled to distance myself from the author and her views if I publicly enjoy something she created. I don't want to provide the author with any more money--though we've already spent money and time on this project we love. Our financial investment in HP licenced fabric was all done by the time she outed herself as a TERF, but I still feel funny about how connected this quilt is with an author I no longer respect.

planning sketch for Riddle's diary

It's the first time I've thought very seriously about "death of the author" (by which I mean, both that the author doesn't get to determine what their work means AND that the author is separate from the work).  This is the first author whose work I really loved, who went on to make what I consider a real negative difference in the world. I loved Good Omens; Terry Pratchett has always been one of my favorite authors, while the living author of those books was not. I feel ok about continuing to support Good Omens, since the problematic living author is no longer associated with the TV version. 

tracking which elements we'd created, which ones we had patterns for and...others

I honestly thought, back in 2020, that the Harry Potter author would get some push back to her original comments, hear what people who disagreed with her had to say, then eventually walk back her comments.  I thought at least she would say she respected their perspective, but couldn't fully agree. Instead, she leaned in to saying and supporting things that I disagree with. Thus, my love of the books (and audibooks--Jim Dale is amazing), and this quilt have to occupy an awkward space where I no longer support or respect the author, but still love what we've made and the time we spent making it.

Crookshanks, basically completed, including wonky edges

When we started this quilt, I don't know that we had considered how long the process would take. We obviously didn't anticipate the pandemic, which paused our 4H sewing sessions and initially slowed us down (and limited the assistance we could get in problem solving some of the more difficult designs), but at some point the limitations of COVID gave us more at-home time to work on the quilt.

this one was tough, notice the word "platform" in green

The next big delay was my stupid cancer, which limited my energy. Then Alison started high school, which meant cross country and marching band and TSA--and we just had no idea how all-consuming marching band would be. Speaking of all-consuming, I took on the union presidency in 2019, then dove head-first into bargaining the contract and pandemic changes, then return from COVID, then 3 years of bargaining the second contract and all the drama that came along with that (things are MUCH better now). For most of that time, the union was a second job, and I was also teaching full-time (or slightly more than full-time).

at some point we started highlighting the sections we had finished, so we knew which imagery still neded to be made

Throughout all of this, we never entirely abandoned the quilt, though we'd go months and months without touching it. Some of the hardest times to work on it coincided with some of the hardest decisions to make. At some point we needed to determine how to put it all together. In the original design, we saw the quilt as basically four separate sections that could be put together in pieces, but as the measurements of individual elements changed, that impacted whether the pieces would fit together in a grid, and whether that grid would fit with the other pieces.

the cat on the bottom right wasn't part of the original design

The layout always called for having the snake at the bottom, but we never entirely planned for how the snake would fit across that space with it's head somehow above the edge of the elements next to it. We basically just saved it for last. After ignoring it for months, I believe we got the quilt pieces out in late fall of 2024 (after marching band, cross country, and CBA bargaining had all come to an end). At this point, I think we were just hoping to finish before Alison graduated high school.

Rita Skeeter (as a bug)

Regardless of how you feel about the author, I hope that you enjoy looking at our quilt. If you are a quilter, be gentle with us, as this is the first design we've ever planned an executed and we did it during a fairly tumultous half decade. If you are in Yakima, check it out at Larson Gallery. If you are coming to Alison's graduation next year, maybe you can see it in person then (since we did, in fact, finish it before she finished high school).

we had to spread it out on the floor to see the whole thing

Can you identify all the various elements in the quilt without help? 

Here's my key: right to left, top to bottom:

Rows top to bottom

• Weasley's Wizarding Wheezes box (all the skiving snackboxes are falling out across the quilt), scroll, cat plate from Umbridge's office, Fluffy the 3-headed dog, broomstick, Rita Skeeter as a bug
• Sorting hat, puking pastille, dragon egg (tri-wizard tournament), Scabbers, wand with red sparks (hard to see in photo), top of bookshelf, Luna's Spectrespecs, time turner (our design, not based on the movie--because circles are difficult)
• Lion from Luna's hat, Hedwig, Ravenclaw's diadem, Trevor, penseive on bookshelf, Crookshanks, Slytherin's locket, quill
• Hogwarts, Skiving Snackbox, snitch, dealthly hallows, platform 9 and 3/4 sign, niffler, Triwizard cup
• Griffindor's sword, Skiving Snackboxes, moon (Lupin), Riddle's diary with a baselisk fang, Harry Potter's glasses/scar, Marauder's map, broomstick
• Dobby's sock (falling out of the diary), mandrake (hard to see in photo), howler, Sorcerer's/ Philosopher's Stone, quidditch goals
• Chocolate frog, Nagini (getting her head chopped off), divination teacup ("one of the blue patterned ones")

