Halloween Houses

I don't know if the rest of you have had the experience of making a quilt that forever changes how you approach making quilts. I have. Making liberated houses a la Gwen Marston really changed everything. I was never much of a template fan, but after "Liberated Quiltmaking" I've never used them again.

The first houses quilt I made was for Christmas in 1996, and I haven't posted that one yet. Sometime after that I made the blue and white liberated houses quilt that I posted in my very first blog entry.

In September 2000, I pieced this quilt Halloween Houses and it loosened me up that much more. I mainly pieced houses but you'll see a witch there in the top line. I wasn't paying enough attn when I sewed on her head, so it's a bit out of whack, but I refused to redo it. She's a witch, not a beauty queen.

But the biggest step forward for me was realizing that I could piece letters. Letters without templates or a systematic approach with squares and rectangles... Just letters. The kind that I showed you all how to make back in August. This was the beginning. I've been on a quilt lettering kick ever since.

I love the quilting on this quilt, if I may say so myself. This detail shot is all perle cotton, but I also used embroidery floss in other areas. All the quilting motifs are out of my little head, I didn't use any templates. Most of the fun was deciding what went where. In this shot you have the old tree and bats flying in the air, a visiting alien, half of a spider web and a big fat spider.