Mantis Shrimp

I wrote a book. Sadly, not a quilting book; it's related to my day job as a librarian.  I wrote it with a colleague and friend.  It was officially published last month.

We planned a lunch celebration with our families a few days after the book was released.  I have planned for months to make him something to thank him for being the best co-author on the planet.  I was a little worried about being able to pull it off.  But I did!

Garrison, my co-author, is obsessed with the animal the Mantis Shrimp. Thing is, there are not commercial mantis shrimp quilt patterns out there.  Applique was going to be my only option, but I still needed something to create the applique from.  I tried coloring sheets online and found two, but I didn't really like them.  Garrison's love for the mantis shrimp is so well known at work that when we re-did our staff intranet, the committee working on it decided to use a mantis shrimp as the unofficial library intranet mascot.  A coworker who has a talent for drawing created a mantis shrimp as said mascot.  I reached out to that coworker, Justin, explained what I wanted to make for Garrison, and asked if he still had the sketches from the intranet and could I use them?  Justin was enthusiastic about the project and immediately sent me his sketches.

I enlarged Justin's drawing and then worked on simplifying it to best translate into fabric.  I realized pretty quickly that I was going to need to do a fair amount of thread work to get the details of the shrimp segmentation.  I did all the stitching with navy Aurifil thread and a small stitch length.  I built the parts of the shrimp body first.  I layered the background and backing with Hobbs Thermore batting which is perfect for small quilts/wall hangings.  I quilted the whole piece with cross-hatch lines before adding the shrimp to the background so the quilting lines would not go through the shrimp.

 

I really, really wanted the shrimp to be reading a book.  Specifically, our book.  I used fabric sheets that can go into the printer, common used for adding photos to quilts, and printed our book cover in a few sizes.  Then I picked the best size.  I had already modified one of the shrimp "arms" to work holding the book. 

Other than the fabric that went into the printer for the book cover, all fabrics are Island Batik basics.  The background is Tumbleweed, the tail is Bermuda, the top part of the body is Mystic, the "arms" are Sangria, and the eyes are Grape.  The backing fabric is Beaujolais, which has been sunsetted but I still had some in my Island Batik stash.  The finished quilt is 17 1/4" high by 14" wide.  I added folded triangles of solid gray to the corners on the back to make it easy to hang.

This was far more detailed in terms of thread work than what I normally do, but I'm very proud of the finished product.  The creator of the original shrimp drawing, Justin Mulcahy, also thought it turned out well, and I'm grateful he let me start with his drawing, as I don't think I could have done this without a place to start.  I'm happy to report that Garrison loved it!  He was laughing when he saw it, and his sister said it was as if all of Garrison had been captured in a small quilt, which I felt was a huge compliment.