Everything is Canceled & Harry Potter Quilt

Clay Classes & Events Canceled

Spring is usually a busy time for art in Yakima and at YVC. At Yakima Valley College, we usually hold our annual pre-mother's day clay sale as well as the Student Exhibition at Larson Gallery in May. May is also the month for Larson Gallery's Tour of Artists' Homes and Chalet Place hosts June Art Fest in early June. This year I am still taking part in a Mount St. Helens exhibition at Oak Hollow Gallery, though people can't really go see it.

My daughter's spontaneous reaction to the pandemic.

This year, because of the pandemic and the stay at home order, my winter quarter final critiques for my clay classes were moved online, my spring 2020 clay classes were canceled shortly before the quarter began, and within the last couple of weeks, our last hopes for having a late spring clay sale have been dashed by the extension of the stay at home order. The student art exhibition at Larson Gallery hasn't happened and in late March, YVC made the decision to move nearly all classes online for summer and fall. 

The Deathly Hallows quilt square

While disappointing, all of the decisions to cancel classes and events are completely reasonable given the circumstances of the pandemic. Some of our programs have permission from the state to hold face -to-face class meetings this quarter, but students and faculty need to maintain strict social distancing protocols, wear PPE, and follow other safety precautions. Faculty are required to develop written plans, train the students on safety protocols, make sure everyone is following the new restrictions, check students for symptoms, and re-do the training and checks every day. 

My daughter's fox quilt from last year

I suspect that, even if the state allowed us to teach clay classes with social distancing protocols, it would have been difficult to meet those safety expectations. Yakima Valley College decided relatively early to move most classes online for fall. Based on what scientists seem to be saying about how the coronavirus spreads, it sounds like this decision was a wise one. I'm also glad to know this before students start signing up for fall classes later this month.

Our plans for the Trelawney's teacup

The Lucky Ones

As one of the lucky ones, who has a job that can move entirely online and whose family and friends have (probably) not contracted the virus, I have been thinking about the kinds of things that have made this time easier for me and my family. Unlike many of my colleagues, I have taught online for several years, and I've taught all of this quarter's classes online recently, so I am not in the position of having to learn to teach online or to move my classes online in a short time. I also spent significant time in August and September updating and adjusting all the dates for my online Art History series for the year, as I was anticipating that my union position and contract bargaining would make spring especially challenging and wanted to do as much as I could before spring.

Rita Skeeter as a beetle (my favorite one so far).

I am optimistic that one of the side effects of this time spent online is that my colleagues and maybe the YVC community in general, will have a better understanding of what teaching online entails. So few faculty taught online before the pandemic forced us all to go there that I think people simply didn't understand how much work online classes require. I am optimistic that this time will help put our collective energy behind supporting students and faculty in these classes.

Fluffy, the three-headed dog

My family is also lucky that our daughter is old enough that she can work on her own and that her grandparents are able to FaceTime with her regularly. We also benefit from having functional technology in the house and from living in a place where the internet is reliable. Her schoolwork has been pretty doable and, though she gets frustrated when I have hours of meetings and time on the computer for work, she is also able to find things to do that don't interrupt those meetings.

our original plan for the quilt, the size of our earliest pieces have changed significantly

Harry Potter Quilt

My daughter and I have been working on a pretty big sewing project for a little over a year and this time has probably allowed us to focus a bit more time and energy on it than we would have without the stay at home order. My daughter started doing 4H sewing few years ago. For her first project she made a "Fancy Forest" quilt, using a pattern from Elizabeth Hartman. Last year she made a large quilt using just the fox from this pattern. This year we are designing our own quilt with several pieces derived from the Fancy Forest designs. This year's quilt is Harry Potter themed.

