Happy belated Halloween! Here's my feeble pumpkin pair. Usually my husband carves the beasts, but it was Thursday afternoon, and he hadn't so much as thought about them. I was sick and not patient enough to carve anything too elaborate. The kids thought they were great. Amazing.
I also made a plate of spider cookies for my son to take into his kindergarten class. He said they were a hit! The teacher even commented how tasty they were...not bad for store bought peanut butter cookie dough, hershey's kisses, some licorice and pearly eyes!
I love to sigh a sigh of relief when Halloween comes AND goes. It's a great holiday for candy makers and dentists, but as a quilter, I really cringe when September comes and I realize that I have to sew costumes (a dreaded word) for my kids. I know, it is silly. They are not that painful in reality and the kids just love to play in them year round, but I never find great pleasure in that process. As usual, I was finished with these mid afternoon, and bailed on fighting my machine which was burping at the effort of sewing on velcro. I snagged a few safety pins and called them done. I had really wanted to sew Sophie a princess dress, but she had her head set on being some kind of animal (lamb or bunny), so I let it go. I told her I couldn't find one of those so I got the horse/unicorn instead. Once she tried it on, the look in the mirror said it all. It was a keeper. And she trotted all over the busy neighborhood last night like she owned it.
She made Obi Wan Kenobi (left) and Anakin Skywalker (right) eat less and run more to keep up with her. These boys always get great compliments on their costumes. After a few years of having pirates, we now are stuck in that Star Wars phase. I sewed all but the brown pants. They had dark brown faux sweade hooded capes, (gasp, I mean "cloaks"), but they were left behind on account of our freakishly warm 65F day. Summer returned for a day.
Bryce, AKA Obi, was not so cooperative in the afternoon for pictures so I snapped these via tele lens while he was stewing his anger off in the woods! Except for his pleather boot covers, which caused such a fit because they wouldn't stay put, the costume was a hit. The boot covers are lucky they made it out of the driveway!
In anticipation of a cool night, Hayden's (AKA Anakin) shirt is flannel. I bet the kid was roasting last night. But he couldn't have been as hot as the furry unicorn!
The back (not quite as cute as last year's purple and pink unicorn, but still fun!)...
...and the happy front, but the gorgeous red lace-leaf maple tree.
Star Wars costumes would not be complete without a full-out light saber war either.
We all know that kids love candy, and this little junkie of mine is no exception. One of our neighborhood friends was offering kids that he knew a "trick". He was holding out a plate of broccoli and apples for the kids. My boys rolled their eyes, and proceded to walk into the house and look for the candy bowl, which of course was hiding nearby. Dear Sophie, who rarely passes on any type food, happily took the broccoli and the candy. Te candy went into the pumpkin bag, and she ate the broccoli. Go Girl!
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The anticipated rain storm held off until about 7pm, when all the little kiddos were inside. It threatened early so most of our neighborhood was out even before it was dark. The dreaded teenage trick-or-treaters started coming about 6:30 when we were about out of candy. The rain held off the remainder of them! A good night was had by all.
It's all freehanded; no rulers, computers or gizmos. It's a modern-ish quilt so I opted to not use straight lines (plus there was not adequate backing on the edges to do so), but rather I did squiggly lines to add texture. The client chose a wonderful Hobbs Tuscany wool batting, so the quilting appears lighter and airier. Believe it or not, I think that wool batted quilts are much more comfortable year round. They are lighter than the cotton ones. We use our's with wool batting in the summer (in a bedroom that is airconditioned only some of the time). The wool will show the details of the quilting so much better than a cotton ever will.
The quilt is stitched with Superior's Bottomline bobbin and an aqua So Fine thread on the top. The matching threads help to make the quilting only show up as texture. With so much patterning and fabric colors, it's hard to select a thread that will actually show, so this is a fine choice.
The back of the quilt, though pieced, is simpler and really shows the patterns of the quilting.
This week, we have also had the excitement of Halloween. My 3 ghouls (Pinkalicious, JailBird Zombie and some Transformer dude) seemed to brave the late October cold without incident to bring home pumpkins full of candy. Only poor mom got to freeze.
Ya see, the day before, we somehow managed to get 8" of snow dumped on us! Look, the grass is still green (it needed mowing!), and there are still green leaves on the trees! It's insane, I tell ya!
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