As many of you are finishing up your Epic Halloween quilts, I wanted to share my finished quilt and hopefully give you a few ideas on how you might quilt yours!
I decided to go elaborate on the quilting, and so I also splurged on 100% wool batting so my stitches would really pop. This is the first time I’ve used pure wool batting in a quilt, and oh my is it fabulous! The other special supply I broke into for this quilt was the cone of glow-in-the-dark thread that a friend gifted me a while back. It was hard to get a good picture of the glow, but it does look pretty neat in person.
The thread requires charging up with a pretty high-powered lamp to really glow, so I’m not sure how much of it I’ll see on a regular basis, but it’s fun to know it’s there. I tried to outline most of the piecing and added some highlights here and there. This is one of the pairs of eyes:
Here are some of the quilting designs I used on the different blocks.
Curved spiderwebs were echoed every 1/2 inch, and the outside is full of little bitty spiders.
In many cases, I used the printed fabric as guides, such as for this skeleton in a bottle, and the bubbles in the green potion. The background of all the potion bottles was quilted with a brick wall-type design.
For the spiders, I added some curved lines to the body and then a jagged swirl reminiscent of spiderwebs.
Bats got a clamshell/mussel-type background design (because that reminds me of the sonar they use to find their prey. Come on, you knew I was going to bring science into this at some point. 🙂 ).
I added some extra lines to their wings, too. I used a silvery metallic thread for that part since I used metallic fabrics, but in retrospect probably should have used the glow-in-the-dark for these details as well.
Some of the open blocks got a spiderweb, and for others I outlined some of the elements and then did a tight stipple in the rest of the block. I actually thought about quilting one giant spiderweb over the whole quilt, and I still think that would look really cool if you’re looking for something less intense for your quilt!
For the Barn Bats, I used some quilting inspired by Angela Walters’ “Shape to Shape” concept and swirls in the background. (And again on the newspaper, I used the fabric as a guide.)
The coffins in the ring of coffins were outlined, and then I used feathers for the background of that block.
You can see it better on the back:
Eyeballs, after being filled with glow-in-the-dark thread, got a leaf fill in the background (since clearly monsters hide in bushes and forests), though it unfortunately doesn’t really show up very well on the black fabrics.
And the haunted house is obviously in an overgrown forest, so I used a branching fill for the background there.
Again, you can see how I used the designs in the fabric to guide my quilting here.
For the backing, I tried to use up a bunch of my leftovers. It’s pretty busy, so you don’t see too much of the quilting, but there is some texture that pops out.
Finally, here’s the binding, which I very carefully fussy-cut to take advantage of the tiny 1/4″ dots and skulls on the Cotton+Steel print. This is one of my favorite parts of the quilt!
Final stats:
Finished size: 48″x60″
Fabrics: Primarily Cotton+Steel and Alexander Henry
Thread: Aurifil 50wt and Superior NiteLite
Batting: Quilters Dream 100% wool
Started: April 2016
Finished: August 2016
As always, quilted on my domestic machine.
Your quilt is AWESOME!! I’ve enjoyed seeing it come together. Thank you for sharing this process and the patterns. Happy Halloween! (a little early).
Oh, wow, this is a beautiful quilt. I love that it is all Halloween without being super juvenile. The glow in the dark thread is super fun.
And as always, fun fun fun. And beautifully done.
What a beautiful and fun Halloween quilt! I wish I had seen this quilt a long at at the beginning, I probably would have done it with you. I made a paper pieced Halloween quilt last summer, but it’s not as gorgeous as this one. Mine is more of the normal Halloween colors, but I love these colors too! You are totally awesome! Jadahlgr at Yahoo dot Com
WOW! What a wonderful work of art this quilt is! So much to look at, and it really is awesome work. Looks good in the pictures and I bet it is stunning in real life. Totally impressive sewing.
I really like what you have done! For my very first paper piecing project, I am attempting the lotion bottles. So I am way behind the curve on this but I hope to have a small wall hanging completed by the end of September.
Great job, love all the spooky pieces. Glow in the dark thread – even better.
Is it still possible to get the pattern. I love the use of Glow in theDark thread.
Fantastic! Really fun quilting is the icing on the cake! What brand glow in the dark did you use?
This is amazing I love it!
Absolutely Amazing Thank You for sharing
As above
Came across your blog via Pinterest and so glad I did! LOVE this quilt and so sad I didn’t find it at the start of the QAL! Really is stunning. Thanks for sharing 🙂
So I didn’t follow your quilt along, however I think ill go back to the start and make one of these quilts. They came out really nice.
I love how you finished this. The quilting is gorgeous!! Congratulations on this entire project!!!
I have so enjoyed following along with you on the making of this quilt, a great job. I was tempted several times to jump in but have just too many projects going on as it is. You should be very proud of this finish.
so stunning.love the detail and all the neat work………………………………
Am so wishing I’d found this earlier this year….so now I’ll just have to do it as a Quilt It After Y’all Are Finished quilt! I’ve purchased/downloaded all the patterns (and a few extras from the Harry Potter collection for random blocks and for making the quilt larger), downloaded pdf’s of each week’s instructions and am ready to get started on putting together my fabrics and hopefully start stitching by Halloween. So, it’ll be done closer to Christmas or thereafter, but hey, I’m kind of a Halloween all year guy, so I’ll love it just the same! Thanks so much for putting this awesome quilt together! Will be posting progress and hashtagging everything on my Instagram and my blog!
I’ve just seen this fabulous quilt and have to do one myself. Thanks for the great tutorials. All the patterns I need to purchase are now in my Craftsy cart! Happy dance happy dance!!!