Boo!

Happy Halloween 

It's been a bit spooky around our house for the last month.  

At the front . . . .

In the house . . . .

Hum, someone must have been relaxing in the sun room with the Halloween tree and pumpkin. 

It  wasn't only at our house. . . . check out Mr. Motorcyle . . . waiting at the library!  

You might be wondering why I've shared so many Halloween items.  (No, these pics weren't all the decoration we have.) But I have a new quilt that will take the place of The Witch Is In next year.  

This quilt has been a long time in the making.  Most of the picture blocks were from a swap of 4" blocks when I was on Prodigy. What's Prodigy you ask?  It was one of the first on line services geared for home use of the Internet. It was active from 1984 to 2001. At one time it was the largest and was user friendly with a graphical user interface. There was an active quilters group on it. All of the pieced blocks with surrounding borders were from the swap.  I'm guessing this swap took place in the early 1990s. (Yep, they are definitely old.) Last year I finished the top by making some additional blocks. I may have gotten some of the extra blocks with the black squares from the E Quilter group I'm in... but I don't remember. I know I don't recognize all of the fabric which makes me think I asked for some of them. I bordered the 4" blocks to match the 6" blocks. I didn't want to quilt all over the blocks so I used my trusty Bernina to stitch in the ditch.  Since this will be a wall quilt I'm sure the in the ditch stitching will be enough. It finished at 39' x 39".  

Here's a close up of a couple. I had to highlight the witch's legs. Whoever made that one pieced the stripes!!! Amazing. Love those crazy eyeballs too. 

Surprisingly I had several Halloween fabrics that could have been used for the backing.  But I really think this one is cute. It's sad it's on the back but I'm always happy to use up older pieces of fabric. It is Mind Your Mummy by Kim Chritopherson of Kimberbell Designs for Maywood Studio. (No I don't normally keep up with who designs the fabric I use. This one had a cute selvedge with all the pertinent information except the date. 

I'm going to share this post on the following Linky Parties. 

Finished or Not Fridays 

Off The Wall Friday 

Beauties Pageant 

Happy Halloween and Happy Quilting All! Bonnie 

Machine Applique -- Give it a Try

One of the things I get to do for my local quilt guild is to choose a block for the block of the month.

The next one for Mountain Laurel Quilters is a Halloween theme -- 8" finished. Today I made a little machine appliqued witch as an example. Here's how I did it. I'm no artist so I went on the Internet to find a witch I could machine applique. She's doable -- not a whole lot of lines but she's too big. So I reduced her... it's hard to see but I wrote 85% on the smaller one. I generally write down the size I reduce or enlarge on the copy.

Next I traced the witch pieces on fusible web. I began picking my fabrics for the different pieces. Luckily for me it was easy to pick fabrics for my little witch. After ironing them on to the fabric I put the witch together on a piece of mylar so when she gets put together all I have to do is iron her on as a whole, rather than pieces at a time.

Because the witch was all together I decided to audition various background fabrics. Here's a background -- purple on purple print.

Then I tried a blued purple solid. It washes out the green face.

I tried it on a darker purple. I was happy with this one. Just an aside -- this fabric is from the very first large quilt I made. It was the backing to a Quilt in a Day, Log Cabin. I made it in 1982 during a class with Eleanor Burns.

Here she is being ironed down. Silly me, I forgot to peel the paper off the top of her hat.

Then I put a piece of stabilizer under neath it before I machine applique the pieces down.

Here she is with a tiny zig zag stitch over the pieces. Usually I do a tight zig zag on machine applique but this time I wanted less weight from the threads. She still needs her face which I will probably embroider on her. Notice the fringe on the dress -- the fabric was frayed and before I cut it I decided I would use it on the dress.

Here she is ready to trim down the background fabric and add her face. We'll see what she inspires in the guild members.

Happy quilting all!