Blogger's Quilt Festival

My Halloween quilt is done!!!  

 So I have to enter this quilt into the Blogger's Quilt Festival, of course.

And I had to wait until Halloween DAY to enter it, obviously.  And since my Giants won the World Series this quilt is even more appropriate!  As a bonus, Ben's school colors at ISU are black and orange so I can pretty much keep it out all year, right?  Right.

I came up with this quilt from seeing so many amazing chevrons and zig-zag quilts and desperately wanting to make one.  I also wanted to make a Halloween quilt that was purely black and orange (ok, maybe grey also) as a tribute to our family's annual Black and Orange Halloween dinner we have around Halloween time (tonight we're having black rice and salmon, carrots, olives, oranges, dirt dessert...you get the idea).

I sketched out what I wanted to do.... have varied widths of white space between the zig-zags, which would be a combination of black and orange fabrics to give it a scrappy look.

I have always wanted to make holiday quilts with non holiday specific fabrics.  Though I love holiday specific fabrics too, and there are some ghosts and candy corns in this one, I began by pulling all the black and orange fabric I had and cutting a bizillion 5" squares and making them into HST's. Then it needed some pizazz, so I added the Halloween specific fabrics and loved it even more.

"helper" dog

I hand quilted it with Perle cotton thread and it was lovely.  I love how it looks simple and special and didn't take as long to quilt as I thought it would! 

I backed it with black flannel that is so snuggly warm, and with some leftover orange fabric.  I love that the quilting of the zig-zag from the top shows on the orange of the back, like a rad surprise detail that looks really awesome.

I had a hard time getting a picture of this as the stitches blend into the pattern, but in person it looks really awesome! 

Quilt Stats:
Halloween Quilt/Black and Orange Zig-Zag
Hand quilted with black Perle Cotton thread
Measures 63" x 80"
Category: Favorite Throw Quilt

Tonight I'll be sitting under this awesome quilt watching Ghostbusters and Young Frankenstein if you need me...and raiding my kids trick-or-treat bags for the all the milky ways and pink starbursts from the neighborhood...!

happy halloween and happy blogger's quilt festival!!

go have a look if you haven't already, and be prepared to be inspired!!