Harvest Moon Wallhanging

As I rummaged through my fabric drawers looking for autumn-toned fat quarters for my previous spontaneous Thanksgiving quilt (post for 11/8/2020) I came across a kit I had bought  on a clearance sale and squirreled away. It was a modest size 30" x 33" and came complete with backing and binding. The manufacturer of the featured panel was Wilmington Prints. I do not know the year because the selvages were not included on the panel section supplied in the kit. I estimate the design to be five or more years old.

Upon research (actually my husband's googling for me out of curiosity to find the copyright year for the panel), I learned that the image was one of five from a larger panel, and the quilt store had added the sashing  fabrics. Do I try to find those other four satellite images? No. This quilt assembly was to reduce my stash not add to it. I report this find only for interest.

After years of being stored, sight unseen, the image of that round mellow moon still mesmerized me and I was drawn in by the rich autumnal colors. The kit had all necessary components, even backing and binding, so I decided to make up the kit, right then and there. I was able to do it in one sitting and was sort of kicking myself that I had let it linger so long. Sequential borders of rust check, solid black, mottled gold, and a green stripe went on smoothly and easily to frame the central image. This wallhanging was not a lesson in piecing for me but rather would provide good practice in FMQing. I echo quilted around the moon to enhance its super roundness. After I stitched around the hills and  leaves of the trees, I echoed those shapes as well, resulting in a surprise central filler pattern in the two major regions of sky. In the three pathways at the bottom, I stitched ruler-guided scallops in the center, and ruler guided straight diagonal lines on the left, and converging lines on the right. I tried not to get carried away in the details of the pumpkins and houses, reminding myself that sometimes less is more.

For the striped border I did ruler work for parallel lines, piano keyboard style. They are more of a texture and do not show up a lot on the front; they are more obvious on the back. In the mottled gold band I did a ruler-guided wavy line which again shows up better on the back than the front. Eventually I will build up my nerve to quilt in a contrasting color that is more visible. I keep waiting until my skill level rises. I used a pale peach thread on the front and a muted green thread on the back. The kit-supplied mini pumpkin rust fabric for the binding complemented both the front panel scene and the backing landscape fabric. In the next two photos the front edge is flipped over onto the backing so both sides are visible, stripes on the front and landscape on the back with that mini-pumpkin print binding around a corner and along an edge.

These are the rulers I used: the straight one Slim by Angela Walters is on the left and the wavy and scalloped ones by Handiquilter are on the right. I add strips of sandpaper to keep them from slipping during use.

I was pleased that the kit had come with a backing fabric since usually kits do not. It was a deep dark brown almost solid that I decided to set aside as a blender for future use. Instead I substituted from my stash a landscape print that I had been reluctant to cut up. As a backing it could live on in its uncut glory. I omitted a hanging sleeve because I might use quilt on either side. I added my typical labels at each lower corner and titled the small quilt simply Harvest Moon like the panel name. Can you find two turkeys strutting their stuff and six scarecrows standing tall on the job? The backing tickles me as a Thanksgiving version of Where's Waldo.