There has got to be at least ONE other person on the planet that sees this as totally normal and borderline pedestrian. There has to be. lol.

If you know me, then you know that I have an (abnormal) obsiession with all things Halloween. No, no, not the movie. Quite frankly, the movie sucks (protest away!). I mean the holiday, of course. I love all things Halloween...the monsters, the interior and exterior decor, pumpkin carving, costumes, Trick or Treating, passing out candy....seriously, from the cutesy and folksy to the creepy, bizarre and gorey...I love it all.

If I ever have children, by the way, they will go trick-or-treating in a neighborhood, NOT in a dang mall. Some of my fondest childhood memories are of getting dressed up and going trick-or-treating around our neighborhoods with my Dad. And, mark my words, one day I will be the house that at Halloween with cause a city brownout with all of my awesome lights and animatronic lawn decor. Yes, that will be a reality. And...I will certainly be the proud owner of the best haunted house EVER. Just you wait. lol.

But with Halloween comes my favorite projects. At the shop, Debi and I designed an embellishment contest for Halloween - everyone started with the same design and fabric and they had to embellish it as they saw fit. Just for shiggles, she and I did our own quilt. By the way, if you like this pattern please ask before copying or emulating. It is under copyright!

I love these kinds of projects because they force you to push your envelope and to think about non-quilting items in terms of quilting embellishments. Looking at things in a new way...that's one of the very best things about quilting, and quilting embellishing!

So this is the finished project. 15 hours of work right there. 35" x 35". Everyone had the house, grass and sky fabric. The rest was their choice.

The black/gray damask border is blinged out with Hot-Fix crystals - I had to hand quilt the spots where the crsytals would sit down so they had a flat place to be fixed to.The spider web is a textured cord couched down with Superior Mono-Poly thread. That spider, I sh!t you not, is one of those gummy spiders for kids that people give out as party favors...you know, the onces that feel all boogery that no one over the age of 10 (oh, okay, well, and me because I'm a freakin' 8 year old in a 23 year old body apparently). The fence is a cut up black wire hanger that's been couched down with blakc thread. The UFO has been fussy-cut from some outer space fabric, and it's little abducting-people-beam was drawn in with chalk pastels. The moon was painted in with a silver paint pen. The cloud is made from Angelina Fibers.

Okay, so here, the alien head in the window is fussy-cut from some alien fabric (I know, "Duh," right?) The curtains have been hand folded and sewn into the windows and are made of silk. The fog is Angelina Fibers. The ghost popping out of the chimney is first an appliqued shape, then with Angelina Fibers layed over the top to make it look all...ghosty. I'll get to the rest in the next photo... 

 From the top, the cauldron was drawn in with a black Pigma pen. The contents of the cauldron is -wait for it, because this'll make you go "Lauren, you have too much time on your hands, and while you're at it you might consider cutting down your caffeine intake" - is hot freaking glue with scrapbooking glitter poked into it while it was still hot. The grass was thread-painted to look like actual grass. The knocker on the door is one of those hook-and-eye closures for clothing. I just used the hook side, because hey, it looked like a door knocker. Also, the stone around the door wa originall just a plain textured grey. I quilted it and shaded individual stones in with a very specialized and expensive tool - a yellow No. 2 pencil. Yep. Just a plain pencil.

Another close up of the web with a squishy spider.

Right, so the boards are fussy cut from a grandfather clock piece of fabric, the coffin was fussy cut from coffin fabric ("Duhr," I can hear it through the screen!). Now get ready to go "what the..." - those bones that the (squishy-like-the-spiders) skeleton is climbing down from are SPRINKLES. Yes, they are sprinkles, as in cupcake sprinkles from Michael's. It's not that weird, I mean, I sprayed them with varnish to keep thaose rat-bastard ants away.

But there you have it. For this quilt we really had to think about how to use non-quilting items with a mind to embellish in order to get the effects we wanted. All in all, it was an absolute blast and I can't wait to do another one for spring!

