Mercerie Es Finis!

I enjoyed this month's Schnibbles pattern, Mercerie. It went together quickly. I'm going to try and get this one basted and quilted over the next week so I can get it hanging in my master bedroom. The colors will match our decor nicely. 

 

I used two charm packs of Little Black Dress by Basic Grey plus a few stash fabrics to get the color distribution I was looking for. Don't forget to stop by http://www.aquiltinglife.com and http://www.pinkpincushion.blogspot.com tomorrow to check out the rest of the parade.

Playing with Scraps

I've been looking at fall-colored quilts on Pinterest lately and all that inspiration has me wanting to make my own autumn quilt. So I'm playing with my black, brown, orange, gold, and tan scraps.

This is what I've got so far:

I'm turning those strips into little bitty nine-patch blocks:

We'll see how far I get.
 

Adding Embroidery to the Halloween Mini

I spent a few nights over the last week adding some embroidery to my new Halloween mini. 

 The pumpkin became a jack-o-lantern.

I even added a creepy spider and web.

 

Next up is quilting and binding.

 

 

Piecing Mercerie

I took a little break from the Halloween mini quilt to get started piecing the blocks for Mercerie, the new Schnibbles pattern by Carrie Nelson. I'm using two charm packs of Little Black Dress by Basic Grey, plus a few of my stash fabrics to get the color distribution I'm looking for. 

The directions call for twirling the seams at the center of the four patch blocks.

Don't you love that tiny four patch that happens when you open the seams?

I decided to make half of the blocks this week and the other half next week. Here's half of the four-patch units:

 

Once again, the Fit-to-be-quarter ruler by Monique Dillard at Open Gate Quilts proves to be a winner! I used the cutting directions for using that ruler then trimmed my blocks to size. The ruler makes trimming the block so easy! I lined up the diagonal seam with the diagonal on the ruler and also lined up the 2" lines on both sides of the side square. perfection!

 Here's half of the blocks all done:

 

 

Pumpkin and Candy Corn

I've been working on a new Halloween mini quilt that I designed. I have a 50 mile commute both ways in order to get to work every day. Now that school is back in session and people aren't on vacation, everybody is back to work and there are a lot of cars on the road. Some days it takes me more than an hour to drive those 50 miles. That gives me plenty of time to think about my sewing projects.  This mini quilt was almost totally planned out during my morning commute last week.

Two of the designs I'm using are a pumpkin and some candy corn. I made the candy corn by sewing a strip set with white, yellow and orange fabrics.

Then I  cut the fabric into triangles to represent the candy corn. I have the Tri-Recs ruler set so that's what I used to make my blocks.

 That little notch on the Recs part of the ruler lets you take a little snip off that one edge that makes the side triangle line up perfectly.

The blocks finished up a perfect 4 1/2".

 For the pumpkin block, I used flippy corners. To make these, I cut the "pumpkin" fabric into a rectangle and added 1 3/8" squares to the corners. I marked a diagonal line from corner to corner then sewed a thread or two just outside that line (on the side I was cutting off). 

For the stem, I sewed a little strip set using the background and stem fabrics.

 

The pumpkin block also finished at 4 1/2".  

Hopefully I'll have the rest of the mini quilt finished to show you next week.

 

 

 

Therapy

When the going gets tough, get some retail therapy! 

For quilters, that usually means a trip to the fabric store. I participated in a little retail therapy this weekend and came home with these fabrics for a little Halloween mini quilt I'll be working on this month.

 

Halloween Cross-stitch

Do you enjoy cross stitch? How about Halloween? How about free Halloween cross stitch patterns? Then head on over to the DMC blog for links to some free patterns.  Happy stitching!      http://dmc-threads.com/halloween-cross-stitch-inspiration/