Annual Redneck Pumpkin Day!

Every year my kids have a redneck pumpkin carving party at the river.  You have to wear a flannel shirt, boots and be prepared to carve some fun pumpkins!  Here is Ali's mallard pumpkin.

Deb and I did Fred and Wilma Flintstone.  Deb made Fred.

Joe won a prize for his Mickey Mouse pumpkin!  Nice teeth!

Of course there has to be fishing at a redneck party.  Evy caught this carp but her brother had to take him off the line for her.

Amanda and Mike made Bert and Ernie.  They won prizes too.

Ali and Rob won for their hunter and mallard pumpkins.

How about a kiss?

Evy fills a pinata every year and we win candy.  Of course Jon and Rob mess with us as we swing.  They move the pinata up and down while we are blindfolded.

Deb and I did not win, but we liked our Fred and Wilma!  Yaba daba doo!

Tonight we are bracing for a major storm, Hurricane Sandy, so I did some sewing, did all the cleaning and vacuuming today.  School is already closed for at least tomorrow so I will do laundry and other stuff tomorrow morning.  Hope it's not too bad, but it seems like it will be.

My beautiful witch quilt (not really a self-portrait!)

About five years ago (maybe more) I saw this pattern for a witch quilt that I loved and had to have.  I got the pattern, the fabrics and everything I would need to complete the project, but never got around to actually making it.  Every time I would take the pattern out and see all of the pieces, I would get intimidated and put it back in the drawer.  Until this year!!!  I was going on a weekend quilt retreat a few weeks ago and decided that this was the perfect time to get this witch done.  No cooking, cleaning, puppy care or anything but sewing for three days!!!  I was committed to only this project all weekend.

There were hundreds of pieces!  All of the little details make it so beautiful though!

Each strand of hair is a different color fabric and then when I quilted her, I used metallic threads and clears just to add some sparkle.  I did tons of fly-away hairs on the quilt too.

I enjoyed quilting her face.  It really made the lips and eyes sink into the quilt.  Her fingernails are tiny pieces of blood red fabric.  Her eyebrows are little pieces of whites and grays.The white whispy threads touching her chin are the quilted steam lines from her green brew.



When I took this to school we joked that I had created a self-portrait in fabric!  I am so  happy that I finally just got it done.  My friend Jenny helped cut the pieces out the first night at the retreat when she was too tired to work on her own projects later in the night.  She saved me a few hours of cutting.  Saturday morning I was ready to start assembling the whole thing.



I did all of the quilting once I was home.  I would say I worked on it for about 45 hours at least from start to finish.  It was totally worth it, but I will not take on something this labor intensive for a while...although I do have a spring one with rabbits on it waiting in that same drawer I hid her away in for all of those years!



The spider in the upper corner was fun to sew on.  I made the web in invisible thread just like they are in real life.  Don't you just love her strands of hair all over the place?  That might be my favorite part of the finished product.

Garlicky fun and getting some quilting done!

A week ago Deb, Evy and I went to the garlic festival in Riverhead at The Garden of Eve.  Deb is enjoying some garlic chocolate ice cream.  It is a great farm and I try to go there quite a bit.  Even Evy ate the garlic ice cream this year.  The table topper shown below is all finished...I am still keeping my vow to finish what I start!  I used my Accuquilt Go!  to make all of the appliqués!  How fun and easy was that?  The quilting is a cross-hatch pattern...I think it came out nice.  Since we have so much Halloween stuff out, I will save this for November.