"Fancy Forest" quilt pattern by Elizabeth Hartman

We drew up our designs for the quilt last spring based roughly on the spacing of the full Elizabeth Hartman quilt. Some of the shapes, like the top of Luna's lion hat and Fluffy, the three-headed dog, are based on Hartman's designs. We started our plans last spring and, feeling excited about the prospect of the entire project, we bought enough fabric to complete the entire quilt (and maybe a bit more besides).

Our first six pieces, The glasses are based on the technique used for the owl's eyes and the broomsticks and top of the lion are based on the hedgehog design.

At the time I remember thinking that maybe we were overdoing it, buying so much fabric at once. Our 4H group meets in Joann's Fabrics, and we could buy the fabric anytime. The project was going to take a long time and there wasn't any reason to get ahead of ourselves. We only attend 4H once a week and there were times this year when we missed several meetings in a row due to travel, after school commitments, and other conflicts.

some of our Harry Potter fabric stash purchased this past summer

Of course, now that we're stuck at home, haven't been to Joann's in nearly two months, and are able to spend closer to two or three nights a week on the project, I'm really glad we bought all that fabric early on. Since mid March we've finished 5-7 pieces of the quilt and today we cut all the fabric pieces for three more. We completed about 10 pieces in the previous 9 months. So our speed has greatly increased.

The point at which we got too confused to continue working on the frogs

The pandemic isn't entirely the cause of the increase speed. We also have made significant improvements to our approach. When we started we didn't really use a pattern. We did a lot of guessing about angles and sides. This worked fairly well for the simple shapes, like the broomsticks and Luna's lion hat that consisted mainly of parallel shapes, but once we got into some angles, things got difficult. 

more confusion while we first tried to use the frog pattern

We got really turned around when we got to the chocolate frog and Trevor the toad. We started out trying to just guess at the angles. Finally after several people, including the 4H sewing leader and my mom, told us to make a full sized pattern, we did and we were able to complete the slightly wonky frogs.

Trevor the toad and a chocolate frog

After the frogs, we decided to start with a pattern. We used a full-scale paper pattern for Riddle's Diary, Dobby's sock, the Deathly Hallows, Scabbers, and Rita Skeeter (in her animagus beetle form).

Riddle's Diary with a basilisk fang and Dobby's/Harry's sock

Once we had completed about 15-17 (depending on how you count) of the pieces, we laid them all out to feel a sense of accomplishment. This is less than a quarter of what we plan to make for the entire quilt, but it feels good to look at them all laid out in a semblance of the final quilt.

Our quilt progress, collected

Harry Potter Party

Butterbeer, with colors of Ravenclaw, Slytherin, and Hufflepuff

A while back, my daughter had a Harry Potter themed party. I'm a pretty big Harry Potter fan, and so is she. She's gone as both Hermione and Luna for different Halloweens. This summer we went to London on a trip and did at least 4 different Harry Potter activities (with which my husband was very patient).

The entrance to Platform 9 & 3/4

My daughter and I worked together on the decorations, party favors, and stuff for the party, but really she did the vast majority of the actual work. She made signs for the various parts of the house to identify them as Harry Potter themed. The porch was Platform 9 & 3/4. She has a little shopping cart that she redesigned as the trolley going through the wall.

She was going to draw bricks on the wall but ran out of time.

There were lots of things for the guests, including chocolate frogs at Honeydukes' Sweet Shop and Butterbeer. The idea was that the kids would all decorate the chocolate frog boxes, but kids have better things to do at a party, apparently, so they mostly didn't get decorated.

Honeydukes and the undecorated chocolate frog boxes

We made the boxes and the chocolate frogs. We bought a chocolate frog mold, and melted chocolate chips into it. We dyed marshmallow fluff in yellow (for Hufflepuff), blue (for Ravenclaw), green (for Slytherin), and red (for Gryffindor). The chocolate frogs were pretty tasty, though also a bit messy. 

A half-eaten chocolate frog and butterbeer (discovered after the party)

The Butterbeer could be picked up at The Three Broomsticks (kitchen). We experimented with several recipes online, but we discovered that vanilla cream soda was the best tasting and least complicated. At first we added butter extract, but it didn't make a demonstrable difference in the flavor.

