A warm hello and thank you to the wonderful denizens of Bluesky who use the #quiltsky hashtag. I recently found out about this hashtag’s existence and used it over there, and a really wonderful community of people showed up and supported me when I was in the middle of this little project and GENUINELY considering abandoning it.
But I didn’t - and now I’m happy to say I finished this Halloween quilted table runner.
Here’s how it all went.
No one suffers more than the cats when their human is deep in the Quilting Mines. Or so they tell me. Good thing I have made a lot of progress and am getting closer to done on this one.
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.
I’m as guilty as anyone walking down the craft store aisles in August and September and oohing and aahing over the … frankly…. kind of UNREAL amounts of Halloween stuff that comes out now. I’m a proper millennial and love Halloween but even to me it’s starting to feel very excessive and, how shall I say, landfillcore?
But when I see something black cat related I do stop in my tracks and I gotta admit. Michael’s… ya got me with these two plaster cats. They were just unpainted and unprimed, as bare as can be, and have a little LED candle light inside so they glow. It’s up to you to make them truly yours. And well, I have two black cats for real, so it’s got to be a law somewhere that I must pay tribute to them. Right?