November Leaves and Acorns Completed

This post continues my work on the November banner from the Pieceful Patchwork Banner for November from Shabby Fabrics that I assembled in my previous post dated 10/31/26. The "Quilt as Desired" phrase used to strike fear in me, but not so much now. I break down these wall hangings into sections and try something different in each area. I still struggle with what how to treat the empty space in the background when left to my own freeform attempts. This post is about FMQ, labeling, binding, and completion of the September banner.

FMQ
For the acorns I echo quilting ¼" away from the central sawtooth star. Then I echoed again but this time ½" from the first echo. I wanted to see if the variation would lend some extra interest and I liked the effect. I echoed a third time, this time ¼" away from the second echo. The result gives the illusion of a larger star around the central sawtooth. A consistent, repetitive  ¼" spacing would have given texture but this alternating spacing surprised me a bit and I will try this approach again. For the cupule (cap of the acorn) I used a clamshell template to appear like shingles on a roof. I FMQ'd a dense ¼" diagonal grid on the plaid stem. A decision on the background will wait until I have FMQ'd the leaves.

For the leaves, I repeated my newly tried technique of alternately-spaced echoing, ¼ ", ½ ", ¼" and three rounds of echoing. Then I was stumped as to what to with the center of the leaf. My solution was to audition additional rounds of echoing to fill in the center to see what would happen. Satisfied it would solve my what-to-do-in-the-center problem, I committed to additional rounds of non-uniformly spaced echoing. The next photo shows only the the first three echoes, not the proposed fourth and fifth echoes.

I usually struggle with what to FMQ in the background. I am terrible at meandering and pebbles though I like the effect of both. It seems I need more structure rather than a blank space in which to do whatever my little heart desires. Logic would dictate that I practice meandering and pebbles more, but alas, I chickened out once again. 

Here is a completed leaf with background quilted. The center was filled nicely enough with a fourth echo and a fifth was not needed. This photo shows I added free-form scallops around the stem, further filling in the negative space. I free-form sewed arcs around the edges and the perimeter of the leaves. Those arcs seemed to fill the negative space well enough I did not need to battle pebbles or meandering.  I liked it well enough I put those arcs on the acorn background as well. They seemed to form pillows which softened the background.

FMQ in the wide, leaf-print outer border was half circles. The inner thinner olive border seemed narrow enough to not need quilting but I mirrored the half circles in the outer border with shallow arcs in the inner border. For the sashing that runs horizontal and vertical in the banner, I added small scallops on two edges.

 

These are the rulers I used for the November banner: 

• the 3" size of the HQ clamshell for the outer border
• the top portion of the 4" HQ clamshell for the inner border
• the 2" size of the HQ clamshell for the acorn top
• the mini scallop ruler for the vertical and horizontal sashing edges and leaf stem
• the Angela Walters Slim for all straight lines

Labels
While deciding how to quilt the background, I took a break to make my labels in hopes that inspiration would arrive quietly in my subconscious (which it did). My grosgrain labels were burgundy thread on peach grosgrain ribbon and read LEAVES_AND_ACORNS and DIC_NOV_2026. As is my tradition for these banners, the NOV stands for the theme month and not my month of completion. Here are the labels before attachment to the quilt corners. I attach the labels to the quilt before binding so their raw edges are covered.

Binding
I leave ¼" extra batting around the edges when binding with folded-in-half 2½" wide strips. The next photo shows that extra margin. Also, at an angle, the quilting shows up better. I cut out my binding at the same time I initially I cut out the components. I join the strips but do not press in half lengthwise. I think it goes on a bit more smoothly this way, and the effort to fold it over at time of application is no harder or time-consuming than pressing that long length. The second photo shows the corners of the bound quilt where the labels are attached, raw edges of the grosgrain ribbon tucked under the binding.

Completed Banner

The next two photos are of the front and back of the completed banner for November. Leaves and Acorns  measures 31" x 31" like the other monthly banners.

All I have left to make are the banners for December and February. Here are the links for the other banners I have completed from this series from Shabby Fabrics.

• JAN    Snowmen and Snowflakes (2/10/26)
• MAR  Shamrocks and Irish Chains (4/6/26)
• APR   Bunnies and Carrots (3/6/26)
• MAY   Roses and Pansies (9/11/25)
• JUN   Strawberries (9/6/25)
• JUL    Flags and Pinwheels (6/24/26)
• AUG   Bees and Sunflowers (9/21/25)
• SEP    Log Cabins and Schoolhouses  (8/5/26)
• OCT    Flying Geese and Pumpkins (8/26/26)
• NOV   Leaves and Acorns (this post 11/5/26)

My stash still holds two more banners to assemble. I bought the kit for December, but for February I bought the pattern only and will be left to my own devices for the fabric choices. My goal is to finish the December banner by Christmas in 2026 and the February banner by Valentine's Day in 2027.

November Leaves and Acorns

The Pieceful Patchwork kit for November by Shabby Fabrics has leaves and acorns, all in burgundy, brown, and golden fall tones. The rich colors seduced me into buying this kit. Those sawtooth star acorns were just so darn cute, I could not leave them behind.

Cutting
I cut all the fabrics per the instructions labeling, each piece with a color-coded letter for the intended block, pink for Leaf or black for Acorn. I used my Pink Melamine Tray, Alphabitties and Clover Wonder Clips to stay organized. To the right of the tray are the the long strips for sashing and borders. Also on the tray are the two laser-cut, pre-fused brown strips for the stems of the leaves. The backing and binding fabrics are not in the photo but they did come in the kit.

Leaves
I tackled the leaves first, sewing two at a time, since they are identical. Variety comes with their position and orientation in the finished banner. One thing I like about these kits is that a preferred pressing direction is given at each step and the plan is generally pretty optimized to avoid clumps of bulk at seam intersections. These are my two leaves. Not part of the pattern, I used the triangles removed from the flip corners at each leaf point to make four pinwheels.

Acorns

I learned that the top hat of an acorn is called a cupule and is made up of fused leaves. I made the cupules of the two acorns first. A cupule is defined as 

a small, cup-shaped structure found in botany, archaeology, and entomology. For an acorn cap a cupule refers to the cup-shaped cluster of hardened, fused bracts (modified leaves) at the base of an acorn in oak trees (Quercus) and related families. It is also known as an acorn cup.

The acorns each have a saw tooth star at the center. The points of the star are made with two squares and an elongated rectangle, a slight deviation from classic flying geese. This method gives more area around the star without additional seams.

Here is a completed acorn. I was able to get one pinwheel from the cut corners of the base of the two acorns, but it was smaller than pinwheels from the leaves. Corners cut off from the cupules of the two acorns yielded only one pinwheel, and the effort to get it was questionable due to its small size. Pinwheels from cut-off corners of the star points were marginally too small to be worth the effort. Shown is the largest pinwheel from the leaves (one of a yield of 4) and two small pinwheels, one of each size, from the acorns. Total yield of pinwheels was six.

Adding Sashing and Borders
The sashing is an olive green and the corner stone is of the same brown metallic plaid as the acorn stems. This fabric is a stunner. It was also used in a larger quantity as the sunflowers' centers in the Pieceful Patchwork August banner I made. Here is the November banner with sashing and borders attached. Now it needs to be sandwiched and FMQ'd. Then I will attach the labels and binding.