I LOVE Halloween!

HAPPY HALLOWEEN!!!

As most of you already know, I had a Halloween party at my home last Friday. My DD1 was coming in from IN and really wanted me to have a party, like we always did when she lived with us. So, sucker that I am, I took most of the week off work, cleaned up the sewing, I mean living room, cleaned the house, decorated, made food and hosted a party. We had such a good time. I have so many photos that I will post them a few at a time. The first ones are of the decorations.
This is the front of my house, complete with ghosts that my DH and I made when the kids were little.

This is Frankenstein's monster on our porch. He used to light up but that broke a long time ago. When we first decided to put him on the porch, I took some of DH's clothes and stuffed them with leaves. Wayyyyy to much work. Now we use newspaper. The cup by his hand used to have dry ice in it so it would froth and smoke. My DS asked me on Halloween where the dry ice was!

This is the cat on my front door.

We bought a zombie a few years ago. His eyes light up and he sways while he talks. It is pretty cool!

I fell in love with this cat basket. So cute.

This is a votive candle holder, my...Cat-O-Lantern!

I found these pumpkin folk at an apple orchard. They look very cute on my hearth.

I used one of those carvable pumpkins and carved the face and then made a flower arrangement. i put one of those little battery powered candles inside too.

I love the bathroom. Can you see the JOL quilt showing in the mirror?? This is the black cat room!

Here is a large collection of my black cat Halloween things.

These are on the back of the toilet.

We bought these JOLs many years ago along with the little plastic shelf that attatches to the window. That way they look like they are floating in mid air.


This is my favorite ghost. Jumping out from behind the shutter! BOO!!

One more shot of the front porch.


I will put up some more pictures of the food and the people later, maybe tomorrow. Since the sewing machine is put away I have not done anything quilty except some embroidery for a quilt. I have 2 back from Liz and they will need binding. I will probably sew it on tomorrow night so I can turn it while I watch the Michigan-Michigan State game on Sat. I got back the crazy rail quilt (for the boys home) and the cat one for my friend with bone cancer.

I did manage to get to the Methodist Boys Home and drop off some Halloween candy. My CL's and I are working on making quilts for the boys. They have been taken from abusive homes and sometimes have come with only the clothes they are wearing. They have nothing of "their own" so we decided to try to make them some quilts. There are 70 boys 10 and up living there. They were so appreciative of the candy. The director told me that they usually get candy donations *after* Halloween so the candy from the CL's was greatly appreciated. More later...

Hallwoween Party 07

Halloween Party 07

Oh, this might not sound like a big deal ...but around my house it is HUGE! DD1 is coming in from IN and wanted me to host a Halloween Party. Every year for many, many years we have hosted HP's. The kids from all around know about ours and I think the largest group we ever had was DD2's sr year with probably over 100 kids. I had my work people here in the afternoon, followed by my friends and then all the kids. We decorate like most people do for Christmas. There is a lot of spooky food!

So I have to pick up the sewing room. Which, you would think, would not be that difficult to do. Ahhh...but it takes a lot of time to put the LR back to "normal". Then there is the planning and the shopping. And the making of the food. I did the decorating yesterday with just a few things left to do in that department. I am finishing up the last little bit of, not really cleaning, but putting away. Today I will go and get some mums to put around the front porch and then to the grocery store.

I did manage to sew down the binding on the gigantic U of M quilt and label it. I also got the binding sewn down on "Sunny Days" which is the quilt using the embroidered animals that Liz did and that I designed a quilt around. I also got that one labeled. Just before I put everything away, I made the binding for the Crazy Rail quilt, finished the cat quilt, made the binding and label for that, and finished all 42 pumpkins for the swap.

I will post pictures of the decorations and the quilts later when I get some time, maybe tonight. What will you do for Halloween?

Crazy Rail

Update on projects

I snapped this photo quickly before I sent the quilt to Liz for quilting. It is from a pattern I bought in Indiana while visiting DD1. I loved making this and it went together very quickly. I can see myself making this one again. It used 9 one half yard pieces for all the crazy rails and 1 yard for the red border. I just love it! I did the entire thing out of flannel. I saw the bear fabric and fell in love with it so I built the quilt around that fabric. I got the fish fabric as a compliment since it is in the bear fabric. Our church group is making quilts for the boys at a local Methodist children's home. the boys are middle to high school age and have been taken from their parents due to abuse and or neglect. The person in charge spoke at a LQS and told us that these boys often come to them with nothing of their own and was asking if we would help and make some quilts so they would have something of "their own". So my group is adopting a cabin (10 boys) and making quilts for them. We will also be doing little things trhoughout the year for the cabin since the director suggested that they get a LOT at Christmas and much less during the year. I thought this pattern might make a cute I spy quilt too if you made all the rectangles that you begin with from different fabrics.

These are a few close ups of some of the bear blocks.


This is the cutest ghost fabric I found when I went to the LQS last weekend with my DF, Charlotte. See howit is irridescent?

Last but not least, you have all heard me talking about the pumpkin blocks so here is a photo of what mine look like! (All 42 are the same). I like the idea of getting them back and all being different but it is kind of boring to make 42 of the same pumpkins! I hope my group will like them.

