Hugs of a different kind.

The purpose of this blog is twofold - to journal my charity quilts made under the label Josh's Hugs and also to journal other quilts I may have made along the way. Not to mention, sometimes we need to give ourselves and our family members hugs too.

First in line is my Sunflower Bargello quilt. This is based on a pattern by Jen (Jennifer Houlden) www.quiltsbyjen.ca

I had several reasons to attempt this quilt. I love sunflowers, I've always wanted to make a bargello, and I had a nice big wall in my living room to show it off. As I may have mentioned before, I'm terrible at following patterns. Right away I made a mistake in the cutting directions and had to alter my borders. But I was very satisfied with the results and most importantly my husband thinks it's beautiful.

My second quilt is a wall hanging I made for my daughter. Although Halloween was never a big deal in our home she likes to decorate for it in her own home.

I started out using the quilt Fall Shenanigans by Jenny Doan as inspiration but have made major changes to the layout, pattern, everything.

Jenny's quilt was great for Halloween but I wanted to extend the usability into Thanksgiving.

I redesigned this quilt to have a removable panel. I also had a large piece of bargello left over from the sunflower quilt and decided to incorporate that into an applique pumpkin rather than piecing a pumpkin like Jenny's. Alongside the pumpkin are two fall leaves. The bottom panel is made up of two pieced black cats in different poses and a witch's hat. By creating tabs with velcro the lower panel can be removed following Halloween and the rest of the quilt displayed through Thanksgiving. I did some simple Free Motion Quilting and finished with a facing rather than a traditional binding. A wooden dowel across the top keeps it hanging flat. An additional tip? Next time you make a quilt that turns out slightly wonky, don't cut it square. Block it! When I crocheted afghans, they would often lay kind of wonky so I would block them. I did the same on this wall hanging and it really worked to get it square. I gently soaked it in the bath tub, used the washing machine to wring out the excess water, then I laid it over some spongy baby block tiles (don't know what they are called) and pinned it square. I set a fan to blow over it to help it dry.