you can't take the sky from me

In case you didn't know, I'm a big fan of all things Firefly. We rarely go a day without a Firefly reference in this house.

A couple years ago I bought Sam Hunter's wonderful book Quilt Talk. That book convinced me that paper piecing is not just possible, but much easier than I thought. I love the alphabet she created and I knew just the thing I wanted to make.

I don't remember how many different colors of red, orange, and yellow I used, but I'm pretty sure it was all of the three that I had in my stack of solids. The background fabric is very dark navy that almost reads as black.

I decided I wanted a firefly-class transport ship but I didn't want it to be embroidered. I found the perfect graphic to use as a guide.

I traced the outline of the ship, traced over some of the shaping, and then used echo quilting to create some movement in the background of the whole quilt. Each letter is outlined, too.

I bound the quilt in a "two-by-two" blue with another piece of the navy in the lower corner. The Firefly mini quilt in the lower left of this picture was part of a Whedonverse swap I participated in 2015.

I want to say that I planned the binding so it looks like Serenity is making for the black but that just isn't true. It was a happy accident.

This is number 11 on my list of 12 for the 2017 UFO Challenge. You can see my list of 12 projects in this post. Four months, four finishes!