Three of us ladies here, (Charlie, Rachel & Louise) all have boy children. The three eldest are all in the same year at College, whilst the younger two are close together at primary school. With the half term holidays looming all three ladies pulled together to take it in turns for a childcare day. Louise took them to the otter sanctuary and the beach. Rachel took them to the movies and Charlie took them swimming. (I think Charlie got the short straw!). It is also a tradition at Quilt Direct for Katherine to include the children for an afternoon in the Studio during holidays. She had in mind a creative Halloween project. This was to make double sided motifs and hang them together to create a window garland for trick or treat night.
This is what we did:
Katherine, Louis and Charlie had a lot of fun deciding which fabrics to use and there were few “squeals of delight” when they hit upon another fabric find. We had stars for the witch’s hats, spotty metallic for the spiders, silver metallic for the ghosts and various other contrasting fabrics for the circles.
We needed first to prepare the applique components and we did this by cutting “Steam and Seam 2 sheets” to match the size of the fabric. We then pressed this to create a tacky side to the fabric and then put on warm and natural cotton batting. Making a sandwich of two pieces of fabric with the batting in the middle. We then steamed the whole piece together for 16 seconds. Katherine stressed that it was important to steam the sandwich not iron it, at this stage, as the steam is actually what sets the piece.
The boys then used a ruler and measured each die that we were going to use and calculated how many shapes they could fit into the sandwiches that had been prepared. Katherine explained the mathematical way to calculate this. They used the Accuquilt GO Halloween Medley. They cut the motifs using the Accuquilt GO Big Fabric Cutter.
Much fun was then had by all assembling the garlands. We found that stringing them together didn’t work too well at first and concluded that we needed a spacer. Charlie was all for popcorn, but it was decided that pasta quills would work better as a spacer. So off to the shops to get some pasta and some sweets. Using a large needle and fishing line, Louise then strung them all together.
We all think that they look amazing and so much fun.
Click here to see all of our Accuquilt products.