Wicked Cute

Wicked is usually a word I associate with bad things, people, the devil and other scary and BAD things (I think I said that twice, didn't I?). But my friend Jeannine suggested I add the word "cute" so I could manage this HOP. I'm going to start with a picture of one of my favorite Halloween quilts from previous years and then introduce you to my blog for this posting. I do want to thank Madame Samm and Wendy for coordinating this, with all their hard work and encouragement!

Just a cheap piece of fabric that I bought for $1 a yard at Walmart!

1. I cut 8 squares 9-1/2" x 9-1/2" so that all of them were exactly like this one. Cats as seen, the frog climbing the pumpkin, everything.
2. I put them all in one pile and then sliced the 8 squares along the horizontal, vertical and both diagonals. Now I have 8 piles of triangles.
3. Then I did the same thing with a stack of 4 blue 9-1/2" squares.
4. I added some blue 2-1/2" strips and made pinwheels. Using only one stack of print triangles at a time, I created pinwheel blocks.
5. As you can see, the print captured in each triangle spins around from the center, each block unique. No pattern today (maybe next Halloween), but here is the quilt.

Halloween Pinwheel Quilt (2002) - one of my favorite quilts. The fabric does all the work.

Now for my Wicked (Cute) block. A little background. When my husband and I were newly married (1977), living in Africa, we used to play guitars together after dinner. We would sit on the edge of the bed and croon our tunes. Out of the corner of my eye I caught some movement on the bed and then fear gripped me. A BAT WAS CRAWLING TOWARD US. Yikes! He took care of it and then when we went to the kitchen, we found another one floating in our pan of dishwater. Seems they came down this open vent and were looking for a warm place to settle down. Bats are NOT my favorite creature, but they do have a vital place in our ecosystem. So, my block is a wreath of harmless fabric bats. What do you think?

I made a freezer paper template and cut black bats from fused fabric.

Here is one black bat with garlands of pumpkins and tiny bats.

3 bats scattered on my 12-1/2" background square.

I finger pressed diagonal lines on the background square and then aligned the bats as shown. This bat has appeared in several of my Block a Day Calendars and I re-sized it so it would work with this size square.

Four bats in a circle. Note the beautiful secondary design in the center.

Since it's just a small one square project, I was able to quickly free-motion quilt it. Here it is from the back.

You can see my quilting better from the wrong side.

I took my finished block outside for better photography. I grabbed a few glittery spiders for "mood."

Bat Wreath block with striped binding and a few scary spiders

Bat Wreath block minus the spiders (in case they scared you)