Halloween Fever

For those unaware- I love this time of year.  In the previous post I outlined the comfort to be found in jeans and sweatshirts and the simple pleasure of crunching a good leaf.  But underlying all these idyllic comforts are the magnificent trio of holidays that round out the end of the year: Halloween, Thanksgiving, and Christmas.  I love them all!  Cooking, decorating, and shopping for the elements of these holidays cheer me during these shorter and shorter days.

And yet, I have very few decorations for Halloween.  These two have been my only addition for the last four years!  Meet Ghosteo and Ghoulia- so named by TY, not me.  I do adore them...

Given my recent interest in wall hangings, I decided to indulge in a bit of Halloween fun via fabric.

I started by hunting the internet for Halloween clip art that I thought would be cute together.  After sketching out a rough plan on a piece of paper, I set about transferring these doodles onto fusible web and from there, onto scrap fabric from the stash.  I sewed everything down with decorative stitches from the machine and in a week of evenings, it was finished!

My first homemade Halloween decoration!  And you want to know my favorite part?

The little creepy mansion and it's neighborhood bats.  :)

Autumn Love

Another cold day in eastern Nebraska- it's so lovely! There's nothing like jeans, sweatshirts, boots, hot chocolate, and crunchy leaves- I love Fall!  Perhaps this is why I undertook my first somewhat "artsy" wall hanging...watch it as it grows!

 

There are things I would have done differently- a better background development, for instance.  But overall, I like it.  :)  Stay tuned for the Halloween and Christmas ones!  (Yes, I'm on a kick...)

It's all pink!

Well, the black bag with crystal zippers fared fairly well during my endurance test with it...  Pros:  the size was nice and the front pocket arrangement was handy.  Cons: the strap was flimsy- mounting an adjustable strap at each end was not a good idea.  So back to the drawing board! Using the same measurements, I've created the 2.0 version.

A return to the double strap that goes over one shoulder works much better to balance the weight load a bag this size can sometimes carry.   I do think that such a large expanse of fabric on the front is rather boring, so I added the little decorative belting for some visual interest. I'm not entirely sure of the name of the fabric I used to make this- it was the left over fuzzy bits from this blanket project:

I am happy to report that both projects used no new material- I've had the fuzzy stuff for well over five years- I figured it was time to finally get it out of my stash!  The blanket is killer!  It drapes perfectly and between the fuzzy stuff, the batting, and minky, it is sooo warm and comfy! Pull this over you and it's instant nap time.

Now, I know what some of you are thinking- minky?!  Isn't that only for children's blankets?  I say no- adults like fuzzy and soft as well.  The only real difficulty of this project was the scale.  The blanket measures 60 x 72!  Working with minky on a machine is not easy; I ended up tacking the layers together every five inches or so with multiple zigzags.  It is nearly impossible to  actually quilt any kind of design into a material like minky.  To finish it all off, I simply bought silk blanket binding.  Viola!

I've kind of burnt myself out on handbags for the moment...big shock, I know.  I'm not sure what prompted me to start this next project, in all honesty.  I've never done any wall hangings before that were not simply miniature quilts.