A Witchy Halloween Pillow
Halloween's almost here, but I've got one more "spooky" project to share with you. I made the 18.5" sample block for the One Scrappy Witch pattern with one thing in mind -- a spot on my living room couch.
I love hand quilting for so many reasons: it’s meditative, it gets me away from my machine and allows me to sew while I’m with my family, and it’s my favorite way to introduce extra colors and details to a project. Pillows are the perfect way to give it a try, and I couldn’t wait to get to work on adding some fun touches to mine. I pulled out a variety of coordinating perle cotton and embroidery threads to give me plenty of options. Small projects like this are a great time to experiment with new stitches and embellishments.
I started off by outlining the hat in a big stitch with black thread and then added additional stitches inside the hat (which are a bit hard to see in pictures). I wanted to keep the stitching simple and didn’t want to add big running stitches all over the quilt front, so I decided to instead add Xs at the seam intersections and in the middle of the seam between each square. I used the mustard thread on the horizontal seams and the coral thread on the vertical seams. Where they intersected, I made one line of the X in mustard and the other in coral, a nice touch up close (if I do say so myself).
It’s always fun to “find” small touches like that when you really check out a project up close (like every time I lay my head on the pillow while laying on the couch). I decided to do a simple envelope back so I could show off this fantastic gum print from Ruby Star Society’s Spooky Darlings collection (whose color scheme inspired the color scheme for the front block). I wanted to make sure to spotlight the precious selvage as well, so I kept it exposed on the bottom of the print instead of turning it under, like I would for a normal selvage.
I hope you’ve been able to get in plenty of your own spooky sewing this Halloween season. Here’s a recap of all the blog posts I’ve done for future reference:
And check out this post for a list of my favorite supplies for hand quilting.