Cats N Stuff

I hope everyone had a good weekend. Mine was pretty productive. I got home from work early on friday so I finished my crazy rail quilt top. I will try to get a photo today before Liz comes to get it. I went to East Lansing with my Dh to pick up DD2. We went out to dinner with her and her boyfriend and we had a really good time. Sat was LOTS os shopping. DS needed a shirt and tie for his homecoming dance that night so he went and picked them out and I had DD go and purchase them while I went with my DF Charlotte to a quilt shop. I got the cutest ghost fabric! I will try to remember to get a photo and post it tomorrow.



I then went to the mall with DD, and to Sam's club and then to the grocery store. I was exhausted, but i worked on some of my swap pumpkins. When I got up on Sun am I took a quick picture of my pink Morning Glories for Jeanne at Luv2stitch. For some reason the frost seems to have killed the purple ones. They sure are beautiful at the height of summer!


I was sitting on my couch in the FR with an old quilt (a cat quilt) over me and guess who decided to join in on some quilt action...that's right, Jack. I got up to go and do something and he stayed where he was napping so I took a few pictures. He is so sweet!




On Sun am he decided to help me get my batting ready to send to Liz with my quilt.



Then last night when I stepped away from the pumpkins again, Aiden decided my sewing bag was the puuurrrrfect head rest while she napped on the couch. Oh to lead the life of a cat!

BIG TEN MANIA

The Big Ten Quilt

I am finally catching up with all my pictures!! Last Saturday a small group of women got together at my friend Robin's house to work on the Big Ten quilt top for the pathology raffle. Our goal was to have multiple people help and to finish the top so we could send it home with Liz to quilt. Robin is the woman in charge of the quilt raffle for the University of Michigan (money to benefit patients in need). She and I have been gathering fabric all year toward this end. In theory this sounds like an easy task but in reality it is made more difficult by the fact that several schools don't license their logos for fabric. We had to use scrub pants for Northwestern and Indiana. I found someone selling Ohio State fabric on ebay but the logo was very large so for the actual "Big Ten" block, where I appliqued all the school logos on, we needed a smaller "O" we used boxer short fabric. Penn State also no longer has fabric. So if any of you ever see fabric with any of those schools logos on them please let me know, as we plan to make a Big Ten quilt every year for the raffle. We made one last year but we all made a block and then we gave them to a woman that put the whole thing together. This year we decided to make it like a retreat day. Robin graciously opened her home to all of us. We had great food and great conversation.

Robin hung the top from her second floor balcony so it is a little "light" b/c the sun was coming through the window behind it. At least you can see it.



Here are some close ups of some of the blocks.


I love how this block turned out with the large O's around the appliqued center.

You can see the "cat" in the center of the N. My talented LAQ, Liz is also a talented machine embroiderer and did the cat and then I appliqued the N around the cat.

I like the Illinois block too. Again, Liz embroidered over my appliqued I

I would have taken more, but I wanted them front on and they were too high up for that, so I will post them all once Liz brings it back quilted. Robin and I designed the quilting and now Liz, the amazing, will get to make our vision come to life in the quilt. Here is a photo of some of the women that were there. From left to right Virginia, Robin, Liz (the LAQ), and Judith.

This is the "Boob Line", hahahahaha!!! We were a little punchy at this point!

I am interested as to what you all think of this quilt.

Jack-O-Lantern

Halloween Quilt

I finally finished my Jack-O-Lantern wall hanging. I began it over a year ago and got the top done in a timely fashion then I gave it to Liz to quilt for me. I told her no hurry and then proceeded to bomb her with a ton of other stuff. I think we both forgot about it for many months (Halloween was sooo far away). She got it back to me probably 2 months ago but I have been so busy with other projects that I sewed the binding on but just didn't get around to turning it. I had a little wake up call when I realized that it *is* October and Halloween is right around the corner! I usually go all out decorating for this holiday as it is one of my favorites! My DD1 wants me to have a Halloween party this year. Our Halloween parties in past years have been well attended and a lot of fun. (People are still talking about the one from 2 years ago). I didn't have one last year and everyone was disappointed. It necessitates cleaning up the living room of all sewing related "stuff" and I still have a lot to do before I can do that. So I told her I will try. I really need to get my pumpkins done so I can post them for the swap and then I can fold up until after Halloween. If I can get them done this weekend, I will have the party. I digress...Here is the wall hanging in all it's Halloweeny glory. I love it!!
I hung it in my little bathroom and went to take the photo but I can't get far enough away so this is a little skewed, but I think you can tell what it looks like.

These are close ups of all the J-O-L's.









This shows the 2 different ways Liz did the quilting around the J-O-L's. she also outlined each cut out. Notice the blanket stitching around each J-O-L? It is glow in the dark thread!


I realized that you can't see the borders and I absoloutely LOVE 2 of the border fabrics so I am showing you some of the close ups. One of the batiks looks like eyes and the other one I love is the one with all the wild spirals. What do you think of the spider web batik I got for the inner border? I also used that for the back.