Ghosties and ghoulies

I made this Halloween hexagon quilt top last year, while I was working part time in a quilt shop - there were a lot of quiet periods in the shop, and I cut out and hand sewed two and a half quilt tops in the three months I was there. I think I posted a picture of this last year (look under the "quilts" tag) as an almost finished top but felt it still needed something. It wasn't quite done. Adding the black border makes the colours almost float. I like it much better now.

Most of the fabrics came from a stash of Halloween scraps I was gifted, with a few of my own (large) collection thrown in. The lime green and orange accents - well, what can I say? I love me some lime green and orange, the brighter the better.

Spiders and ghosts, ghoulies and goblins, witches and beasties, candycorn and pumpkins. I feel a Halloween themed skirt coming on, with bright orange bias binding on the seams. I'm not sure I can bear to cut into my favourite pieces of Halloween goodness, though...

Halloween Hexes

This is the quilt I've put together WHILE AT WORK. I sew during the quiet times, and it really is this quiet. It's all halloween fabric with orange centres and green spacers. Spiders and skeletons, ghosts and ghoulies, witches and cats, pumpkins and skulls, candy corn and owls. Cute! Single bed size, hand pieced. Four more pumpkins to go along the bottom, six half-pumpkins to even out the top and bottom rows, then I might do a row of black ones all the way around and bind it with either the orange to match the centres or green to match the spacers. Or maybe a bit of both :)

I may even go the whole hog and hand quilt it with perle cotton. Orange? Green? Black? Decisions, decisions...

Pile o' pumpkins

During the quiet moments (er, hours) at work (once I've dusted, tidied the fat quarters, tidied the shelves, dealt with any deliveries, and while there aren't any customers) I've been doing some handwork. The pile above (matchbox for scale) is what I've achieved. I've been using up a bunch of Halloween scraps, with the addition of some Halloween fat quarters and a little yardage. I LOVE Halloween stuff, so I have a bit of a collection (okay, maybe three large ziploc bags!). I'm using the English paper piecing method, making hexagons. The central hexagon is orange, the surrounding six hexes either random scraps or six in the same fabric. The pile of pumpkins (even though this a kind of grandmother's flower garden pattern, I can't call them flowers - so they're pumpkins) numbers 46, all completed at work. I did cut papers at home, in front of the tv.

I've started sewing the pumpkins together with a variety of lime green hexagons as spacers, and the little quilt is turning into a fair sized quilt very quickly! I'm always amazed at how fast this pattern goes together once I start sewing the preassembled units to each other. If the smoke in
the sky from the horrendous Victorian bushfires ever clears and the bloodred sun returns to normal, I'll take a photo of progress so far. The light outside is not conducive to photography.

I'm very lucky that's the biggest of my problems.

A year of drawing-a-day!!

Drawing 361

Drawing 362

Drawing 363

Drawing 364

I have an idea about making this drawing into a bigger piece, with a "handful" of these heads-on-sticks, like a bunch of balloons or lollipops.

Drawing 365

I made it to a whole YEAR of making a drawing each day (not a calendar year, there was a spell last February where I was too sick to do anything but moan about feeling miserable and ended up in the hospital emergency room, so I think I'm excused). 365 drawings make quite an impressive little tower of pages. The ideas keep flowing, and I've made several other works inspired by my daily pieces.

So many ideas, so little time...especially now I'm working part-time in a quilt shop. Woohoo! Fondling fabric I don't have to pay for all day, it's such a hardship. Thus far I resisted (mostly) the siren call of bolts of lovelies whispering: "Buy me!" "No, buy me!". I did succumb to a fat quarter of cowgirls on a powder blue background, to add to my stash of cowboy fabric. One day the stash will grow up to be a quilt.