Halloween in May???

Oh but, it's finished!!  Finished, finished, finished!!

Really finished - as in, quilted, bound, and labeled!  This thing has been haunting me for months (ha!  how appropriate) and I am so-o-o-o happy to have it finished!  (Have I mentioned that it's finished?)

OK, enough silliness.  This quilt represent a couple of milestones for me.  It was my first adventure in paper piecing - way back in October '07 - and my first exercise with the Quilt Wizard software.  Then I had the dilemma of how to quilt it.  With the different elements, there needed to be some different quilt patterns.  Up to now, I've either followed the lines of the print, or kept to mostly straight stitching.  Not going to work on this!  It could get scary here.

Jack wasn't too hard.  I could use the walking foot to echo the cut out spaces in his face.  Then free motion the pumpkin section lines and some "scribble" lines on his stem.

And the other pumpkins were easy to follow suit.  Pumpkins are organic so lines don't have to be straight or evenly spaced.  Cool!

I outlined the leaf motif and then free motion stitched vein lines.  They don't show up really well, which is all right.  If you can't see them, you can't see how wonky they are!

Now we are down to the scary part.  Stippling in the backgrounds!  Ha!  Another bonus - you can barely see this stitching!  In fact, I could barely see it while I was stitching it!  Eye drops anyone?

In the borders I stitched a row of pumpkin shapes with loopy vines kind of meandering between.  This is the back side so you can get an idea of how it looks.  I don't know what kind of batting I used (threw away the package more than a year ago.  Sheesh!), but it sure migrated through the fabric!  Now I know why they make black batting!  And why you should pay attention to what batting you are using!  Like maybe save the label?  Doh!

Alright!  Bring on the next one!  I'm turning into a quilting fool.  Well, some kind of fool anyway! ;-)