Traditional redwork embroidery usually means florals and samplers, but this project gives it a twist: redwork stitched for a zombie apocalypse. The maker, Dave's Craft Room, calls the craft zombroidery, and the whole thing is framed as a fictional story of surviving an outbreak that began in 2016. It is a playful answer to the question of what a classic redwork quilt could look like with a horror theme, and the concept carries through every block.
The build starts with designs pulled from zombie coloring pages found online. Those outlines were traced onto muslin squares using carbon transfer paper and an illuminated iPad screen acting as a light box. Each square went into a wooden hoop and was hand-embroidered with red floss. Thirty blocks in all were pieced into a five-by-six grid, joined by plain muslin sashing, with the sashing dimensions worked out on a small dry-erase board. Rows and columns were pinned onto a large white design wall to check the layout before assembly.
Several choices stand out. Printed outlines lived in a three-ring binder and work-in-progress blocks sat in page protectors, which seems like tidy organization. Stitched text on the blocks includes phrases like Devil's Path, Shelter, and Phoon Dawgs Guam 9/22. A diagonal diamond grid was marked with a long straight edge and a blue water-soluble marker, then hand quilted without a frame, with stitches routed beneath the red embroidery lines. An electric home sewing machine handled piecing and binding, and the binding corners were left un-mitered with an overlapping technique.
The trade-off the maker named is skipping iron-on interfacing to preserve the quilt's drape. That seems a smart call for softness, though it is the one choice left open to debate. Two accidents along the way, a cut through an outer border and an accidental fabric slash, were repaired with a sewn-on strip and a needle-turn appliqué patch. A final wash gave the finished quilt a crinkled look.
Project by Dave's Craft Room. Watch it on their YouTube channel: