allsorts

Happy Halloween!

Its here! Happy Halloween everyone! And that means it is now the 13th Night of Halloween, and you can try every single costume on Zoe, all at once, even mix and match!

Last year I held a contest for the most creative combinations, and these were the winners. Dawn's creative trio (top).

Young Miss Sydney's creation to the right...

And Neinke's striking red and black ensemble.

I had the grandest of plans to hold another dress Zoe contest, make another felt Zoe set, but things got away from me, again (my usual refrain).

Hope you had fun with my silly Halloween activity!

Here's my wish for a happy, fun and very safe Halloween!

Cheers,

Jenny

Counting down to Halloween

 

Bopping in to let you know that we're up to the 10th Night of Halloween! Now you can dress Zoe in her costumes for the first, second, third, fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh, eighth, ninth and tenth night. I'll be counting down until the thirteenth night... Halloween!

Crazy about quilting

Finally! After years of thinking about trying my hand at making a quilt, I have completed all of the blocks for my very first one! I took a class last week with my Bernina sewing posse, and learned how to make a "crazy nine patch." It is incredibly easy to make these blocks! I snapped pics along the way so you can try it, too.

First, here is one of the finished blocks:

This quilt uses 36 fat quarters. I chose 12 each of red yellow and blue 1930's inspired fabric.

Once you've chosen your fabrics, wash or rinse, dry them, then give a liberal spraying of starch and iron them so they're nice and stiff.

Using a rotary cutter, cut them into 36 squares. Mine are 12" but you can go bigger if you like. Divide into four stacks of 9 squares with the colors arranged red yellow blue red yellow blue, etc.  But vary the order and which color is first in each stack, to assure a random scattering of color across your quilt.

Put one stack on your mat with the edges aligned, and make an angled cut like so:

Make sure the bottom edge of your strip is at least 1.5" from the corner.

Now take the TOP piece from the narrow stack and put it at the bottom of the stack like so:

Now take the top piece from each stack, put the right sides together and sew a quarter inch seam along the edge you just cut. Working your way down the stack, sew each pair together in the same way, making sure to keep them in a chain, until you finish the last one in the stack. Then open them out one by one, clipping the thread between them as you re-stack them in the same order. Align the edges again and make another angled cut like so:

This time take the top TWO pieces from the narrow stack and move them to the bottom:

Same as before, put the right sides together of the top pieces and sew along that edge, then open out and put back in the same order.

Now press your seams to the middle, making sure you don't change the order or orientation of any of the blocks. Align your blocks and make a cut like this:

Take the top THREE pieces from the narrow stack and move them to the bottom of the stack, and sew pieces together as before. (I won't show photos of every step)  Then open up and re-stack in the same order, align the edges and make one final angled cut like so.

****This time you're going to move the top SIX pieces from the narrow stack to the bottom.***

Same as before, put right sides together and sew along the edge, then open out and re-stack. Press seams to the middle.

Make sure to keep each stack together. When you arrange the blocks on the quilt you will need to have them still in their original groupings.

Now do the other three stacks the same way, then trim all of the blocks down to a uniform square size. In my case, 10".

I'll have to save the info on how to do the sashing and so forth until a later post, since I haven't learned how to do that yet! But here are the pattern combos for my other three sets of blocks:

Its probably a good thing that I'm doing this particular quilt for my first try. And these colors are really making me very happy! I am still waffling on what color to choose for the sashing and border, but I'll settle on something eventually.

Have a great weekend folks! We're off to get Mexican food!

Cheers,

Jenny

Fair enough!

Meet Big Tex:

Our state fair is a great state fair, don't miss it, don't even be late!

Apologies to anyone not familiar with that song, and greater apologies to those who are familiar with it, and now have it stuck in their heads.

Ro and I spent nine hours at the Texas State Fair on Saturday, and it was the most gorgeous perfect fair-day weather, with blue blue skies, cool temps and a delightful breeze... as you can see in the above pic of Big Tex, the official mascot of the Fair. We came we saw, we ate: Belgian waffles, corny dogs, ice cream and beer (not all at once mind you).

The FFA was out in force, showing sheep, longhorn cattle and the most adorable collection of rabbits, I was so in love I contemplated bunny ownership again. Briefly. Just look at this little guy:

I mean, could he be any cuter?

And of course I had to sit in every car in the Automobile Building, and ogle the ones that I couldn't access, like this classic Chevy truck.  Now that's rrrrrrrrrrred!

As usual, my favorite place was the Creative Arts Building, with the crafts, cooking competition (chocolate!) and jams and jellies.  Amongst the quirky crafts this gorgeous blue-ribbon winning wool rug caught my eye. I've got to learn how to do this! 

Mostly I just love wandering the Fairgrounds with its beautiful collection of Art Deco architecture, murals and sculpture.  Many of the buildings have been recently restored to their original magnificence, like the Automobile Building:

It was a fine day all around!  I put the rest of the pics into a set on Flickr if you want to see more.

One more thing... we're up to the Eighth Night of Halloween!

Later gators,

Jenny