And, just to show y'all...we do Halloween up at the shop right. Yes, we dress up! Debi and I were dressed to the nines, and Mom decided the fake moustache route was more her speed....she doesn't love Halloween like we do! But I spent the day creeping around people...I was the Creeper of The Cotton Patch! Can you guess which movie monster is my absolute favorite? ...lol.



Dang you, offset triangles! Dang you all to heck! Hee hee.

If you know me, then you know (probably all too well) that when it comes to quilting and Blocks of the Month, I'm one of those pain in the arse-y people who is simply incapable of following the pattern. No, no, no. I always have to change SOMETHING...usually color, so it's no biggie, but kind of when you have to try and match your color choices to what the pattern calls for. So, before I show you what I (tried to do) did, I''ll show you what I SHOULD have done:

This is Kaye England's English Pathway's 6 Month Block of the Month program. I'm not a floral kind of girl, but even I have to admit, this quilt is gorgeous and a computer picture simply doesn't do it justice - the turquoise in there? Fuhgeddaboutit. It's WONDERFUL. But like I said....I don't care for florals. So...

I did it THAT way. The center of the star is the line I pulled everything else from. I should know what that line is called...Crap...Well, we have it at the store, it's the super contemporary piece. Crud. Ah well, I credit my laspe in memory to it being 1 in the fetchin' morning and that I'm watching stand up comedy (LOVE). Bah. Anyway...that border of triangles in the quilt...from the first picture? Yeah. Those are the freaking DEVIL. They're offset, which in theory isn't difficult but toss that bias edge in there with someone who irons fabric until it's super dead...what a pain in the... So I'm still stuck on that part. And by "stuck" I mean, "I'm tired of freaking looking at those dang triangles."  But eventually this thing is going to go on my bed and I'll re-do my bedroom to kind of match it. Aw heck, who am I kidding? Yeah I will be re-painting the walls and doing a wall hanging to match. Seeing that in writing just reaffirms what a Type A I am sometimes. Yeesh. lol.

So, yeah. Not too shabby.

For YEARS I've heard how just pants-crappingly boring hand work is. Granted, I kept hearing that out of someone who simply detests doing hand work...I think there might be a correllation there! Haha. Well, I remembered back in the day (the day being like, 1993, lol) Mom making a Yo-Yo snowman quilt for her friend Anabel, and not really finishing it because, "Holy crap, yo-yo's!" So I never even considered giving it a go even BEFORE I started quilting...so I did recently-ish.

So I started this beast in July 2010. And by "beast," I mean "teeny table mat." It was my first time working in wool felt or doing hand applique, and all things considered, I think I did all right. It came in a kit, that oh how conveniently, had all the stuff down to the dang needle and floss in there...so no excuses to not finish it!

There's the one little nook in the flower petals were I was sitting there going "Well, sh!t. What the fetch am I supposed to do here?!" So, I decided to cram 2 stitches right in there. Yikes. MISTAKE. But of course, I couldn't be buggered to take the stitches out because I realized it looked ridiculous 2 petals after that. Yeah....Not undoing the last 10 stitches. Bah. :-)

That's the kit it originally came out of, above. We do have them at the shop if anyone is interested :-) But we have tons more, you know, spring, winter style ones as well.

As a complete aside, unrelated to anything, I'm sitting here watching Chelsea Lately, and a Jack LaLanne Power Juicer commercial came on...creeps me right the heck out that the guy died like a week ago and they're still playing the commericals with him in them. Creepy.

Anyway, I digress.  So yeah, disregard my [bada$$] leopard sheets...I do my best stitching (and blogging) on my bed. If I'm not working, I reserve the right to be obscenely lazy, lol. But in the picture you see what the teeny mat is supposed to look like. Pumpkins. Cute! What's that you ask? Have I finished it yet, it now being January 2011? ...*cricket noises*


So having commented that I actually enjoyed hand applique-ing...Much more than doing machine blanket stitch (I'll leave that to Carol!) ...Mom decided that she'd "give" me one of her wool projects she started in 199....*cough* and have me finish it. For being a primitive style quilt, it is really cute. I like the colors she chose! But she's always been absolutely fantastic at that (I'm serious!). But here that is. So far I've only done the bird and the flowers, but I'll get to the rest...sometime....eventually...lol.

