Happy Halloween

Happy Halloween!!!  We don’t get any trick or treaters here but I like to decorate my house with a few Halloween items anyway.

I have several Halloween wall hangings I put out each year and just finished a table runner.  Will talk about this more later but it was easy and used striped fabric, a 60 degree ruler and the pattern Triangle Frenzy Swirl by Bunnie Cleland.This is my oldest Halloween wall hanging that I made in 1990.  I remember I had to use a poly/cotton orange fabric because at that time I could not find any bright orange 100% cotton.  It is about 32” square.This 17” x 20” pattern is from the Which Witch & The Who by Leslie Beck for Fiber Mosaaics.  It is fused with a pieced border that I bought as a kit from a fabric store and finished in 1995.  I finished this wall hanging in 2008 after it sat unfinished for several years.  The center design is by Rebecca Carter in the book Two-Hour Mini Quilt Projects but I needle turned the applique instead of fusing it.  I pieced the points and the background as an example in a class I taught on piecing Mariner’s Compass blocks and didn’t finish it until much later.  Here is a detail of it below and you can read about it starting with this blog on August 28, 2008.  I usually leave it up all fall as it doesn’t scream Halloween.This is a close up of the corner quilting motif.  Maybe in a few years I will be inspired to make something else new for Halloween.

Until Later,
Lynn

The Devil Made Me Do It!

We ate out at a local restaurant with a group of hunters and families on Saturday night which was Halloween. During the day I remembered I still had pieces and parts of costumes the girls wore when they were young so I found the box in the bowels of our basement. Dug out a pair of Devil horns I had made and attached to a headband plus a red Devil tail to go with it. I attempted to spike out my hair but wasn't too successful with that. I did apply heavy eye makeup which you can't really see behind my glasses either. Oh, well....I had a good time and it was fun. If I would have thought of it sooner I would have figured out something for John to wear but he was probably relieved I didn't.

I did get a new pair of glasses this last week too. The lenses are more square than the last ones I had and it only took a day to get used to the new prescription. My old glasses were really getting scratched so the new ones have been wonderful.

Lynn

Waiting for Halloween

I received an email asking about the pattern for the applique in the latest quilt I finished - "Waiting for Halloween." I am sorry I forgot to tell you where the pattern came from on that blog posting.

I used a pattern from the book pictured below "Two-Hour Mini Quilt Projects" by McKenzie Kate c. 1997 and made changes to to it for my quilt block. I enlarged it joined the motifs together without the spaces and added front legs to the cat and eliminated the heart. The pattern in the book showed the design fused onto the lid of a wooden box.

The book is packed full of easy applique designs by several designers and the design I used was by Rebecca Carter. I have used quite a few of the applique designs from this book at different times since I purchased it but I don't always use the design the same way the designers did. I may use it as a jumping off point for another design or change it to fit what I want to do at the time.

The quilt I am going to show you today is another one I made a few years ago. It is called "Color Play" an original design made in 2004. My goal for this quilt was to do a color wheel and had fun finding the various colors for my small Mariner's compass blocks. It is machine pieced and hand quilted and to finish it I put small Prairie Points around the outside of the quilt. I hang it using one straight pin and have the yellow points at the top of the quilt like you see other color wheels displayed. I used the Electric Quilt computer program to design the small compass blocks and the setting. Love that program!!! I use it in almost every quilt I make some way or other. http://www.electricquilt.com/

It took a little math to get the space divided up equally for the Prairie Points and get them inserted between the front and backing euqally spaced but did finally get them to fit the way I wanted. This quilt received a first place ribbon for hand quilted miniature at the 2004 State Fair.

Today I have really not gotten anything done but cook and catching up on some paper work. I did manage to get to a quilt shop yesterday to purchase enough coordinating fabric for the purse I want to make but still need to get it washed. I wash all my fabric before I use it - have had one real big mess and never want to repeat that problem!

Went to Husker Harvest Days (Really, really big farm show) yesterday in Grand Island with John and Peter so after we left the grounds I had a chance to pick up the fabric I needed before we had supper with my sister-in-law's family.

Lynn