Design Wall Monday

The Timber Quilt is still hogging all of my cutting table/design surface, but the small Halloween wall hanging I shared a couple of DWM ago is finished.  

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I buttonhole stitched around most of the larger elements, and did a tiny zigzag around those windows and the door.  The house was made from leftover charm pack scraps.  The whole wall hanging is about 16x20ish.  Binding and hanging sleeve were completed Sunday and it is now gracing the powder room.  In other Halloween themed news, at long last my version of Any Witch Way, a quilt I started in 2009, is finally hanging up in my dining room for the season. 

This is from Quiltmaker magazine and is available as a PDF on their website now.  I changed the borders and added free-pieced names a la Tonya Ricucci (Word Play Quilts book).  

My witches have eyebrows and noses in addition to the lips the pattern called for.  Quilting was done by Georganna Hawley.  The black border has pebbling and cobwebs in the corners, which look great in person but are hard to photograph.  I'm so happy with how it turned out and look forward to seeing it every year.

See more Design Walls on Judy's Patchwork Times. 

Not a Pinterest Fail

Pinterest fails are famous on the web, but once in a while a trial works out.  I saw these pumpkins made out of canning jar lids on several websites, and remembered the large bag of leftover lids from the mason jars that my daughter and son-in-law gave out as favors at their wedding--four years ago--which I still had in a closet. 

Getting the lids evenly coated took about four coats, but I'm not a very experienced spray paint user.  The pumpkins called for 24 canning jar lids.  After watching a couple of videos, I chose to use large zip ties to hold them into the pumpkin shape. Fortunately, I also had some of those on hand.  The only thing I purchased for the project was the spray paint. 

That worked pretty well and was more secure, I thought, than raffia or yarn. 

I had just enough cinnamon sticks in the cupboard to make two pumpkin stems.  I hot glued the sticks together and into the center, and used the raffia to cover up the glue.  I also cut a couple of circles of scrapbooking stock and hot glued those to the pumpkin bottoms to help keep the sticks in.  Pretty cute, huh?  I gave DD Elaine one and kept the other.  I haven't got any real pumpkins yet, but grandson Cove (20 months) visited the pumpkin patch the other day with his mom and dad. 

He had a good time riding in the cart with the three big family pumpkins and carrying around a warty gourd.  Not pictured is a tiny pumpkin that represents his baby brother arriving in March.  Cove spent the night with Mimi and Papa last night and the better part of today and we had a great time playing, as usual. We look forward to meeting our next grandson in another few months!  This grandparent gig is the best :)

Spooky Break

I'm taking a short break from the Timber Quilt, which has progressed to a lot of completed sections:

And just four additional blocks before assembly into a top. However, since my new deadline for this quilt is Christmas, I'm paying attention to a long neglected small project for Halloween. 

I designed this to use up some cherished charm pack scraps of a Minnick & Simpson Halloween line. Everything else came from stash and my own scraps. I've pin basted for black buttonhole stitching/quilting and may bring the backing to the front to finish. I'm happily home from work this morning as my doctor is out of town today and Monday. 

After being sick and then out of town, not to mention the dang heat, there has been little sewing happening. Time to remedy that!

Weekend Bliss

Grant and I left town early Friday afternoon, heading north away from the record-breaking heat. We had two events,  a celebration of life for a longtime childhood neighbor of mine, and the wedding of DD Elaine's best friend. Luckily, though both on the same day, in different cities, they were at least in the same direction from home:). 

We stayed in Arroyo Grande the first night. It's hard to describe what a relief an air-conditioned room was to our long-baked nights of this summer and fall. We had dinner with my old neighborhood family, some of whom I hadn't seen in decades. Their lovely mother had a massive stroke and passed away a few months ago. It was wonderful that her five children were all with her at the hospital. 

We reluctantly left our cooled room at checkout and drove the short distance to Pismo Beach for the Celebration the next day. Being a bit early, we parked at a charming city park in Shell Beach and walked the cliffside path. This view is towards Pismo. Our selfie pic was from this spot. 

And looking west. It was a beautiful day and we greeted other old neighbors with joy. Two of my brothers made it to the celebration too. Grant and I had to leave early to head inland to Solvang/Santa Ynez for the wedding, which was at a winery beside the grapevines. 

It was hot but what a lovely setting. DD Elaine was the Matron of Honor. 

I caught her walking down the aisle. 

The beautiful bride and her groom were married by a very good friend who did a lovely job. The happy couple were cheered and applauded. The reception took place outside as well. Our table was on the lawn beyond a covered patio, near a huge Live Oak tree.  We had a good time chatting with our dinner companions as the sun sank. Just at dusk, a thick concentration of flying insects rose out of some bushes, followed quickly by a squadron of small bats. It was entertaining to watch them swoop and whirl. The rest of the evening went by with plenty of dancing and conversation. It was lovely. 

After another air-conditioned night in a hotel, and breakfast out with our kids, we hit the highway and returned to our hot house , where I promptly took a 2 hour nap. We wrapped up the weekend with another beach visit late in the afternoon, followed by fish tacos at our favorite restaurant. Monday is here too soon, but we'll revisit our fond memories of an enjoyable weekend away. 

Wordless Wednesday

Still Timbering

Lots of sewing and cutting and double checking parts and diagrams happening here. 

The center section completed, I moved on to multiple other sections. 

None of these are entirely complete but it looks like progress, doesn't it? Speaking of Timber, a couple of weeks ago my brother texted, asking if I were home, and then said he was coming over with his chainsaw. The prolonged drought had killed our ornamental pear tree and it needed to come down. 

Within about 15 minutes our view changed forever. 

Someone else likes the debris still in the yard:

Mini finds this a great scratching post!

I'm home sick today with a fast moving cold and if I can stay upright for long, will stitch and cut on Timber. I'm pretty tired of blowing my nose already!