u/TheYeastOfThese

Second attempt - first time didn't post pics.

This is a quilt I made for my 11yo. When he asked for a Mordor themed quilt, of course I said yes!

If any of you parents out there are trying to hook your kids on Tolkien, the Andy Serkis audiobooks are fantastic!

ETA: Thank you so much for all the kind comments! And for those who've asked, sorry, I'm not making them to sell - this is the first quilt I've ever made and I was very literally learning as I went. It is far from perfect! The fact that someone besides my kiddo would want one enough to pay for it is such a compliment though!

I hope this inspires someone else to express their love of Tolkien creatively too, even if you don't think you have the skills - draw a picture, paint something, perler bead, cross stitch, bake some one ring cupcakes... after all, if more of us valued food and cheer and song above hoarded gold, it would be a merrier world.

ETA2: You guys are awesome. I (and my kid!) truly appreciate all the kind and hilarious comments. There was a mention or two of wanting the pattern - I included a pic of my graph paper sketch and some notes over in the quilting sub: https://www.reddit.com/r/quilting/comments/1thn282/comment/omob57e/ I am a very fly-by-the-seat-of-my-pants crafter so it's not super organized or detailed. Never thought this fun project I made with love for my son would garner so much interest!

Black Friday of last year I bought a cheap Brother off Amazon, and jumped headfirst into sewing. I offered to make a quilt for each of my kids, and my 11yo asked for a Mordor-themed Lord of the Rings quilt. The front I sketched out on graph paper, and I pieced the back with leftover fabric from the front and some brown I had in my stash. The binding was a win - I sewed together ever scrap of yellow I could scrape together and it was *just* long enough. I literally didn't trim it at all at the end.

I'm posting this as encouragement for the other newbies out there. If you want to try something beyond your skill set, go for it! You'll learn as you go. This quilt is by no means perfect, but I'm happy with it, my kid is happy with it, and I learned a ton along the way.

My three biggest takeaways:

• Buy more fabric than you think you'll need, especially for a self-drafted pattern
• Fabric with mottling/texturing is much more forgiving than pure solids
• There are youtube tutorials for every step along the way - if one doesn't make sense, find a different one!

Happy sewing!

ETA: Thank you so much for all the kind comments! I was nervous to post - I'm a first-time quilter, a new sewist, and there are a lot of things that aren't perfect about this quilt, but as I said, I wanted to encourage someone else who may be feeling nervous about jumping in to the world of quilting!

Since there's been a couple of requests for a pattern, I'm adding that picture, along with my comments of all the changes I made (at least that I remember, haha.) If you have any specific questions, just let me know!

Each block is 5 inches unfinished, and I worked on it a little at a time, so I crossed off different blocks of four as I sewed them together. The eye, the cave, and the path were all applique, free-handed.

Changes from the pattern:

• I didn't put the top two rows on, they would have unbalanced the quilt, I felt, as they were just going to be more gray.
• I added a gold border around the whole thing.
• I changed the bottom rocks a bit from the design

If I did it again:

• I would put in some lava on Mt. Doom (I wasn't sure I had the skill to do that well, so I left it out.)
• I would make the horizon less flat/add in more peaks and valleys.
• I had the sky lighter around Mr. Doom to try to show that it was glowing. I'm not sure if I would do it again that way. But maybe with some lava flow or fire, that would make more sense.
• I would probably make the sky more red/orange and less gray, but my kid really wanted to show the smoke and haze from Mt. Doom, so I did it that way.