El Pollo Diablo Backstory
- Published:
- Length: 619 words
- Reading Time: 4 minutes
Earlier this year, I made a quilt, El Pollo Diablo, that probably seemed quite strange. It looks nothing at all like anything I've ever made before, which is fair.
But making El Pollo Diablo was a trip down memory lane, and I'd like to take some time to talk about why such a strange design was worth all of the time and effort I spent creating it.
Way Back When
I was two years old when the first Monkey Island game, The Secret of Monkey Island, was released.
My dad used to sit my sister and me in his lap and together we played the game. Tansy and I couldn't read, yet, so Dad would read everything out loud to us, and we would take turns managing the mouse (it was a point-and-click adventure game). We would laugh and laugh at the main character, Guybrush Threepwood's, adventures. I have such fond memories of that time spent with Tansy and my dad.
So continued the tradition a few years later when the second installment of the Monkey Island series was released, and again when the third game, The Curse of Monkey Island, came out when I was nine years old.
This is the game that inspired my quilt.
El Pollo Diablo
All of the Monkey Island games are point-and-click adventure games in which players play as Guybrush Threepwood (Mighty Pirate) and solve puzzles to progress the story. One of those puzzles in The Curse of Monkey Island involves Captain Blondebeard, proprietor of Blondebeard's Chicken Parlor.
Blondebeard tells us the legend of El Pollo Diablo, The Devil Chicken, who terrorized the local populace, freeing their penned chickens during his rampage. The former captain-turned-restauranteur has vowed revenge on El Pollo Diablo in retaliation for his liberated poultry.
The puzzle players need to solve involves Guybrush getting himself tarred and feathered before walking into the Chicken Parlor to surprise Blondebeard, who mistakes Guybrush for his nemesis, the legendary chicken of fowl persuasion in the flesh.
Blondebeard has a painting of El Pollo Diablo hanging in his restaurant, visible behind him in the above screenshot. The painting is also visible in this scene, which only exists to showcase the art:
Designing the Quilt
The above screenshot was my primary reference when drawing my quilt design. I knew from the beginning that I wanted to include the frame — or at least a modified version more conducive to quilting — because it adds so much grandiosity to the painting. This is the digital design I ultimately created and used as a template to make the fused appliqué quilt:
After cutting and ironing 510 pieces of fabric into an assembled quilt top, it was ready to quilt. I used my usual style of microquilting with 100wt silk thread.
And finally, here is the finished quilt!
