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
31st 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
October
8
October
9 - TODAY!
October 10
October
11
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!
You can find patterns for my Halloween quilts in my Etsy store HERE.
