The Queen of Halloween Rides Again

Jane is a maker. She is happiest creating - everything from quilts to softies to greeting cards and ephemera. She's also the Queen of Halloween, getting into the spirit of things more than almost anyone I know.

So it was no surprise that she would turn her hand to creating some fabulous banners to celebrate this spooky season. Vintage prints, ric rac, ribbon and a few embellishments and she was off to the races.

This year she made four of them, each with their own wonderful style.

Do you recognize the candy corn blocks in the back? In short order, leftovers from her recent Halloween quilt border became the inspiration for a new project.

The banners herald the completion of her latest Halloween quilt, beautifully quilted by Roberta. (Jane sent it off with a warning not to be afraid of the glow-in-the-dark pumpkins 😄!) You can't see it very clearly here but the pantograph is the same pumpkin pattern that we used on my Pippi Longstocking patchwork pumpkin table topper only at a larger scale. The variegated thread shows up beautifully against those black scrolls.

And the binding is perfect too. She used the 'check' that was included as one of the border and it works brilliantly to finish it off. Now all she needs are a few ghosts and goblins to come knocking on her door.

Happy Halloween everyone, particularly the Queen of Halloween!....M

Lookin' For My MoJo

You know how everything looks great on paper but sometimes things just don't pan out in real life? You just run out of steam some days. Well, today is one of those days.

I had plans to sew another topper for the Holly Bazaar but just can't find it in myself to sit at the machine.

















Sometimes you just have to switch gears.
















So I've picked up some hand work - four potholders that I made using the scraps from my Pippi Longstocking pumpkin table topper.















They will be for the bazaar too so at least there is still progress in that direction.

Something about these little squares all clipped and ready to go makes me think of an old doll with her hair in rollers. Not sure what that says about me, but hey. Happy slow sewing Sunday....M

Star Bound

It's been a little on the hectic side lately with more flurry to come this week, but despite all of the tooing and froing I have seen signs of Holly Bazaar progress. There are now two Carpenter's Star toppers together, one with a white border and one without (I'll share them the next time and you can tell me which style you prefer).

There's also been a mountain of binding made...

and in some cases applied.

And, miracle of miracles, some of it is even sewn down! Stay tuned for a more complete star table topper rundown in a few days....M

If I Were a Carpenter...

I've been humming 'If I Were a Carpenter' lately and thinking of my dad, who was a very talented carpenter. It was time to branch out from my tried and true scrappy star table toppers and try something new for the Holly Bazaar craft table (sometimes I think that I've made so many star toppers that everyone in town has one!), so I landed on the Carpenter's Star pattern.

This pattern can be done in a variety of colour ways but this scrappy version was the inspiration that got me going. As I sewed I had this feeling that I'd seen this pattern before. Initially I thought that it was Swoon but eventually I figured it out - this is also known as the Moda Love pattern which Betty used to make Julia' beautiful duvet cover.

I found a pile of 6.5" squares of Christmas prints that I had cut last year from the same fabrics that I made the star table toppers from so I used them to make eight HSTs at at time. Soon it was time to start laying things out...

...and slowly it grew.

I'm liking how it is coming together and already jumping ahead to thinking about how it might get quilted. The inspiration piece has a beautiful pebbled free motion pattern all around the star which looks gorgeous, but we all know that I'm not doing that (maybe some day, but not this close to the bazaar) so I will need to find some straight line quilting inspiration soon....M