Homemade Halloween

Welcome to my Handmade Halloween post!

Here's your warning!

This post is very picture-heavy.

Bernie, over at Needle and Foot is hosting a linky party to celebrate Halloween this year. Participants are linking new and old posts about all things spooky and Halloween-related. That means we'll see great ideas for quilts, decorations, costumes, etc.

I'm super excited about this, as I love Fall and all the hoopla associated with it - even raking leaves!

Of course, if you'd rather make a leaf quilt instead of raking leaves, you can always make one of my favorite quilts -

The Maple Leaf Log Cabin Quilt.

One of the things I like most about Halloween is seeing how creative people can get with their costumes and decorations.  I have to admit that I am not super-creative anymore when it comes to this, but when my children were young, we really got into it and had a wonderful time.

When times were lean, I created costumes with items that were just around the house. For example, one year Nikki was a basket of dirty laundry. I had a broken laundry basket that I cut out leg holes and added suspenders. Nikki wore a white leggings and a long sleeve white t-shirt. I threw some clothing in the basket (many were hanging over the sides because that's what our laundry baskets look like), and I attached clothing to the suspenders. It was pretty cute and she actually took first place for creativity at the Halloween party that year. 

That same year, Lynn was a bag of jelly beans and she won second place! I took a clear trash bag, cut holes in the bottom for her legs and tossed in a bunch of different colored small blown up balloons. With her big round cheeks, I must admit that she looked adorable.  :-)

Oh how I wish I had pictures of them! A bunch of my photos were destroyed when I moved from my old house. It makes me sad, but I still have a vivid memory of those costumes. (Maybe I'll ask the girls to recreate that for me so I can take pictures.)

The Halloween torch has been passed.

Nikki and Lynn know how to do it right. :-)

I don't usually go for the creepy, or scary decorations. Instead, I like lots of pumpkins, mums (especially when they are orange or burgundy), cornstalks, etc. Nikki created this fun display for her front porch last year.

I love the big eyes!

Of course, she had to add something yucky!

And there MUST be pumpkins!

This pumpkin wall hanging was made using an Eleanor Burns pattern and is a family favorite. 

The pattern includes instructions for making some placemats, which I made, but I changed it up to better fit our needs. 

I made the basic pumpkin the same, but made the face parts separately and backed them with timtex.

The placemats are now an interactive game and the face changes constantly, depending on who's here, how they feel, and how silly they want to be.

With the changes I made, the placemats have become one of our family's favorite Halloween decorations and traditions!. :-)

 

This is one of my favorite pictures of all time!

Sadie, Lynn, and Mom had such a good time playing while I was fixing dinner that night. 

I look at this picture often because it makes me smile. It warms my heart to know that Sadie still recognized Mom, who passed away 12/1/12.

Here's a pumpkin quilt I made a few years back. I still love it and now that it's October, I can hang it up!

Look at these fun fussy-cut block centers

And then we have the costumes! My girls really know how to make some awesome costumes. It is very rare that with of the girls buy costumes. Instead they "shop" their closet or Goodwill and find things that can be "adjusted" to fit their needs. Other than Lynn's outfit in 2014, all of the following costumes were handmade. Many times there is a theme involved for the costumes, but not always. It doesn't matter one way or the other, they always look great!

The weather was pretty crappy in 2014 and Avery was fighting a cold. She was not going to be trick or treating so Lynn decided to have her cousin paint Avery's face instead of getting all dressed up. Now this is the kind of pumpkin that I really like!  :-)  

 

That same year, Lynn dressed up too. Even before she was born, Peyton was participating in Halloween.  :-)

Nikki is definitely a creative gal! Check out her costume from 2014. And that face painting is amazing.

2014 was a year that didn't have a theme for Nikki's family, but they looked great anyway. (The paint is off the kids faces here; but trust me, it was awesome.)

Quinn made a pretty darn cute vampire!

Sadie was an amazing wind-up doll!

Ronan is just so darn cute as a piñata!

I'm not sure what caused Sadie to make that expression, but I love this picture of her and Quinn.

