Halloween Quilt Featured In American Quilter Magazine

Scaredy Patch Halloween Quilt

Check out the September 2015 issue of American Quilter magazine for this Halloween-themed quilt pattern. The fabric used in the quilt in the magazine is a line called Sew Scary by Quilting Treasures.

The magazine article is by J. Wecker Frisch, who is the designer of Sew Scary fabric, and the quilt was made by me. Another designer, Joan Ford, was first contacted to do the quilt, but was too busy to take on the project, so she recommended me to construct and quilt the quilt, plus write the instructions.

I thought the project sounded very interesting, and based on the sketch of the quilt, I thought that the pattern instructions would be fairly straightforward to write. The initial picture of what she wanted the quilt to look like was done in a design program. The picture here shows the fabric in the planning stages, when we were planning the optimal sizing.

The quilt is made up of squares and rectangles that are ‘fussy cut’ from the various fabrics and the challenge was to get as much of the fabric showing as possible for each of these shapes, while sticking fairly close to the size envisioned for the quilt. The tricky part is always that the fabric prints out slightly different to the size of the artwork. After much consultation back and forth via email it all worked out and I had a complete quilt top to designer specifications.

Now for the challenging part where I decided to stretch my abilities. I had just received a sit down Tiara Quilting Machine from the people at Baby Lock to try out. The largest piece I had done at that point on the new machine was a table runner. At 60” x 60” I knew the quilting of Scaredy Patch was going to be a big challenge for me. But in for a penny, in for a pound, as they say. Here’s the quilt ready to be quilted.

I envisioned an all over quilting motif on the quilt, but the designer had other ideas. She wanted each shape separately outlined – a huge job with all the stopping and starting going around each letter and each motif. It was good experience on the new Baby Lock quilting machine though, and it all turned out very nicely in the end.

Everyone was pleased with the results, and now it’s featured in American Quilter magazine! Pick up a copy to see full instructions on how to make the quilt.

Here’s the finished quilt hanging on my clothesline.