Another Wicked Day

This is such a Wicked fun Hop. Halloween is my most favorite holiday. We live in a townhouse and we get somewhere between 350 and 400 Trick or Treaters. I generally take the afternoon off from work just to enjoy the kids and their outfits.  This is what treats for 400 looks like. It's 375 little bags of pretzels and 1 bag of chocolates.  MJ likes chocolate and he would prefer that if we have left overs they would be chocolate.

 

 

 

Tink likes to great the kids at the door. She is really short but stands on the coffee table and a box to see out.

 

 

Before we get into my Wicked contribution to this hop I want to do my Thank You’s to Madam Samm and Wendy for all of their support and time cheering us on and their organizational skills..

Last year I got caught up in the Ghastlies for Halloween. Very cool but rather dark. This year I thought I’d go for a slightly lighter note, with Pumpkins. This is a fun go to block. Over the years I have used it for the base for pumpkins, Christmas balls (grey or gold rectangle where the stem is) and apples (skinny stem and leaf) and of course there is always the traditional snow ball.

 

 

I started with this basic block which is 12 ½ inches unfinished. I then proceeded to make a couple more and then I found that my personal pumpkin patch was boring.

 

 

Next up I needed to give a couple of the blocks some personality. That’s much better.

 

 

 

 

And then when I wasn’t looking a visitor found its way into my patch. Scary little critter.

 

 

 

 

As anyone who follows my blog will know I couldn’t just stop with blocks, I needed to have my pumpkins and their little buddy in a patch of their own.

 

 

 

 

This was a fun and quick quilt to put together. I did some machine in the ditch quilting along the sashing and then did some detail in the pumpkins by hand. Oh yeah, and a little home for the visitor was also done by hand. All in all a very Wickedly fun quilt.

 

 

 

Please stop in and see all of the Wicked quilters contributing to today’s segment of the hop and you can click on the Wicked button for a list of ALL of the Wicked Hop contributors.

 

 

                                                     Terrifying Tuesday,

23rd of October

 

Sew Mollie Sue, Quilt Much?

Sew Incredibly Crazy

Hill Valley Quilter

Fignie - A Geekie Crafty Life

Hot Pink Peonies

Jane's Quilting

Sew Me Something Good

Buzzing And Bumbling

Polkadot Classic

Piece Peace

Selina Quilts

Pigtales And Quilts

     

Thanks for stopping by.

Beautiful Weekend

It was a great weekend here in NJ. In spite of having a head cold I got out and about.

 

I am participating in The Wicked Blog Hop next week and I needed to get some outdoor pictures of my blocks.  My blocks, camera and I went for a lovely drive through the local neighbor hoods in search of an appropriate location.

 

 

 

These are a couple of pictures of what had appeared to be an abandoned cemetery about 2 miles from home.  About 6 months ago construction started on a small group of houses on the adjoining site and the cemetery was put to rights.  While I thought it would make a good backdrop for my blocks I actually felt like that would be rude once I got there.

 

 

They had already been mistreated.   These 2 pictures are pretty much all the stones that are left.  They date to the early to mid 1800's.  A plaque outside the gate indicates this was the site of a Presbyterian church that was built in the 1700's that had been burnt out once in the 1800's and again in 1935.

Really great local history.

 

Did get some great pictures of my blocks with a wonderful display of mums.  Came home and made the blocks into a quilt top.  You'll have to come back for the Hop to see them.

 

 

So that covered the up side of the weekend.  Then there was today.  I don't usually catch colds or the like.  When I do I go into denial and blame alergies which I did for 3 days.  The cold won and  I actually took some Sudafed this morning.  I felt better and decided to work on the back for the quilt.

 

So when I measured the quilt it was small enough for a WOF back.  No muss no fuss.  HA HA

Apparently my fuzzy brain forgot to take into account the sashing so my WOF was not wide enough by a  few inches.  Not bad I improvised and used a couple of chunks of fabric I had left over from the front and made a panel, I even liked it.

Well the fuzzy brain also didn't take into account that each time you sub cut and resew you chew up length of fabric so my panel ened up  a few inches short.  Well I needed to add the inches so I cut the back in half and inserted the black strip.  Managed to sew it together in opposite directions, which I really like after the fact.