Last year, Avery and Peyton were Little Bo Peep and her Sheep. Avery did NOT lose her sheep!  :-)

I don't have individual pictures of Nikki and kids, but here's a picture with all of her in-law cousins. Can you tell from the picture that the Marshalls all like Halloween too? Quinn is in the top row, second from the left. Ronan is the mummy in the middle row on the right, and Sadie is sitting on the ground at the bottom right. Nikki and Bailey are on the left, and in case you can't tell because they are sitting down, Nikki is a rainbow and Bailey is the pot of gold. I love that!!

Of course I am sure you can all relate to the picture below! There were more like this than the one above. :-)

2013 was a theme year for Nikki's family. They were all characters from the Wizard of Oz.

Quinn makes a great Cowardly Lion.

Oops! She's got her medal so she isn't cowardly any more.

Sadie is a beautiful Glenda - the Good Witch (although she is a bit preoccupied with the play cell phone here). 

Ronan was the most adorable Flying Monkey ever!

I don't have pictures of my son-in-laws Zach and Ty. Although they support Nikki and Lynn in their Halloween excitement, they don't usually dress up in costumes. They are usually found helping with the kids or passing out the candy. (Also, Zach has had to work more Halloween nights than not over the past few years, so he's had to miss out on all the fun.)

However, I did find this picture from 2010. Ty was a really good sport here and went trick or treating with Nikki's kids.

  

As you can tell, we like our Halloween here.

Check out the other participants in the Handmade Halloween Linky Party. 

I just know that you'll get inspired.

Mermaid Tail was a Success!

Friday, I posted a picture of the mermaid tail that I made for my granddaughter's birthday gift.  We gave it to her Friday night and it was a HUGE success. YIPPEE!!

Sadie told me that she doesn't like this gift, she LOVES it and will NEVER, EVER forget it. :-)

Sadie was very kind and let her sister Quinn have some fun flopping around as a mermaid.

Sadie had a great time posing as if she's a mermaid sunning herself on the rocks.

And then they wondered if there would ever be a two-headed mermaid. There is now!

I love it that all of the grand kids play together! It may be loud, but it warms my heart to see them all together. They are playing with Bailey's little wood box toy. There are a bunch of different shaped blocks and you put them in the box by matching up the shape to the correct hole. All of the grand kids have loved doing that since they were very young.

I love it when I see the kids playing with or snuggling up with quilts that I've made for them. Peyton is wrapping a doll in a mini chenille I made for Quinn and Sadie back in 2012.

Of course Peyton has to share the doll quilt. She didn't want to use the matching larger quilt. Nope, she just wanted to share with the doll.  :-)

And Quinn and her siblings are so lucky to have another grandma who is awesome. They call her Grandma Honey, and Quinn sure does love to snuggle with her. I was glad she was at the birthday celebration!

Friday Finishes

I've been a bit more productive than anticipated, which is always a good thing.

You know the saying that "it takes a village?" Well this quilt took a small village to complete it. Jackie pieces the blocks, Jerry sewed the quilt top, and I quilted and bound it. It is an adorable little quilt and I love the pops of color. The pattern is called It's Five to Ten, by Far-Flung Quilts

I made Sadie's mermaid tail and LOVE how this turned out. I'm pretty sure she is going to LOVE this too.

I am so pleased with the scale like fabric and how the tail quilted up. The scale and tail fabrics are a stretchy performance fabric and I had never worked with them before. I didn't have trouble, but I did use a walking foot and I pinned and used wonder clips a lot. I lined the entire thing with a fleece that was the perfect color for this. I used the fleece for the cuff at the top also, because I thought that would feel nice and snuggly against Sadie's face.

It's fun how the fabric changes color, depending on how the light hits it. 

I have a feeling that I'll be making a few more of these. To mix it up a bit, I'm thinking about a dolphin, whale, and shark. :-)

I've been able to finish up a few other items, but I don't have pictures. I'll get those taken soon and post them later this weekend or early next week.

Check out what other quilters have been working on lately.

Go to Sarah's

Confessions of a Fabric Addict

Design Wall Monday

I have been very busy continuing to play catch up here and I'm not doing too bad so far. I really want to get a bit more caught up before I begin my long-term sub assignment late next month. There are an awful lot of projects that I need to do, so I'll just keep chugging along. Some of the projects are UFOs, while others are gifts or promised things. I'll just keep plugging along and am sure it will all work out well.

