
I love the concept of combining the old and the new. Quilting is an oh-so-useful craft that goes back hundreds of years. Recycling scraps of fabric to make a sturdy bedcover has been elevated to an art form. It seems anachronistic at first glance, but 8-bit pixelated arcade game icons lend themselves well to the design of patchwork quilts.
1. Galaga Quilt

Emily at Carolina Patchworks made this quilt depicting the arcade game Galaga. It’s for sale at Etsy.
2. Quiltbert

Lenore at Evil Mad Scientist adapted the traditional “tumbling blocks” quilt pattern and made a pieced quilt based on the videogame Q*bert!
3. Mega Man

Mega Man is just one of Punzie’s videogame designs for quilts and pillows. You can buy them through her Etsy store, Rapunzel’s Tower, but she connot guarantee Christmas delivery on new orders now.
4. Pacman

The maker of this Pacman quilt posted at Kotaku isn’t identified, but you can click for a closer view at the site. It seems to be a counted cross-stitch project!
5. Super Mario

Marie at DIY-namite made this Super Mario quilt from two-inch squares …a lot of them. She shares the instructions in two parts, here and here. See more pictures of the project at Flickr.
6. Mario mushroom quilt

Flickr user 3j0hn pieced together two-inch squares to make a Mario Mushroom quilt!
7. Space Invaders

Here you see Craftster rainbowmeow working on her Space Invaders quilt. It was her first quilt, and turned out wonderfully.
8. Zelda quilt

Quilters are not limited to 8-bit icons! This awesome Zelda Wind Waker wallhanging was quilted by AGiES’ mother over several months. She even hand-dyed some of the fabrics!
If anyone knows of a World of Warcraft quilt, I’d like to see it!
Yeah, the quilts are cool retro items but check out the lifesized and fully functional Atari 2600 joystick this guy made!
posted by Amy on 12-11-2007 at 7:26 am
holy cow those quilts rule. and to be pedantic, a “life sized” atari joystick would be 1:1 scale of the original. that appears to be quite a bit bigger than that.
posted by Ack on 12-11-2007 at 8:41 am
Post-it notes are prefect for making 8 bit game scenes. I seem to remember photos of one where people used a fully-windowed stairwell to create a Mario scene using post-its. The view from outside the building was quite amusing.
posted by EV on 12-11-2007 at 9:16 am
So cool! What a fun thing to do. The Zelda blanket is outstanding.
posted by Joshua on 12-11-2007 at 11:14 am
These are amazingly cool. I can’t imagine the amount of work it took to make these. I made a quilt out of old concert T’s for my son and I htought that was tough! (lol)
posted by JaneM on 12-11-2007 at 1:13 pm
Awesome, but you its Wind Waker not Wind Walker
posted by John P on 12-11-2007 at 3:39 pm
Thanks, John, your eyesight is certainly better than mine! Corrected.
posted by Miss Cellania on 12-11-2007 at 4:13 pm
Wow. I quilt quite a bit and that Zelda piece takes my breath away. I just can’t imagine the hours spent on that…
posted by Sarah on 12-11-2007 at 5:07 pm
Wow! These quilts are inspiring! I’m not a huge gamer myself but I don’t think I’ve ever been so inspired to start a quilting project. Maybe the pixelated sqares make the designs seem easier? Anyway, great post! Thanks for the entertainment!
posted by Leah on 12-11-2007 at 7:24 pm
Wow, these are awesome! The Zelda quilt is really impressive.
posted by heather on 12-11-2007 at 10:40 pm
Thats Awesome!!
posted by Denise on 12-11-2007 at 11:24 pm
WOW! These are too cool! I LOVE Q-BERT!!!
posted by Christine on 1-9-2008 at 2:25 am
A friend’s mother is an award winning quilter, and when I asked her why she’s never made anything like this, she just looked at me like I was insane. Granted, I AM insane, but still… She’s now working on the pattern for a Tux quilt for her LINUX using son.
posted by Maggie on 2-22-2008 at 12:43 pm
National Transportation Safety Board recently divulged they had funded a project with the US auto makers for the past five years. The NTSB covertly funded a project whereby the auto makers were installing black boxes in four wheel drive pickup trucks in an effort to determine, in fatal accidents, the circumstances in the last 15 seconds before the crash.
They were surprised to find in 49 of the 50 states the last words of drivers in 61.2% of fatal crashes were, “Oh, Shit!”
Only the state of Texas was different, where 89.3% of the final words were, “Hey Y’all, hold my beer and watch this!”
posted by Britney on 2-23-2008 at 4:26 pm
U made me so happi seeing all those quilts….thanks for sharing this
cyndi Seui
posted by Cyndi Seui on 10-29-2009 at 1:00 am
here. it be Wondrous. ^_^
http://fiftytwoquilts.blogspot.com/2010/12/quilt-three-wow-logo-quilt.html
posted by wizzie on 6-19-2011 at 11:48 pm
I made a quilt for my brother based on a shield from the PC game Ultima: http://invisiblegirl.org/2011/05/my-brothers-quilt/
posted by Erin on 7-28-2011 at 2:26 pm