My big brother has a birthday coming up. A few months ago, I started thinking about what I could make for him that would be both nerdy and quasi-useful. Among other things, he has been a Dungeons and Dragons fan since our childhood, so it seemed a good place to start. Unfortunately, I didn’t know the first thing about it. In my quest to learn the basics, I discovered the original D&D Starter Kit from many years ago. It has what was, for most people, the first map they ever played. It’s about 2 ft x 3 ft and composed of 748 one-inch squares – perfect for a quilt pattern!

In between major projects, I have started using up scraps and leftovers by trying out new techniques and occasionally attempting crafts without patterns. I think ultimately it makes me more aware of what I’m doing, rather than blindly following instructions on the page. Here are two of my favorites.

As if making a quilt based on a video game wasn’t nerdy enough, I started this one in Excel. I used some images from a quick search to plan out the pattern and colored the squares in the spreadsheet according to the fabric color. As many people have commented on the pattern, it’s definitely not true to the game. There is at least one completely filled line that is still there where it normally would have disappeared, there are half a dozen pieces “falling” at the top and gosh is this person bad at Tetris. Look at all those holes!