Remember the quilts I made for my friend's chemo nurses? I made one more, for a nurse who wasn't really forgotten about, but she had been gone so she didn't get put on the list. Her quilt is done and ready for delivery. (Sorry for the crappy picture.)

I also had to do some fixing on two of the other quilts. All of the quilts have names embroidered on them. Well, I guess we should have tripled checked spellings because two of the names have unique spellings and I had to rip out the embroidery, redo it, and then put the quilt back together. Because I had embroidered on just the quilt top, I actually had to rip out binding and quilting before I could get to the embroidered area. I then had to take a couple of blocks apart and then redo and add the embroidery back in. YUCK! On one of the quilts, the embroider spanned two pieced blocks and that was a real pain. It actually took just about as long to fix this as it did to construct the original quilt top. Lesson learned!

And because I know myself and recognize that if all I was doing was working on UFO projects I'd go bonkers, I cut strips for a quilt I've been wanting to make for Jack. I pieced the strips and am piecing the blocks as a leader and ender project.

I am using stash for this quilt and thought I would be happy with only making 20 blocks and then adding borders, but I've decided that won't work. I don't have enough of the light fabric to make this quilt with a 5 x 7 layout and the 4 x 5 layout is going to bother me. Do you notice that in the top row, if I only have four blocks, the first and last blocks will not be symmetrical? In the first block, the dark is on the top but in the last block it is on the sides. I know that is pretty minor, but it will bother me so I had to make an adjustment. 

My first thought was to finish this as planned and give it away, but then I thought that I really like these fabrics and want to make it work somehow.

I decided to add a third fabric and make some blocks with yellow instead of the light grey. I like how this is working so far. I didn't really doubt that I would like it because I have always liked yellow and grey together.  

I wasn't going to show this to Jack (it was going to be a surprise quilt), but decided that I would to get his thoughts on adding the yellow. He likes it and is leaning toward adding two vertical columns of yellow blocks (second and fourth columns) instead of the random placement I had thought about. I have more of the original blocks to piece and will make those before I sew more yellow blocks. Since it's his quilt, I'll let Jack make the decision on how this will be laid out.

Unfortunately, I probably won't be working on this very much over the next week because of a very busy schedule, but I'm ok with that. It fills my need to work on something new, while finishing something old. :-)

What are you working on today?

For inspiration and eye candy, check out

Judy L's Patchwork Times

and

Monday Makings

I'm Baaaaaack!

It's been a while, hasn't it? Sorry! Life got in the way, and even though I'm in full-swing with lots of stuff, I read about Needle and Foot's Handmade Halloween Link Up and had to stop and take time to write this post.

I love Fall! I love the colors, the cool, crisp air, and the sound of the local high school marching band practicing every school morning and then performing at half-time during home football games. I love apple picking and making applesauce, and then watching my grandkids devour it. I love bon-fires and jumping in leaves. I love driving around and looking at the amazing artwork that pumpkin carving has become, and I love that my kids and grandkids love Fall.

If you feel the same way, join the link party and then come back on October 4th and be prepared for some eye candy. 

Happy weekend, Everyone!

A Shelved Quilt Emerges

While still trying to organize the sewing room (in between "must do" projects) Saturday, I pulled out a bag that was nicely packed up and wondered to myself, "Mmmmmm, what's in here?"

Well this is what was inside...

This is Moccasin - a block of the month from Gen x Quilters.

I had started this and then for some reason, put it aside. When I opened the bag, all but the last month of blocks were made (the four blocks around the center Dresden Plate) and the setting squares, half square triangles, and rectangles. Good grief!

I started working on the missing blocks and then the storm hit and we lost power. I cut the pieces and crossed my fingers that we'd get power restored quickly. Of course I got busy with something else and when the power did return, I didn't get back to this.

Yesterday, I had a bunch of stuff to do in the morning and early afternoon, but I did finish the blocks and put this on the wall before another storm hit. I turned off the sewing machine when the power started flickering again.  We did lose power, but not for long. Unfortunately though, sewing was not going to happen because Jack and I had plans to go to the Firelands Symphony Orchestra Family Pops Concert last night. (The show was their annual summer affair, which is always a lot of fun and The Doo-Wah Riders - the guest group - was really quite good.)

