Welcoming Autumn

I love autumn! I know I'm not alone. It's by far my favorite season of the year. I've been doing a bit of sewing to decorate around here.

The kids have been complaining about the lack of Halloween decorations around the house. I confess, Halloween isn't my favorite season to decorate for. In fact I have one Halloween decoration-- a cross stitch project I did ages ago. The problem is I hate storing decorations. They just take so much so much space. If I was going to have decorations, they needed to be simple and easy to store. I decided to put together a couple buntings we could hang.

It was simple and quick. I used purchased bias tape and pulled some black and orange fabrics from my stash.

I cut out triangles and sewed them together to make it double-sided. Finally, I pinked the edges before sewing them into the bias tape. Easy peasy!

Next up, I made a new pillow cover to go with my Halloween quilt, which was one of my very first quilts. I chose a soft black fabric from the home dec department of Jo-Ann. I believe it's some type of microfiber fabric, but I admit I didn't even look. I bought 21" which was perfect for the pillow. I do love that Jo_Ann will allow you to buy fabric in any increment. The fabric wasn't quite as sturdy as I wanted, so I basted the front and back to some twill I had on hand, giving it a bit more body. 

I quilted this spiderweb with metallic thread. I am so pleased with how it turned out! It shimmers just enough. The fine, metallic thread doesn't stand out too much. It's just what I was hoping for when I started the project. I began by stitching my straight lines. They are not perfectly spaced, but generally it is an offset "t" with two additional lines per quadrant.

I started the inner circle using my walking foot and that didn't work at all. I struggled getting the the loopy threads of the web to look just as I wanted them. I then switched to my darning foot and actually fmq the rest of the pillow. It worked much better. I was surprised at how well the metallic thread worked for fmq. The final size is about 19" square. I installed an invisible zipper to finish it off.

Finally, I have a new quilt progressing on the design wall! I'll be talking about this Oakshott Cottons project more soon! I'm making this from their new Autumn bundle.