Sorry about the pictures being so dark.  I did manage to pin baste the thing but decided that the way my sewing was going today that I would be much better off leaving the quilting for another day.

Well I'm thinking of heading to bed with a book.  Should keep me out of trouble for the rest of the evening.   Have a great week.

This weeks doings and we have a winner

I have been doing quite a bit of sewing these past couple of weeks much of which I can't post pictures of because they are for the next 2 blog hops that I have signed up for.

 

 

 

These are some pictures of this weeks other project.  One of the gals I work with is going to be a grandma for the first time next month.  She is planning a shower for her daughter and I volunteered to make the goodie bags for her to fill.

 

 

They are about 5 inches tall by 3 inches wide. They are made of tulle. Sparkly tulle.  Didn't know that was going to be the material of choice when I volunteered.  Oh what a mess. Sparkley everywhere.

 

They were pretty easy to whip up though.  I had to finish them up in one sitting to minimize the spread of the Sparkles.

 

I will be happy to hand them off tomorrow.

 

I also managed to finally put together a backing for the Dottie quilt I did for the last hop. No pictures it was pretty basic.

 

 

OK on to the winner of the Pin Cushion from the Leafy Blog Hop.

 

 

TA DA......GPC of Shedding the Wolf is the name MJ picked.  I have sent her an email and once I get her address the pin cushion will head out to her.  Congratulations!!!

 

I had 101 lovely people take the time to make wonderful comments about my contributions to the hop.  I appreciate every single word.  One of the best parts of Blogging is the nice people you meet from everywhere.  I took the time to look at each commenters profile where possible while I was sending my thank yous and was amazed to learn that the comments came from 8 countries outside of the US and 23 of the states here.  It is a very small world and I am so glad to be a part of it.

 

 

A Leafly experience

Welcome to the Fall Leafs Me Happy Blog Hop - Day 3

 

Lets start with the Thank yous,

First to Cherry and M Samm for organizing and planning and cheering.

Next all of you the great followers.

And my personal thanks to Kaaren Johnston http://thepaintedquilt.blogspot.com for the stitchery pattern I used for this hop

 

Apparently I have little imagination, I started with Leaves.

 

These are my 10 1/2 inch blocks. I really enjoyed making these blocks.  It was a great change of season project.  Started them on the first day of fall.

 

 

The background fabric has lots of very soft brown leaves on it.  A great base for the oranges.

 

Now this is my centerpiece.  It is a stitchery pattern by Karren Johnston.  My version has been enlarged to work for this piece.  Her pattern and  her tutorial are actually for a pin cushion. 

 

I don't have an official hop picture of the block because I forgot to take it while it was in the requested size. I was having such fun playing with the little squares that it grew to a 14 inch block before I realized it.

 

This is what my leaves added up to.

 

My finished runner is 53 inches long by 18 inches wide.  I took this picture standing on my dinning room chair and I couldn't get far enough away to get a head on shot.

 

This is an almost full shot of it.

 

 

 

This is better yet but the detail is lost.   

 

 It is not yet finished because it is now on its way to Marcia at http://marciascraftysewing.blogspot.com

That's because during the Think Christmas Hop I won Marcia's giveaway of the quilting of a table runner which includes the batting and thread. I'll post pictures once it's back and bound.

 

 

 

This is a picture of my version of Kaarens pin cushion.

 

The pattern fully surrounds the shape.  Mine measures in at about 3 x 5 inches.

Her pattern and tutorial were spot on.

 

Thanks for hopping with me and if you are kind enough to leave a comment you could be the lucky winner of this pin cushion. I'll ship anywhere.  Here is a list of the other stops for today.  If you haven't been there yet please stop in and see the beautiful pieces these quilters have been working on.

 

 

Wednesday 3	Plum and June
	Briarside Lane
	The Recipe Bunny
	VroomansQuilts
	It's Sew Kiki
	PigTales and Quilts
	Quilting fiesta
	GrammieQ's
	Nancy Seitz – on That Other Blog
	Just Let Me Quilt
	Selina Quilts