WIP Wednesday: Sneaky Stars AAAAAAAAND Lovely Frankenstein's 31 Days of Halloween is back!

This is going to be a weird little post.  Christmas and Halloween in one post, dogs and cats living together...mass hysteria!

 Well that's what I heard.

So first of all, my WIP Wednesday duties.  Linking up with Freshly pieced, as always...see the side bar for a link to the Freshly Pieced blog. 

Sometimes, I get bored, and when I get bored...ish happens. In this case, a 25th and Pine layer cake got the star treatment so to speak.

 

I was inspired by this pattern, but I wanted to used it as a block, not as the quilt itself, and I wanted to use as much of the layer cake as possible.  

So I grabbed my crayons and got to work....I could get 5 star blocks from the layer cake, which meant I needed to figure some spacer blocks. I thought it would look pretty neat to have some subtle stars in between. 

Here's what I have so far....all the spacer blocks are done...

 See it?

Sneaky star!

This is the first of 5 focus stars:

 So there's that.  I'll finish it in time for Christmas this year...MAYBE.

Now. Today is October 1.  That means that Lovely Frankenstein's 31 Days of Halloween is back!  If you're not familiar with that, then here's the deal:  Every day in October I post a quick and simple Halloween themed quilting/sewing project, craft, party idea, interior/exterior decoration, food or cocktail.  It's fun for me, because hey, obviously the chick with the monster themed blog LOVES the crap out of Halloween, but I hope it comes in handy for someone else out there!

As a side note, because this comes up every year...I try to give credit where credit is due on all of the projects I post.  Someone designed it, and they deserve credit for their work!  I will post the designer's name, the name of their blog and a link to the page where I found the tutorial/pattern etc.  That being said, while I do test the links before I post, I don't go back to past posts and continue to check the links - I just don't have the time or manpower for that sort of upkeep.  If a link from years past doesn't work, the name of the project, the designer and the blog names are all there and you may be able to locate it another way.

Enjoy, and Happy Haunting :-)

WIP Wednesday: Seasonal Projects

Well...I'm kind of back at it.

The past couple week have been wild and just plain crazy, but things are starting to regulate some.  But there's no rest for the wicked and seriously, the holidays are creeping up on us before we know it. Yes...Christmas in July.  It's an odd little world we quilters live in that we think about Christmas projects in July, but then again, these things take time, so we have to think about it.

So I just finished a smaller than expected Christmas table runner, and I have a Halloween lap quilt in progress, and I'm cutting for a fall table runner too (though, this one is a little more intensive piecing wise than the Christmas one).

Nothing totally exciting, but it's just a little something.

Sunday - Not a Day of Rest!

Today was a really, really full day.  I intended to sleep in, but after a 6:30am call from John, before he went out to the fire line, I was really cat-nappy.  I kept waking up and at about 9:30 I gave up?  Sunday, a day of rest? Pssh.

I completely forgot the Silverton Art Fair was going this weekend, so I called Mom up and to see if she wanted to come with me.  She, Dad and I ended up going, and wow...Sorry guys, but this year was disappointing!  Usually it is such a great fair, but this year it seemed like there were fewer vendors, and among the vendors that were there, a lot of them had similar stuff...lots of metal garden decor that was similar, lots of jewelry that was similar, lots of similar style paintings...only one booth stood out, and she was a doll/jewelry make that had a lot of spooky themed stuff.  I wish she would have had a business card available!

But once we got back, I got to binding a few samples that I needed to finish for the shop.  I got the Thanksgiving quilt done, and I'm just about finished binding the Halloween panel.  When I got home, I got the Generation Q quilt from my last post ready for quilting, as well as a Fall quilt and a Christmas quilt that have both been waiting to be finished in my backlog.  Looks like we'll have a change of the guard in the shop pretty soon...it may be August but it's time to get ready for Fall and the holidays....Already...Despite all the samples, I am NOT ready for the season to change yet! Wah.

I need to get pictures taken of the quilting-ready and 100% done quilts...I promised Isabelle I'd have them posted on Facebook tomorrow, so I have no excuse to not have them posted here.  Until tomorrow~!

Two Finished Projects in Two Days. Bam!

Whelp, I have spent the last two nights sewing my booty off and here's what I came up with:

Woo! It's done! The one complaint I have about Piece O'Cake's pattern is that there really wasn't a helpful placement guide and so just in eyeballing how far away to put the reindeer and Santa from the seam I ended up placing them too low when I gauged how far down to put the large tree. There ended up being a huge white space and it looked weird I thought, so I just filled in with more trees. I like the end result there! and the green squares in the corners aren't part of the pattern either, I just thought it would be an easy way to bring the green out without it being overpowering.

It also called for thin ric-rac for the lettering, but gave no placement guide for the letters, so I just used Hot Fix ribbon and my own sloppy cursive. It's whimsical, dammit! :D

Here is another one from BJ Designs, another of my favorites. It's just a quick and cute 20" by 20" mat.

Here's the whole kit 'n caboodle. It's hard to see here, but the "white" is actually a light gold with gold metallic snowflakes on it. It's not as bright and glaring in person as it is in the photo. Thanks, fluorescent lighting!

Here's a closer shot. See? The "white" is actually gold. Not quite as intense. But the snowflake is Michael Miller's Fairy Frost with the the glitter. Oooh....sparkly.

Let's see. Next up I have another mat like the snowflake (but it's a candy cane instead) and yet another from BJ Designs that's a large wonky Christmas tree. I'll get a picture posted of that soon, once I get it all together :-)

It's not even Thanksgiving yet!

I know. I know. Those of you that know me know how I feel about Christmas invading my life before I'm good and ready - which invariably is the day AFTER Thanksgiving. Buuuuuut I work in a quilt shop and now October was the time for beginning our Christmas samples. So after getting a simple little poinsettia tablerunner done...this is ny next one. It's from the Piece o' Cake book