Halloween

Halloween is lots more fun with little girls in the house again (and in cyberspace). Leia wanted to be a Princess. It took her quite a while to figure out which princess though.The deciding factor? Addy was dressing as Belle, so Leia had to be Belle too. Aren't they adorable?The Belle dress will be traveling with us when we go visit Addy later this month so we can get pics of the girls together. 
Naia settled on the ever popular pirate.Her school allowed costumes to be worn to class today, but Naia decided the tights were a little much, so she wore pink pants with her pirate top. Tres chic, and tres practical.

And Little Bits? A ladybug.Leanne loves the antennae, which she can see bobbing on top of her head. She tries to follow them with her eyes and looks hilarious. And did you notice? I got a pic of her smiling!

We added a couple of last minute decorations -  light up pumpkin and haunted house in the front windowand my quilted pumpkins on the front door.Bring on the haunting, we be ready! 

75 x 58

Remember the first quilt top I started? The one I did after falling in love with the 1600 quilt? The reason I started quilting in the first place? It's done.In today's marathon session, I added a 1" border all around,

then put a 3" border on the long sides and 6" on the top and bottom. 
I needed it big enough to cover hubby when he's sound asleep relaxing in front of the teevee.Still need to square it up a final time - much too tired to take a cutting implement to my new baby tonight. Then it's on to the quilt sandwich and some stitch-in-the-ditch quilting. 

So what's next?  Turn this -into a quilty Christmas present.

And turn these -

hand-dyed by my weaving buddies - into this.
Bought the fabric on Thursday; found the pattern today. Perfect timing. Mine won't look exactly like the picture (how boring would that be, right?) My 'rule' when picking the colors was that I could use only Deb and Gerri's fabric. I think it just might work.

But before all that, I need to finish a birthday present. And I'm not telling what it is. (That ought to make Wenona crazy. heehee)

Bound, Labeled, Cat-Approved

Both quilts are done,

with bindings hand-stitched and backs labeled. 

I put the big one through the washer and dryer - gentle cycle - and both cats have had a turn sleeping on it, so I guess it is officially finished. 

I thought stitching the back binding down by hand would be a pain, but turns out I loved it. 

Found a great tutorial here (scroll waaaaaaay down) on how to do the blind stitch - which I knew, theoretically, how to do but this method made it a snap. Love how neat and tidy both sides of the binding look. I can't stop turning the quilts over to admire it. 

I also made my first sleeve for hanging the pumpkins

and attached my first labels, proudly proclaiming these as my first and second quilts. Want to experiment a bit more with labels to find a style that I really like. Guess that means I'll need more things to label.

I think I'm hooked on this quilting thing.   

Great Pumpkin Hunt

We took the girls pumpkin hunting a few days ago, on an afternoon that was cool, overcast and almost drizzly - as close to Fall as we're likely to get in So.Cal.

The hay maze was new this year and all three girls loved it, jumping from bale to bale, following paths high and low. 
They would have been content to spend all afternoon running back and forth, 

but the call of the pumpkin was strong and they were soon running up the hill, with Leia and her little legs determined to keep up with the big girls.  

They were all three up and down and all around the field, searching for the perfect pumpkin. 

Leia found hers first and got Hanna to help her carry it back to the wagon,

 where PopPop stood guard over the treasures.

This patch is smaller than the one we used to go to in Ventura, but I like that there's plenty of room for the girls to run around and they have little 'extras' - wagons and wheelbarrows for riding, 

the maze, picture frames for acting silly, 

 and a hay tower to jump from,

just for the sheer joy of it. 

Each girl ended up with two pumpkins; a big one for carving and a smaller one for carrying. 

All in all, a very successful afternoon.  

Royal Shawl

I finished this earlier in the week and got my favorite model to pose for me, once she was done decorating the house and herself for Halloween.Love how this one turned out. It's an easy, one-row repeat on the main portion and the ruffle is all double crochets. Almost six balls of yarn - over 1000 yards - with as much used in the ruffle as in the entire rest of the shawl; details are here.Now that the weather is cooperating and it's out of the high 80's and 90's, I plan to wear this often.

Decorating

Hubby and oldest granddaughter decorated the house for Halloween today, both inside - mostly Naia's job - 
and outside. 

We have the classics - the repeaters, back for a second year- the new - and the just plain wacky. Leia and I love these sparkly bats that hubby hung above the ghostly pumpkin. 

And speaking of wacky (in a good way), check out these shoes Naia's mom bought her for getting good grades. Naia loooooooooves them.And I've never seen anything like them.
Ked boots? So cool.

HalloPumpkin

To have any chance of getting this finished by Halloween, I needed to get my rear in gear.

So today I added the borders (all of them were redone several times; nothing was going right today), picked the batting and backing fabric, made my quilt sandwich, and got it all ready to quilt tomorrow.

Or Wednesday, since the little girls are here all day tomorrow. Stitchin' in the ditch requires a lot of patience and concentration - not much of which will be in evidence unless Leia and Leanne take their naps at the same time.Which may happen about the same time pigs fly and M&M's are the tricksters and not the treats.