My latest finish (which you may have seen here, unfinished, last year) a wall quilt for my sweetie, a banjo & guitar player (his youngest daughter also plays a little banjo). Yeah, I’m a lucky gal…I have access to banjo music 24/7, should I so desire it. I started this in September 2010, but only finished the border quilting and binding this week as a birthday surprise for him (I’m pretty sure he had given up on it ever being done!):
The inspiration for my quilt is this 1940s die-cut from our vintage Halloween collection, by H.E. Luhrs:
I drew a girl cat playing a guitar as a companion for him, gave them both a spooky moonlit night and dead tree background, and the result is my original wallhanging, Midnight Serenade:
The original die-cut cat is roughly 14″ tall, the quilted cats are larger, closer to 22″ tall. The quilt itself measures 26″ x 32″. I used a raw-edge applique method, with Heat n’ Bond Lite fusible for the applique…
There are some hand embroidery details…
Gotta love those stockings, and I could use a pair of those shoes for Halloween! The tree is a single piece of fusible applique carefully cut out and raw-edge stitched down to the quilt:
The quilting includes the edge stitching on the tree, moon and cats, and a free-motion side-to-side meander in the background to mimic fog:
and a spiderweb design quilted into the border:
Incidentally, I really enjoy quilting spiderwebs–so easy to do! I used leftovers from my 2009 Haunted Hexagon table runner for the back, and now I’m wishing I had more of this fun print:
This week’s Halloween Party/Blogtoberfest Giveaway includes an American Jane pattern, a spool of Nature’s Rainbow thread, and 5 fat quarters of Lizzy Dish fabric from Andover. To qualify, comment on any of my Blogtoberfest posts (you can qualify more than once, and followers of my blog automatically get an extra entry):
Happy Halloween, and have a great weekend!
made by a brunnette 
I need a pair of those shoes! Fab! Great giveaway too, and I'm a happy follower 🙂
Your Halloween cats are great! I love how you showed the detail. Awesome job!
Love the cats! Very creative. I'm so envious of the talent! I'll get there someday! 🙂
I love the cats! they are such cooool cats and im jelous about the banjo music! i love bluegrass! The fabrics in the giveaway are scrumptious too! im a follower tamaraboatright at gmail dot com
I love the way you quilted this. It looks so awesome! I bet he was excited to get it for his birthday.
Koooool Cats! lol Hope hubby like them.
Thanks for the opportunity to win your generous giveaway. I enjoy looking at the interesting things you're sewing.
I love the way you did the trees! I've been trying to do spooky trees for a couple of years, but they always look like curly yarn. Thanks for the great chance to win some wonderful prozes! VermontPines@aol.com
Wow, I love your Halloween cat quilt, the design is soooo cute!! Congrats on finally getting it done!
Love the cats. Your work is so awesome.
The cats are so cute. A very nice wall hanging.
I had to do some searching to find this fantastic quilt from your recent Ghastly post. I love this quilt so much. It would be my favorite I have ever saw. I wish i would make one just like it. Do you think you could do a tutorial on it? Thanks so much for your inspiration. Happy Halloween!!
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