Little Bits.....: October!

I don't very often pick up quilting magazines anymore because I was finding that the quilts featured inside were just about same old, same old. Perhaps a little twist on them, but not much else. Okay, so maybe it was me and I was just magazined out.

One grocery shopping day while Karl was putting the cart load of food up on the conveyor belt (yes, I make him do it all), I noticed a magazine I hadn't seen before, so I went and got it. Ohhhhhhhh, I thought, this is different, so I put it up on the belt, and then I went to the other end and started to bag everything up. (See he doesn't do e-v-e-r-y-t-h-i-n-g).

The new magazine is from Fons and Porter and is called Quilting Celebrations and it's the fall/winter 2011 issue, so it's available for all of you.

This was my inspiration. I love this! These are my colours, browns, oranges, greens, reds........the shades of autumn.

I have to make my wall hangings to fit on the rod in the bathroom. The rod is about 25" wide and I can fit a length of about 20". Any more and the length is touching the towel that hangs underneath.

This is it. My October BOM. It's right there with my favourites. The only one I didn't like was August, so that's a re-do sometime next year.

I really quilted this. After sandwiching, I quilted the pumpkin and the leaves, then I did the rest. I didn't use a blanket stitch around the edges, I just sewed as close to the edge as I could and yes, there are spots I did go off and spots I'm a bit in, but it's good practice. Something I don't do often enough.

This is the quilting...................I told you there was a lot of it.

I wanted practice and this piece told me it would take as much quilting as I wanted to give it. I have no idea how much thread I used, but it was a lot!

This photo may give you a better idea of how I did it. I started by outlining the leaves and the free motion foot was my guide. I used the width of it to gauge the distance. I went around the leaves 3 times and then did the pumpkin the same way. Once the stitching met above the pumpkin I started to fill in the other areas. If you click on the photo it will come up larger for you.