The 3 Broomsticks, Est. 1452 Hogsmeade

We bought tiny glass mugs from the dollar store and I drew the labels. My daughter colored them and we Mod Podged them on the mugs. We put food coloring in the bottom of the cups and let it dry. The internet suggested that we could add ice and no-one would notice the food coloring, but the internet was wrong. I compromised by spraying a bit of whipped cream in the bottom, then pouring the cream soda on top. The effect was great for color and foam, but the cups were tiny and they tended to overflow as the soda fizzed and combined with the whipped cream.

Cream soda, food coloring, and whipped cream

The color worked well and the kids could get sorted into two houses (via Butterbeer and via the chocolate frog). Later they played "quidditch" in the lawn, which basically consisted of Daddy hiding the "snitch" and the kids all running around and screaming til someone found it.

Butterbeer cups with dry food coloring in the base

The tiny Butterbeer cups were a good idea, given that we overdid all the other sugar by 1000. Besides Butterbeer and chocolate frogs, we had cookies and cupcakes

niffler cupcakes

. Viera's Bakery in Yakima made us hedgehog cupcakes, which we converted to nifflers by hiding chocolate coins in the paper cupcake liners.

The Magical Menagerie (Pygmy Puffs and Nifflers now in stock)

The Xylophone was converted to the Magical Menagerie, but we couldn't quite decide if the Niffler's belonged there or in The Three Broomsticks or at Honeydukes'. 

Niffler drawing by Meghan Flynn

Somehow the child already had 3 (non-cupcake) nifflers and a hedging, and a number of her other stuffed animals appear to be pygmy puffs. My talented colleague Meghan Flynn (buy her art), gifted Alison a niffler drawing to add to the team.

Olivander's wand shop in a jar

We made each kid a wand (which was a ton of fun, really), but hot gluing pencils. I really enjoyed dropping the hot glue into shapes on paper, then peeling them up and using them to sculpt shapes on the end of the wands. 

Olivander's wand table

We painted some of the wands with glow-in-the-dark acrylic and the kids seemed to like them.

Our Harry Potter library

Besides the signs around the house, we collected all our Harry Potter books in one place. Besides the series and the plays, we have one illustrated copy (book 3), a cookbook, and several books I bought in the hiatus between Half-Blood Prince and Deathly Hallows. 

The Rookery (the Lovegood's House) Keep of the dirigible plums!

My daughter is a big fan of Luna Lovegood (and nifflers, obviously), so she wanted to make quibblers and spectrespecs, too. We tried to get cookies in the shape of spectrespecs, but weren't able to do so.

 

The girl spend a lot of time making quibblers (with the help of a photocopier). Each quibbler had a pocket with foam. The goal was that kids would trace and cut out spectrespecs and glue them onto plastic glasses, but we underestimated the time and overestimated the general attention span of the group as a whole, so none actually were finished.

The Quibbler, Birthday Issue by X Lovegood 

Alison designed a dot-to-dot and runes to decode inside. 

The runes on the right say Happy Birthday if you flip the magazine upside down

I'm guessing very few people got all the Harry Potter references in the party, since most of the kids had not read the whole series--and some had, shockingly, not read any. 

Grimmauld /Grim Old Place "Shh Don't wake anything up" (like the cats sleeping inside)

I asked Alison to keep people out of a couple of rooms in the house, so she labeled them as Nocturn Alley and Grimmauld Place. Which entertained me and worked in combination with the closed doors to keep the kids out. 

At the start of the flight we decorated the bottoms, but eventually we embraced a simpler aesthetic.

Since the chocolate frogs were tons of fun and we never got to decorate any, we made more for the family for Christmas. We made the chocolates and put them in a plastic bag, but apparently the pressure of the plane broke the chocolate and caused the colored marshmallow to squeeze out during the flight, so they didn't work particularly well.

Chocolate frog box from London

We decorated them together during our flight (about 6.5 hours) Initially we were referencing the official chocolate frog box, but as the flight continued, we just made our own designs, including an "Invisible Chocolate Frog" for the baby (since we were short one frog, and babies done eat chocolate).

Decorated and put together chocolate frog boxes from Christmas

The invisible frog box would have been a lot funnier ("fat free, 0 calories, gluten free") if all the other boxes had really had chocolate frogs inside, but the result was still kinda fun.

The birthday chocolate frog boxes had chocolate frog cards with a place for kids to draw their own wizard (or for marshmallow goo to stick)