The Harry Potter Quilt
In 1997 there was buzz in the press about a fabulous new book for children from England that was getting a lot of publicity...Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone by J.K. Rowling. Reading to our children, Kate and Alex, had always been a high priority for my husband and I so I knew that this book would be part of our reading lives at some point.
It wasn't until a year later in 1998 , when Kate was 7 years old, that Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone was released in Canada. We went to our local Chapters store, bought the book, and I started reading it to her for our evening reading time together. We both got lost in the Harry Potter world and couldn't wait for her bedtime every night so we could continue on with this enchanting story.
After that, together we read The Chamber of Secrets and The Prisoner of Azkaban. For those of you who went through this craziness with your own children you will also remember the midnight launch parties that started at the book stores in 2000. Yes, I lined up at Chapters at midnight with my 9 year old daughter and her 2 best friends, Renelle and Allison, so they could buy their copies of the fourth book, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire.
Unfortunately for me, when it came time to read The Goblet of Fire, Kate felt confident enough to read this one on her own. After that I had to wait until she was finished reading it to get my paws on it, and the same thing happened with The Order of the Phoenix, The Half-Blood Prince and The Deathly Hallows.
As a quilter I made quite a few story/theme quilts for my children when they were younger so it came as no surprise to me when Kate requested a Harry Potter quilt. There had just been a Scholastic Book Fair held at her school where she purchased a Harry Potter colouring book so I was able to use a couple of the pages as designs for the quilt.
Harry playing Quidditch, Hedwig, the sorting hat, the Harry Potter logo, the Hogwarts coat of arms and Hagrid were all from the colouring book. I had to draw out Ron, Hermione and Dumbledore in such a way that they felt cohesive with the other designs.
Originally I had planned to hand appliqué the entire thing, but then two things happened...I realized that I hated hand-appliqué and there was very little time left in order to have it completed for the upcoming Durham Trillium Quilters Guild (Oshawa, Ontario) quilt show. So after finishing Harry with hand appliqué, everything else was accomplished using fusible web appliqué. Free-motion quilting was done using gold metallic thread, details were drawn on with a Pigma marker or stitched on with contrasting thread, and gold metallic stars and seed beads were randomly hand-stitched on the black borders. Kate was thrilled with her wall hanging.
Kate's quilt was completed at the beginning of November 2001 just in time for the quilt show. I received the ultimate compliment when a few women attending the quilt show went home to get their kids and brought them back to show them the Harry Potter quilt. Of course, this was back when cell phones were not as prevalent as they are now, and you couldn’t just snap a pic and show the kids when you got home!
This quilt will always be one of my favourites, not only because I love the quilt, but because of the wonderful memories of spending time reading with my daughter that are associated with it. Even now that she's 30 years old, her generation will forever be shaped by the story of the boy who lived.