I think there are 2 more rows to it. I haven't looked in a while, lol. No idea what to use as a border, if any at all. But so far, it's coming along nicely! I can't recall for the life of me what pattern it is, so before anyone asks...lol.

Oh man, I've really done it now.

Well, I've completely clogged my Facebook with posts about all of my projects, my ideas, crafty things I've bought...etc, etc, etc...I'm sure, much to the chagrin of 90% of my Facebook friends. lol. So I'm joining the thousands of ladies and gents across the wild, weird world of the Interwebs that have their very own quilting blog!

Anyway, I'll get cracking on my "About Me" section later, and get this thing current on all my projects that I've littered Facebook with, but allow me to introduce myself...My name is Lauren and I'm a (fairly new) quilter. I'm originally from Fredericksburg, VA, which no matter where I am geographically, will always be my home sweet home. Right now, I'm in Oregon, having just graduated with a B.A in Anthropology degree from WOU.

 Anyway, let's get back to the point. Technically speaking I've only been seriously quilting for about 2 years, but art and quilting have always been a part of my life. I have very vague memories of being a 3-4 year old sitting with my mom while she was quilting, with my grandfather's wooden bowl and some safety scissors, turning mom's scraps into fabric confetti and calling it quilting. When I was ~6, she tried to get me sewing by having me sew a few paper pieced hearts. I did a couple, sure, but I wasn't having any of it otherwise. I wanted to be outside instead! Well, that, and I was not loving the rapidly stabbing needle in the sewing machine. No thanks! So she kept quilting and I stayed outside playing, or in my room, or whatever.

In high school, I was an avid art student. I lived and breathed art. Seriously. All I did was listen to music, and paint, draw, sculpt, weave...whatever I could do. I didn't have a lot of support in school for my art; our art teachers were the absolute worst representation of what the art community could be -- competitive, closed-minded, "purists" that put the kibosh on the art of students whose subjects didn't agree with their own sensibilities as to what art was. I think recognizing the hits that my confidence in art kept taking, Mom tried to get me to quilt again, and I gave it a shot by making a Halloween quilt, but it frustrated me so much! I ended up quitting and sticking with my other mediums.

 Come college, I realized how much absolute and utter disdain and disgust I felt with the mainstream art society, largely because of my experience senior year. There are exceptions to every rule, to be sure, but my experience in general had been negative. My first year in college, taking pottery courses, the sentiment was still the same. It was so bad that I actually had another student sabotage my main project for class, slaking a pyramid I had spent 20+ hours carving out of greenware by hand. I was DONE. I completely quit the traditional art community, and with a sour taste in my mouth to boot.

Mom started working at a friend's quilt shop, and after 5 or so years, I gave quilting another shot at her behest. It was equally as frustrating (I mean,I didn't hurl a chair or anything, but man alive, you should have heard the colorful language flying out my mouth!) but this time, I stuck with it. A whole new world opened itself up to me. I became part of a legitimate art community that wasn't full of negativity and people out to get a name for themselves; no, this was a community of people being drawn together by a common interest and doing their own art, be it wearable, functional or just art for art's sake, while at the same time being supportive of one another. What a novel concept! It infiltrated my life to the point that I completed my Anthropological thesis (not without protest from my advisor) on quilting.

Now, Mom owns the quilt shop in Keizer, OR - the Cotton Patch - and anyone who knows me even just a little, knows I spend 98% of my time working there, or working on projects for the shop. Sure, I have another job too, and a wee social life, but most of what I do is quilt, design, quilt, design, quilt *smacks self on head* Yeah. I do that and more! Quilting has reignited my love for traditional mainstream art as well, though I am more than happy to stay in the community of quilters I love so much!

So....If you're still awake and with me...This blog is just all about my journey with art, quilting and community.

Follow me down the rabbit hole...trust me, you'll find yourself tumbling too!