Grease Is The Word

A quilter friend in my community is the in charge of costumes for the Menominee High School Theatre Dept. and this year they chose Grease as their production. They have a quilt made each year and raffle it off as a fundraiser for the theatre dept. Brenda asked me if I would make the quilt for this year. I said I would design and construct the top of the quilt and someone else could quilt and bind it. So where does one start on a project like this? First was a reuested size of twin size dimensions. Then I Goodle searched many images from the movie even though I have seen the movie alot and love it!! But the Google images helped with clothing detail and authenticity of the 1950s in regard to hair, colors and fashions. I chose 1950s colors-black, white, pastel blue, yellow and pink with some red for this project. Also I really needed Google for the car which was the part I was most apprehensive about-I draw people and flowers not cars!!

 

When I designed the quilt I thought of this similar to a block of the month style quilt with different pictures connected with borders. I pulled images from the production like hand jive, Rizzo, beauty school dropout, leather jackets, the T-Birds etc. and then had the bottom section with Sandy, Danny and the Greased Lightning car. I drew out the images then did a raw edged fused applique technique. Usually I would quilt and stitch the applique down in one step but since I wasn't quilting it I pre-stitched all the applique down before the quilting.

This is the close up of Rizzo-she's wearing a little chiffon scarf!! I used silver glitter glue for the jacket zipper and some glitter nail polish in her hair.

This is the beauty school dropout girl with silver lame cape and lots of glitter and glitter glue on the rollers, eyes and lips!

This block ws 8" x 8" and I felt like I was making doll clothes when I made the leather jacket. I went a little 3D and added a belt buckle from my personal belt that I knew I would never wear. I used silver glitter glue for the zippers and all the hardwear on the jacket. I love this mini jacket!

 

The Greased Lightning car had silver lame applique on the hub caps, lights etc. since the 1950s cars were full of chrome!!

 

When you use volunteers to do a project there could be drama and this quilt was not able to be finished before the production last week. It was displayed without much quilting and no binding and I had to let that go because I agreed to do the top only and not the quilting. The general public probably didn't know the difference and I said nothing!!

It was a fun quilt to make-I sang the Grease songs through the entire process and giggled when I added little details like Danny's comb, the belt buckle and Rizzo's scarf.