Fall Finishes

Finished a lot of little projects this month, unfortunately no WISPS, they were all new starts, and some new ideas! Being QOV Co-Chair has become very time consuming in the past few months. My former Co-Chair, relinquished her post after two years and my new Co-Chair had surgery on her knee so has been unavailable or not 100% since June. I am glad the kids are back in school, that helps with time management for part of the day. In October we held a QOV workshop, we planned to make 1600 strip quilts or lasagna quilts. We supplied the 40 2 1/2" strips needed for each quilt and had material on hand for the border. We had 12 participants and I am sorry to say I forgot to bring a camera! It was a lot of fun and two ladies managed to complete their quilts, and most everyone else finished theirs except for attaching the borders. I confess I hardly got any of mine done, so now I have another WISP. I did make the door prizes for the workshop. (and then some!) Originally I thought I would buy fall fat quarters and fill them with chocolate and then tie with ribbon, but then I saw an idea on line for fabric pumpkins, and later that week I had night guild where I found that really cool orange soft and fluffy fabric (previous post) and so I decided to make the fabric pumpkins out of the fluffy fabric and stuff them with Dove chocolate and little Reece's Peanut Butter cups. I ran out of candy after 5 of them so I used high loft batting scraps to fill the rest. I used cinnamon sticks for the stem and leftover silk flower leaves for 6 of them and then I made leaves using cotton batting scraps in between 2 pieces of green fabric. I zigzag stitched all around twice and then sewed veins through the middle. I like the sewn leaves best!

I also made 9 pin cushions from a Halloween Charm pack that I couldn't decide what to do with. The ric rack can go from front to back and you can decide which side you want face up as the buttons are on both sides. I made the buttons from FIMO and used a button on hand to make the impression. While I was in the Fall fabric mood I made 9 little tissue holders and are saving those for November's QOV workshop.

I showed the ladies at my Bee what I had made and they asked me to teach them how to make them at our next Bee, which I happened to be hosting. I was running out of the fuzzy fabric, so I tried other fabrics, and although it was harder to join together, I think they turned out pretty well too! We used homespun, orange batiks and a stretchy, soft fabric. I then wondered how to make the pumpkin tall, instead of short and round, that did not work out, but I turned my mistakes into two candy bags - one full of m&m's and one filled with candy corn! Happy Quilting, and Happy Halloween to all that celebrate it :)