Pumpkin Pleasures at Wooden Gate

I got an email from Wooden Gate Quilts that they were having a sale on Fall fabrics. This pumpkin print caught my eye since I like to collect pumpkins of different materials and patterns and sizes. I bought online and paid for 1¼ yards to make two 22" square pillows, planning to make the trip to the store nineteen miles away a couple days later to pick it up.

Wouldn't you know it, the day I went to pick up my fabric there was a trick or treat Halloween event at the Danville Livery Shopping Center where the quilt shop is. It was a zoo and parking was a challenge but it was kind of cute to see all the kiddos meandering around in costumes. As a fuddy-duddy, I would not have chosen to go on that day; but thrown into the situation, it was a pleasant diversion I most likely would have tried to avoid. The horse team got priority over my parking spot.

Browsing the store I got a couple more items other than the yardage I had pre-paid for. This book, Modern Halloween ©2107 attracted my interest and was included in the fall sale so I bought a copy. The prelude read

Halloween isn't meant to be cute. Leave that for the Easter Bunny. Or at least Halloween for adults doesn't have to be cute. There will be no smiling bats wearing pink hair bows here. Halloween is the one time of the year to embrace the spookier, scarier side of things. The designs in this book are for the modern and mature Halloween enthusiast (doesn't that sound official?) Really, these are projects that can add a unique seasonal touch to your home without making it seem like you have decorated the place for a preschool party.

I am happy with smiling and whimsical pumpkins that can do dual purpose for Halloween and Thanksgiving, even as a grandma. I paged through the book and did like the clean lines of some of the patterns. I was going to get a second copy for my daughter but decided instead to hold off until I saw her at Thanksgiving and see if she wanted a copy. As I browsed Amazon to get a screen grab image for this post, Amazon informed me I had purchased this book before. I immediately felt guilty and careless if I'd already purchased it and stashed it away, forgetting about it. Then I checked the detail of the order and realized I had sent it directly to my adult daughter in Oklahoma in June 2019. She, her husband, and kids are into the ghoulish and zombie type of Halloween. My daughter and I laughed about the book over the phone today, and she was going to look for it first thing when she got home. 

At Wooden Gate's fall sale I also picked up a plush, squishy, fuzzy, pumpkin in a peachy orange. It is the one in the foreground of the next image. I added it to my collection already on the hearth. In the image after that, I typically turn those two jack o' lantern pumpkins on the far right around to face the wall so they do double duty at Thanksgiving. I hope their feelings are not hurt but I would think they would prefer an extended stay on the hearth to plastic bin time in the attic.

Determined not to stash away the pumpkin fabric and forget about it, I order two 22" pillow forms from Amazon. I already had two 18" zippers so I was all set to make up those pillows right away. There would be little waste or leftover scraps since I'd gotten just the right amount of fabric. But I thought the selvages were so cute with the row of itty bitty pumpkins that I did not want to throw them away. I was able to salvage two rows and decided to place them diagonally across the top corner of each pillow. I cut ¼ " away from the white section of the selvage and used that as a seam allowance. Then I flipped over the strip and stitched very close to the edge with white thread, below the dotted black line, leaving the bit of fuzzy fringe intact.

The diagonal selvage bands came out cute but small relative to the entire pillow. Next time I do this I will cut a longer strip of selvage, even if the text shows, so it will be farther down from the pillow corner and more visible.

The two pillows are now deployed on either side of my hearth. I expected the pale gray to play a larger role. But the dark gray is dominant enough that the pillows have more of an orange/black Halloween vibe. I do love the plaid of the pumpkins, though.

Oh, by the way, I did buy two patterns from Etsy, one for sewn pumpkins (Kim Kruzich) and one for knitted pumpkins. (Marie Mayhew). Oh, well. Maybe I'll get to them next year. They look like fun.