Wednesday, November 13, 2013

Halloween

I've had this wonderful pattern for a Halloween quilt for a couple of years and I decided that this year I would make it, just for me! It's different from my normal quilts: lots of applique and embroidery, but it's way cute. So off I go, I even started early enough - or so I thought August. It only had 5 major blocks, not so big so surely I could get those done. So I started on the first block. It turned out great, but it took a lot
longer than I thought to get it done. The cat on the roof is really cute though and was worth all the time and effort so off I went on to the next blocks sure that I would still make deadline. And maybe I would have if life hadn't intervened. Why does stuff like that have to happen? I forget that I don't have 4-5 hours a day to devout to quilting every single day. The other blocks have gotten done. See them below.
So you can see these blocks came out cuter than cute and I love all of them, but they took me gosh darn forever. You do not want to know how long it took to blanket stitch around each one of those fence posts.  However it's worth it. Now that the main blocks are done it's time to finish off the quilt. I thought that would be quick. That's what I get for thinking. It is now well past Halloween. I will finish this quilt. I happen to really like it. But it is driving me crazy. I discovered that there were 2 more blocks, plus corner blocks, not to mention the border. Oh yes the border -  I mean for crying out loud today alone I cut out 14 bats for the border. The person who designed this is just crackin' up. Easy quilt! Sure it's easy, but it will take them 2 years at least! Ha ha ha! 
 I guess Halloween and trick or treat can sa(y) quilts right?

My Helper

Every once in a while, or maybe quite a lot depending on the day, I require some help. In quilting that usually means that I'm scrambling to look something up in one of my many quilting books. Or, egads, trying to find that one article that I pulled out of the magazine that had an amazing tip that I knew I would use one day - TODAY IS THAT DAY - but of course I can't find the darn article in the array of articles that I have saved. Truly I thought I had a system that would help me find them again, but it obviously isn't working. Arghh!

Oh well, soldiering on I continue and mutter to myself as I sit at my sewing machine. Much to my surprise, I do wind up with a helper. He doesn't really solve the problem, but by getting right in my face and forcing me to slow down I'm able to figure out what I was doing wrong. Who's my hero? My cat, of course - Tigger.
Normally Tigger sits on the other side of the room. But that day he just came right up onto the machine. After he had my attention, he backed off and let me sew, but stayed where he could keep an eye on things.
 
Thanks Tigger. This piecing will be done very soon and I will be ready to quilt this quilt very soon. Seems even cats have a lot to sa(y) about quilts!