The temperatures are dropping around here and it’s feeling crisp and chilly. And I live in Massachusetts, home of Salem and all things spooky, so of course my mind is turning to Halloween.

I’ve had plans and stashed fabric for ages for Halloween quilts. The idea started in 2014 on a trip to Japan in mid-October. I saw how Halloween is interpreted in modern Japanese pop culture and I loved it - it was cute and just a little spooky, but nothing gory or creepy. Spoopy, I guess. That’s my jam, and this version of Halloween isn’t one I can easily find in the US for Halloween.

So I loaded up! During some fabric shopping on that trip (there’s a neighborhood in Tokyo that specializes in fabric - I’ll write more about it sometime) I picked up some fat quarters of adorable Halloween fabric and hoped one day I’d have enough to make something with it all.

12 years later here I am… I carefully picked out some Halloween fabrics over the years that I found mainly at Joanns (RIP now and forever) and figured it was time to figure out what went with what. A simple scrappy quilt using strips (a strip quilt? sounds saucy) is what I’m thinking of, so time to get out the rotary cutter, put on some good tunes and get to work on what I am calling my “yes pile”:

The Yes Pile of fabrics for this Halloween scrappy quilt

As you can see, right now everything is pretty saturated in colors, lots of bold graphic design, cartoony and cute.

Hmmm….I am a little concerned that things seem all very high-key, uniform in value. I’ll see if I can can add some variance there, otherwise it’s going to be just very == AHHHHH == all the time. Value contrast is so important!

Also important is looking at fabric choices in different light, literally. I picked this pile out from my stash late at night and it all looked fine enough, and now that I look at them again in the light of day, slightly different story. So fascinating how this all works.

Here are my “laters”, or I guess, the reject pile: The laters, they didn’t make the cut this time

I didn’t like the ones in this pile because the art style was WILDLY different, and as an illustrator that bugs me. Instead of bold graphic style with flat coloring, there’s a lot of shading and variance here, and mixing the two styles together drives me batty (Halloween pun absolutely intended). But maybe there are some pieces here or there I can make work, especially if they are lower in value.

Then again, I could be Overthinking It(TM), as I am wont to do. This is a Halloween project, and the quilt I am pretty sure will be for a table covering and not for actual sleep-bed-covering use.