A Little "Season"-ing

Fall
Lest you think all I ever do is work on tiny things, I thought I would show you the progress I have made on my "It's So Vermonty" quilt. (The inspiration for this quilt and its name are explained in this post.)

Yes, this really is made from Bonnie Hunter's Crabapple pattern in her Adventures With Leaders and Enders book. I wanted it to fit my Queen size bed, but I didn't want to make more trees than originally called for (see all the ones I have yet to sew are lined up at the bottom on design boards). So I cut up some fall colored batik yardage to make setting squares. If you enlarge the photo you may be able to see that I have fussy-cut swirls that are in the batik. Haven't yet decided on what to use for the setting triangles, but I will wait until I have the trees finished before I worry about that.

Halloween
I never did get the Halloween decorations out this month. I mostly use scarecrows and pumpkins (Halloween is not scary at my house), but they are still in their boxes. The only decor I managed to muster was stitched stuff--the collection of little black and orange quilts I made last year, plus the Flying Scarecrow pillow designed and stitched by the very talented  Kaaren (The Painted Quilt blog) that I won in her drawing last year. Fun bit of trivia (for me, anyway)--Kaaren and I discovered that we share the same birthday. We already knew that we share a similar taste in fabric. : )

One of my little Halloween quilts never got quilted. I had every intention of quilting it this year, but as the holiday approached and I could see it wasn't going to happen, I hung it up anyway. Maybe I should have trimmed the fraying threads first.
This quilt was based on Julie Letvin's Pool Lil' Punky Pincushion pattern. I made a bunch of those, and managed to keep one for me.
Once I had made those I felt the urge to incorporate the happy little gourd into a small quilt. I wanted to make it in Halloween colors, but use repro fabrics. This is what materialized--and maybe one day I will actually get it quilted.

Christmas
This summer I saw a cute set of "wool" ornaments hanging in a LQS, but there were no patterns nearby. Upon inquiry I learned that they came as a kit, and you could not get the pattern by itself. I didn't want the kit--I have plenty of wool, and it appeared that the kit included felt, not felted wool. I decided I could live without them. Fast forward a few months and I found myself in another, more obscure, LQS. My mother had asked me to take her to try to match a fabric, that she had been unable to match in the other local shops. As she decided on a fabric, I browsed the notions and patterns. Lo, and behold, there was the ornament pattern without the kit. I nabbed it. This evening I was not in the mood to stitch, though there is plenty of stitching I should be doing, so I grabbed some wool and the pattern and started tracing and cutting. I made a good start. They aren't as dark as this photo makes them appear. Even with a flash, the colors wouldn't lighten up. I am trying to make them just a bit more primitive looking, so I am adapting some things. I probably won't get to stitch these up until December, but it was a nice diversion for me to cut them out.

BTW, the pattern, by Rachel of Greenfield, is available online here.

I'm pooped. I wasn't going to write this post in the wee hours, but when I looked at my schedule for the coming day, I thought I'd better get it done. Now I'll be a zombie all day for lack of sleep, but I guess I can get away with that on Halloween.

Until next time,
Janet O.

Pineapples and Poor Lil' Punky ...

... came together to make this. My third and FINAL Halloween mini--at least this year. : )

I think I liked it better the way I imagined it would look than how it actually "materialized", but I'm not unhappy with it. If you enlarge the photo you will see that the little pumpkin centered in the lower right pineapple block is upside down. I don't know how that happened because I paid careful attention to that as I laid out the nine blocks to sew together. But I do know that it is staying that way!

Making the pineapple blocks and dealing with this reminded me why I don't do more paper piecing.

When I made these four Lil' Punkys I did the first one using the foundation paper piecing method as the directions said. I made the next three and the one in the mini above using perforated paper piecing (see tutorial tab at the top).

This is the only mess left from making all four of them. That is also why you may notice that in the photo above, one stem points to the right and the other three point left. As I did my perforated paper base, I didn't realize I was reversing the pattern.

Thanks, Julie, for the fun "Poor Lil' Punky" pattern. I tried to resist it, but it didn't work. (If you missed this pattern, the info and links are in this post.)

Until next time,
Janet O.