So..... the plan is to get this sewn together by the end of the week.  (I have appointments today and I'm subbing Tuesday through Thursday.) I've already been thinking about the quilting for this and I have no idea what I'm going to do.

Check out what other quilters are working on today.

Go to Judy L's Patchwork Times

Monday, Quilts, Kids, and Chaos

It's Monday again and although I did make my rainbow quilt and posted about it last week, I've done very little sewing or computer work the past two weeks. I have not responded to people who commented on my recent posts and I apologize for that.

It was pretty chaotic here, as I had at least three grand kids here much of the past two weeks. My husband and I watched Nikki's three oldest kids while she and Zach dealt with some serious family medical issues. Usually when we watch the kids, I can do some sewing in the evening when they go to sleep, but this time it was different. They needed a bit more attention and quite honestly, I was emotionally and physically drained.

The kids all knew and that Bill, Zach's dad was very sick and that really upset them. They also missed their mom and dad and were all out of sorts because of the chaotic schedule they were following. The girls were excited about the new school year starting soon, but since they are going to a new school, they were also apprehensive. We had lots of laughter, but moments of sadness and tears as well.   

Bill was under hospice care when Bonnie (Zach's mom) was taken to the hospital for an emergency. She was in for a little over a week and because Bill's condition, she was released earlier than she really should have been. Bill passed away Wednesday and Bonnie will be returning to the hospital soon so she can have the surgery she needs.   

See what I mean? Crazy chaos!

Sewing always helps me relax and today I took some time to sew.

I was gifted a Koala sewing cabinet a couple of weeks ago and I had not had the opportunity to get it completely set up and ready to use. I needed a new acrylic insert because the one I had did not fit into this cabinet. Also, this cabinet is quite tall and my chair did not raise high enough to allow me to sew comfortably.

With the new insert ready and a new chair purchased, I was set to go. It felt soooooo good!

While doing some rearranging for the new cabinet, I opened up a tub of works in progress and pulled out 24 Friendship Star blocks. I have no idea when they were made, but I know it was a long time ago. I remember looking at these about a year ago and thinking that I needed to do something with them. The problem was that I had the 24 blocks and no coordinating fabrics. I had to think about what I was going to do, and obviously I didn't come up with anything because they went right back in the tub. I pulled them out again this past July 4th and thought I knew what I was going to do, but I didn't have enough of the fabric I wanted to use. So...back to the tub they went.

Today was going to be different. I pulled some fabrics that I thought would work, started some sketching and was excited to sit down and actually sew.

The rows are complete (not all pressed yet) and I'm ready to sew them together. I'm adding a couple of borders and this quilt top will be ready for quilting. My plan is to make it fit the requirements for a Quilt of Valor; and if I did my math correctly (I'm pretty sure I did), once the borders are added, it will be the perfect size. I love the fact that I'll be able to finish this UFO and that it will be used for a wonderful cause.  

Despite all of the stuff going on with Nikki and Zach's family, we did have some good times this past week. On Saturday we celebrated Avery's third birthday. Although Nikki and Zach weren't there, Jack and I took the kids to the party. (The kids wanted to go and Nikki and Zach really needed a day to rest and simply take a deep breath.) 

It was a small gathering, but it was a lot of fun. After eating and opening gifts, the kids were all playing in the back yard and were getting pretty darn hot and sweaty. Ty suggested that perhaps he should get out the sprinkler and let them run through it. It was a wonderful idea and the kids had a blast until they decided that they were not getting wet enough. Ty resolved that problem by getting a plastic tub, filling it with water and giving the kids buckets.

It was hilarious watching them dump water on themselves.

Of course they also chased each other.

They must have played outside for well over an hour before it started to rain. They were already wet and there was no lightening or thunder so we moved the party to the front of the house.

The kids played in the rain while the adults stayed nice and dry in the garage.

Oh the simple pleasures in life!

Schools starts today for Lynn, Ty, and the kids and I hope to get some sewing work done. I have some patterns to write up, but I think I'll run the sewing machine a while longer. I've missed it and it really does make life and its chaos a little easier for me.

What projects are on your design wall?

See what other quilters are working on today

Go to Judy L's Patchwork Times

and

Monday Making