Happy Halloween

I'm Here... and I'm a Winner!!!

Thought I fell off the face of the earth? Nah - just been spending a lot more time sewing and a lot less time writing. Also had Halloween in there ...and groups, and Facebook, and swimming lessons for the Munchkin, and cleaning up the yard for the winter, and work... and I think you get the idea.

I've missed the blog though.

Here's Halloween...
The Munchkin in MY costume...

And the Munchkin in HIS costume and me in mine...

And here is my prize - courtesy of Cheryl. She just got to meet PW ... I am so envious...
(sorry about the glare - I am lucky to get a photo taken and posted...)

Three quilt books and one cross stitch - all from Leisure Arts. Some wonderful stuff - especially the Pat Sloan Camera, Color, Quilts! I am loving the one on the cover especially!

But I need a new project like a hole in the head... I am currently working on a quilt for the Munchkin, a quilt for a friend, the turtle baby quilt (which needs machine quilting and binding), and now a wedding quilt for a host brother from Japan (long story...) - plus a craft show, and oh did I mention that said wedding quilt for host brother is due to him getting married HERE... and I am helping to plan the wedding..... plus Lazy Girl Designs just came out with a yummy new pattern for a pair of little bags that will be awesome for little family and friend gifties...

It's going to be a busy fall!

And I am loving every bit of it!

Two (actually three) Finishes

Earlier this spring I swapped some scraps with my Lazy Sister Sue, and we planned to do the Bricks and Stepping Stones quilt by Bonnie Hunter at Quiltville. I drove my scraps all the way out to Ohio for the April retreat, and all the way home, not working on the project at all.

This summer I got busy - and yesterday afternoon I tied the final knot and removed the last safety pin, and called it done. Of course it was instantly comandeered by the Munchkin, who turned himself into a quilted ghost, and then used it for a cave and tunnel for his trains as he played on the floor. I got it back after his bedtime, and field tested it on both the sofa and the bed. This one's a keeper!

Note the bees in the border~ and all those ties - in the middle of EVERY four patch. If I had it to do again I would have added an inner border, but I was tight on the bee fabric and it was one I could not get more of so I was not messing around too much by making the center too big. As it is this ended up as a nice large quilt - touches the floor on all sides of the quilted ghosty, and covers my side of the king size bed - and then some.

Concurrently with finishing up this quilt, I have gotten back to work on my Halloween quilt - dubbed "As You Witch" by Jill. I started back in July. Shellie has been after me to finish this one up - and now that things have settled down a bit I figured I could focus on it a bit better, since this is a "make it up as I go along" pattern and I could not remember exactly where I left off last - except that I had purchased fabric during my shop hop in late July to finish it up.

I had a slight change in plans as to how I was going to use the fabrics, and I ended up using the original novelty print in the borders, so you can see it both uncut and turned into kaleidoscope blocks. The dark black/brown with the orange dots will probably be the binding - the more I put it with the blocks, the more the "black" really read as brown and just did not work with the other fabrics, but I think it might work for the binding.

These pictures don't really do justice to how bright these colors are - the orange sashing is a red on orange print, the yellow is pretty vivid, and the lime, purple, blue and other colors in the blocks are also very intense.

I have a traditional Halloween white sheet for the backing - a vintage sheet still in the original packaging that I picked up at an estate sale. It's in the wash to get some of the sizing out of it but then I think it will be great on the back. I plan to quilt around and through the kaleidoscopes stitch-in-the-ditch which should create some "spider web" type areas on the back - and i have some black yo-yo spiders prepped to applique back there to make this double sided.

19 more days until Halloween! I hope to get this done sooner than that so we can at least have some time to enjoy it before the Halloween decorations get put away!

Oh - nearly forgot that I needed to post a finished picture of "On Pinwheels and Kneedles" - the machine quilting turned out great and I was very very happy with this one. So was my MIL.

Current Obsessions

For a couple of years now I have been interested in doing a Stack-n-Whack type quilt. Lazy Sister Sue had shown me some she had done a few years back and I liked the effect, but once we moved so far away from my quilt teacher, I had kind of put it on the back burner and had not pursued finding a class locally.

When I went to the Peeps Retreat in April, we did a book and pattern swap among the peeps, each of us bringing things we no longer wanted and placing them on a big table up for grabs.

I was so excited to find this book in the mix - this looked to be another authors version of the technique - which basically consists of cutting your fabric in rectangles so that the pattern repeat fills each rectangle, stacking up 8 layers so that the pattern aligns through all 8 layers, and then cutting out wedges that are then assembled into octagons.

This book was the gentle nudge I needed to get my mind back on doing this technique - it became one of those nagging things in the back of my mind, even as I worked on many many other projects.

