I hope that I am not the only one who had to look up the meaning of this quarter's theme :) I toyed with all sorts of ideas of picture quilts, colour-coded quilts and variations on those themes but, in the end, I went with the timing of the reveal and created this cushion for Halloween.
I found this lovely poem "Halloween" by the American poet John Kendrick Bangs here and used the first verse for my cushion. The text was written out freehand with a Frixion pen and it took some doing to get all of my letters correct on the backward lines!
The d's and b's were particularly confusing :)
Three words - All-Hallows, moonlit and Jack-o-Lantern have been embroidered in glow-in-the-dark thread to add to the spookiness, I keep forgetting to check to see if it works :)
Ghosts and witches hats were quilted in the 4 corners of the cushion, but they weren't as successful as I had hoped. The witches hats are hardly visible, and if I was doing them again I would probably pick them out in orange or neon thread instead.
On a recent trip to visit our new granddaughter I bought this pumpkin cotton fabric, which was perfect for the back of the cushion. I couldn't find a cushion insert of the right size in the local store here in France, but they did have cushion stuffing so I just stuffed the cushion and hand-stitched it closed.
Now I not only have another decoration for future Halloween's but I have also learned the meaning of boustrophedon, what a brilliant group this is!
Looking forward to seeing all of the other interpretations of this interesting theme.
If you would like to see what else I have been stitching up for Halloween head on over to Celtic Thistle Stitches to have a look :)
So clever turning it into a Halloween quilt. Very cute. I'm impressed with how you were able to turn the lettering backward!!
ReplyDeleteThanks Barbara, it took a couple of goes to get some of the letters right I have to admit :)
DeleteVery cute, and I think you are the only one to take on the challenge of backward lettering! (As a former teacher, I can not imagine the horrors of trying to teach kids how to figure out the intricacies of that system!) I like all the details of the shapes in the stitching, and the glow-in-the-dark lettering.
ReplyDeleteThanks Gwen, I did have to write the text out a couple of times to get some of those letters the right way round :)
DeleteI remember being in class once and some of us had tried to do mirror image writing by reversing the individual letters rather than the whole words - backword lettering is not easy and must have been very difficult to sew! I love your ingenuity in interpreting the theme so well and in a seasonally appropriate way too :-)
ReplyDeleteThanks Catherine, I suspect we have all tried that at some stage :)
DeleteI'm very impressed with your mirror writing. This is a lovely design and very exciting that some elements glows in the dark. It will make a great decoration for Halloweens to come :)
ReplyDeleteThanks Janine, even although I know it is correct the backwards sob still looks like sod to me :)
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