It's Day Three Of The Halloween Witchy Stitchy Blog Hop

The last few days of the Halloween Witchy Stitchy Blog Hop has been kind of like the

 Addam's Family theme song. It's been a little creepy and a bit kooky. Mysterious and spooky.

There's not been any ooky, but lots to scream about with excitement!

I'm loving it, aren't you?

Lucky me...I'm hosting Kathleen today! She doesn't have a blog, but that can't stop

anyone from hopping along with us. Look what she wrote and created!

Is It Halloween Yet? by Kathleen

First and foremost, a big thank you to Carol for hosting my post.

I will introduce myself with a statement – My name is Kathleen and I am a Halloween freak.

One would think that having to give up most of my trick or treating candy as a kid because of 

allergies would mean that I developed a dislike of the holiday, but that could not be further from

 the truth. Every day is Halloween at our place with an entire dining room wall unit displaying 

assorted Halloween items like a witch feet cookie jar and assorted salt and pepper shakers and 

several Halloween quilts on display all year. Yes, I have a wonderful, understanding husband.

Our large yard is the go to place on Halloween. I start decorating October 1, if I can hold out 

that long.  People come by throughout the month to see what is new and how I am progressing. 

I give out full sized nut-free chocolate bars and it makes me smile and laugh to hear the squeals

 of delight from the trick or treaters, and the parents when they get rewarded for having a great 

costume of their own. We even have treats for the dogs. Typically, it takes kids a while to make

 their way to our front door as they are busy looking at the fun, but not overly scary, decorations. 

A lot of time the parents don’t wait at the end of the driveway as they want to see, too. The 

neighbourhood won’t know what hit it next year as we are moving to a condo in a few 

months. I hope I do not get into trouble with the strata for my display in the solarium next year. 

I usually make 3 or 4 Halloween projects per year, from placemats, aprons, and table runners 

to wall quilts. The hardest part of the process for me is choosing which of my over 500 

different Halloween fabrics to incorporate into a project.

A friend and I have been discussing me making a Halloween advent calendar for a while and I 

decided this was the year. I designed the calendar and pulled my Eerie Alley line of fabrics. 

I have quite a bit of all three colourways of the original hearse fabric and I cleaned out the store

 of the new hearse version.

Making the 31^st pocket larger was a no-brainer. It is on a row of its own, and is THE day. 

I appliqued 31 on the pocket and then used my machine to stitch the dates on each of the 

other pockets, all in bright green, which I decided was going to be my main accent colour. 

That being done, it was time to try to square up my background again and add the pockets. 

I appliqued the header and footer and pockets to the background in the bright green. 

Typically, when sewing rectangles to a quilt like a label or a rod pocket, I will put fusible on 

the back of the piece and press it to the quilt to stabilize it. I was so eager to see this advent 

calendar closer to completion that I did not do that with the header. That was a mistake as the 

green Stonehenge frayed. I stopped and tried to rectify it with a bit of success. Then I used 

fusible on the orange footer. The orange rectangle was much more successful. Lesson learned.

My header and footer: After stitching the numbers I looked at the project on the design wall and 

felt it needed something. So, a bright green Stonehenge rectangle with the letters appliqued in 

what I call my Stonehenge Halloween collection of fabrics and a bright orange footer. 

The backing is the pink hearse version of the Eerie Alley fabric.

 Since there are coffins bouncing out of some of the hearses, I decided to do coffin quilting, 

some of them bouncing. I did a simple outline stitch around the pocket rows, header and footer. 

All the quilting is done in glow-in-the-dark thread and, if the lines are a little wonky it just adds 

to the spooky factor of the quilt. That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.

Now that I am finished the calendar I have decided to shop this year, wrap the treats, store 

everything, and wait to fill my advent until next year so that I will forget what I bought and

 most of the items will be a surprise. I think waiting is the way to go since we are also in full

 pack to move mode. There are all sorts of fun little treats I can use to fill my calendar – erasers, 

pencils, stickers, glow-in-the-dark thread, sample sizes of fall shower gels, tea lights, ornaments

 for my 7’ black tree and, of course, fat quarters. I already have a salt and pepper set for the 

October 31 pocket wrapped and ready. Any large items will be wrapped, and numbered with 

cardboard Halloween cut-outs and placed under the calendar.  Yes, that is Halloween 

wrapping paper in the photo. I haven’t thought this through at all. lol

Project info:

Eerie Alley fabric by Caleb Gray for Robert Kaufman

Finished size  33”x24”

1-30 pocket rows are each 3” x 18” finished. Each individual pocket is 3”x3” finished.

31 pocket is 4” x 6” finished.

Glow-in-the-dark thread for all the quilting

Label has a photo of a tiny portion of my 2016 yard display

Photos of some of my Halloween items and displays Flicker HERE.

Get Me Outta Here!

After I finished Is It Halloween Yet? I decided I needed to make a Halloween table topper. 

All of my indoor Halloween decorations, including the quilts, are in storage as, for some 

reason, people don’t want to see a dining room full of Halloween décor when looking at a 

house for sale, especially in August.

I went through my patterns and settled on Toad-ly Spellbound by Patchabilities. I made one 

important change – the frog is not jumping into the cauldron, he is jumping out of it. I think 

this may be the true back story for Michigan J. Frog, the singing and dancing frog from 

Warner Brothers cartoons. Perhaps the frog actually is a little spellbound after all.

I used Northcott Stonehenge fabrics for the front, and Benartex Spell Bound for the backing, 

with simple glow-in-the –dark outline quilting. This is now on our dining room table with a

 lantern I etched with a spooky tree pattern sitting on it.

Finished size 12´x 14”

Thanks, Kathleen! You can leave her comments on this post...I'm sure she'd love them!

Wondering how to do this blog hop thing?

Start with the first name on the current day and click on it.

Once you're at that blog, see all the Halloween goodness and then click on

the next name on the list (they will have the list on their blog, too.)

Keep going to each blog (comments are very much welcomed) until you're done.

Come back the next day and start the process all over. It will last five days and be 

full of incredible sewing and quilting inspiration. Not all of it will be scary, so don't

be afraid to check them out. You will be in awe of everything, I'm sure!

Ready to go to the next stop? 

October 7

Creatin' in the Sticks

Songbird Designs

For The Love Of Geese

Quilted Delights

Kathleen McMusing

Quilts By Joanne

Whims And Fancies

Janie G. – Hosted at Just Let Me Quilt

October 8

Selina Quilts

Words & Stitches

Vroomans Quilts

Days Filled With Joy

Elizabeth Coughlin Designs

Life in the Scrapatch

Just Because Quilts

Brenda's Quilt Blog

October 9 - TODAY!

Home Sewn By Us

Kathleen - Hosted at Just Let Me Quilt

Quilts Fabric and Thread Tales

Vicki’s Crafts and Quilting

Websterquilt

Seams To Be Sew

Sew Many Yarns

October 10 

Beaquilter

Homespun Hannah's Blog

MooseStashQuilting

Cynthia's Creating Ark

It’s A T-Sweet Day!

Count it *all* JOY!

Bethni L. – Hosted at Just Let Me Quilt

October 11

Just Let Me Quilt

Quilt Fabrication

Melva Loves Scraps
Patchouli Moon Studio

Ms P Designs USA

Karrin’s Crazy World

Patchwork Breeze

I have a giveaway!

Quilt Taffy is one of my favorite online stores so I got a gift certificate

to share with one of you. Corrie has lots of things to choose from!

a Rafflecopter giveaway

There's a Pinterest page for all this Witchy Stitchy madness HERE.