One hitch to my plan was that I am working on tight pursestrings where fabric purchasing is concerned -and the quantity needed for me to "experiment" with a new technique was a bit daunting. A few chunks I had in my stash that I thought would be good for this were too small.

Then last Sunday (the 12th) a new quilting buddy came over for a few hours - it was her first visit to my workspace - and as we swapped ideas and chatted and I cut a few chunks of fabric to share with her, I unearthed FIVE YARDS of fabric that I had forgotten I had. FIVE YARDS of fabric that I purchased in a trip to Hobby Lobby in SC with Lazy Sister Sue nearly 2 years ago. FIVE YARDS of fabric that to this point I had no real plan for. FIVE YARDS of Halloween Spirit craziness... I had finally found my fabric!!!

So not long after Shellie left, I got to measuring and cutting and stacking and aligning and cutting some more - and soon had piles and piles of triangles just waiting to be assembled. Most would end up in 8" blocks -the rest in 4" (and I even scraped a few 3" blocks out of the scraps).

And then the magic began - especially in the centers of the blocks...

Witch hats turned into flower centers...

Witch hat brims and hair turned into "venus flytraps" ...

...or swirling fire spirals...

I never knew quite from the wedges how the final block would turn out - it was hard to visualize what the seam allowance would eliminate from the final effect - especially in the centers.
I thought I was going to lose the one-eyed witch in this one, but she surprised me and still peeks out from the middle

Still working from my stash, I decided to add the yellow corners to each block to form the square - since the yellow is the least dominant color in the original fabric. I am going to try to pick up some black, blue, purple, orange and lime fabrics to do some borders, sashing and other accents both front and back, but I have not yet figured out my final block arrangement.

Oh - the little ones are fun, too - the witch face is not so dominant in those due to the small size, so they get more "abstract".


I just love how the colors shift and change from block to block -and how quickly these go together.

I hope to have this completely done soon (at least by Halloween!)- other projects are patiently waiting in the wings - but don't think for a second that I have this technique entirely out of my system yet. The magic has just begun!!!

Halloween Scarves

For weeks leading up to Halloween, the Munchkin told me emphatically he wanted to be "just a boy." Not content to leave it just at that -creative Mommy was determined to have "something" going on costume wise. So when I spotted this great Halloween fleece, I bought a bunch and quickly whipped up a handful of scarves - for the Munchkin, Mommy, Daddy, godparents, Gramma and Aunt Jeanne. Given the NORMAL near-freezing temperatures of a western NY Halloween, I thought it was just the thing. Snow earlier this week led me to believe I was on the right track.

Then the Munchkin finally decides to be a kitty cat, and the weather turns 60+ degree balmy!
Go figure!

We all wore our scarves anyway - there was a bit of bite to the wind after the sun went down. And who knows what the weather will be next year!

Finally...

Happy Halloween

The Munchkin FINALLY decided that Halloween was not such a bad idea after all - he let us carve his pumpkin (his is the one on the left), and decided he was going to be a "kitty". (Easy choice -thanks kid!!! His Aunt wonderfully has a costume stash that included extra kitty ears and a tail... YAY!)

And now he WANTS to go trick-or-treating. Peer pressure - a wonderful thing (!?)

Flashback Friday - the Costume Trunk

As I struggle with a 3 1/2 year old who is telling his Halloween loving mother that he wants to be "just a boy, Mommy" and that "we don't need Halloween, Mommy. It's not a good idea" -all while every creative gene in my body is screaming to build him the best Halloween costume ever - I remember back to the Halloween's of my childhood.

We had a big orange trunk in our family room - it did not contain toys (they were in a different toy box) but was filled with all sorts of costumes. Most were dance costumes from my older sisters - there was a gypsy and I think a peacock of some kind - but others were fun Halloween costumes -the sheep (see cute little me over there as the sheep), the brown dog - and I know there were more.

Each year we would delve into the trunk - seeing what fit who, or what could be adapted, embellished, altered or enhanced to create whatever our imaginations came up with that year. No store bought costumes around our house - but we had some great ones! Gypsies, ghosts, and other such elegance.

That and lots of jack-o-lanterns out front, with lots of pumpkin seeds roasting in the oven - YUM!!!

I also remember the years big brother Rick decided to rig up some speakers and a microphone and be the spooky noises at the front door.

We really did not get a ton of trick-or treaters at our house - mostly kids who lived in the few houses around us on our rural road. Costumes were frequently covered up by coats and hats and gloves - and had to handle getting in and out of the car frequently as Mom and Dad drove us around to more houses.

I can live with the Munchkin going trick-or-treating as "just a boy" - his box of costumes and spark of creativity may yet still come.

My only dread is that come Halloween morning that he does not suddenly decide he wants to be something more complicated than "just a boy, Mommy."

That's when I will wish for that big orange trunk...