I Made a Little Quilt That Is a Ghost for The Little Ghost Who Was a Quilt

The best thing, for me, about having a small niece, is that I can still make all the cute children's things that I want to make, because I still have someone to give them to!

Honestly, I might actually make more things for my niece than I did for my own kids, if you don't count things like clothes or homeschool materials or collaborative crafts, because when my own kids were this little kid's age, I was too busy parenting little kids to get enough crafty time to actually make them cute things! My younger kid was four years old by the time I made her first quilt, oops!

So when I saw The Little Ghost Who Was a Quilt in a local bookstore a few weeks ago, and I was immediately charmed by it, and then immediately after that I wanted to make a little ghost quilt--I did!

Happily, the book's endpapers feature the quilt design of the titular little ghost, making it super easy to see what similar fabrics would look like. And even more happily, I did not have to buy a single thing to make this quilt! To be fair, a couple of the fabrics that I used are remnants that I'd previously bought with no purpose in mind, but everything else was honest-to-goodness scraps and stash, from the fabric for the top to the cotton batting to the cotton sheet I used as the backing.

All of the pieces are 5" squares. I wanted my quilt to be 10 blocks by 12 blocks, so I needed 120 blocks total. I sort of tried to keep the colors even between purple, aqua, and white, but it's a little blue-heavy. There are just a few grey blocks scattered in, because it turns out that I don't actually own very much grey fabric. The little ghost quilt in the book also has tan blocks, but for some reason I don't have ANY tan fabric, and anyway, I wasn't really feeling the tan colorway... which is perhaps one reason for why I don't own any tan fabric, lol!

To make the quilt, you lay out your pieces and rearrange them until you like the way they look as a whole, then stack them by rows, piece each row, then piece the rows themselves together, being quite fussy about lining up the corners:

Then you take up your entire family room floor making your quilt sandwich!

This is why I can never say that my creations come from a pet-free home, ahem. I would NEVER want my creations to come from a pet-free home!

I pinned my quilt quite well to the batting/backing, trimmed it out roughly, then quilted it via stitch in the ditch, earning myself yet another day of having a wonky back in the process. Why must quilting be so ergonomically incorrect?!?

Here's how it looks all nicely quilted and ready to be properly trimmed:

I got through trimming the batting before my supervisor came to check up on me:

I trimmed the backing to 1" wider than the quilt on all sides, then folded it in half twice, clipped it in place using every plastic sewing clip I own, and stitched it down:

Proper quilters use a blind stitch or another invisible stitch, but I'm happy with a plain old zig-zag.

And there's my little ghost quilt!

The lighting was soooo perfect right when I finished, but in the hour it took me to run out and do early voting, it got completely overcast. But I had to take my photos anyway, because Halloween presents are more fun if you can get them in the mail in time for the recipient to receive them before, you know, Halloween!

...and that's a bunch of cat hairs there on the purple block, sigh. I did wash it and dry it, and then go over it with the lint roller, before I put it in the mail.

Because you don't have to follow a pattern, just make sure that the pieces look cute together as a whole, this is actually one of the quickest quilts I've ever sewn:

I'm always especially pleased when I can work any of my favorite meaningful fabrics into a piece. Below, the smocked blue fabric used to be part of the only skirt that my older kid ever willingly wore. The silky white fabric to its right is actually from my wedding dress!

My favorite part, though, is that I used variegated thread to quilt it, and it looks so nice from the back!

Isn't it crazy that you can make something so substantial, and so pretty and perfect, entirely from materials you already have on hand? Historically, that's exactly what quilting should be, including reusing those bits of old clothes, and I LOVE that there's a children's book that encourages children to notice and care for the simple, unassuming gift of a patchwork quilt:

I didn't have any ghosts on hand to put into it, though, so that part's going to have to figure itself out later. 

P.S. Want to follow along with my craft projects, books I'm reading, road trips to random little towns, looming mid-life crisis, and other various adventures on the daily? Find me on my Craft Knife Facebook page!

In Which I Sewed Fancy Witch Hats Until I Literally Ran Out Of Fancy Fabric

Never mind that I don't actually have any occasion for wearing my fancy witch hat lined up yet. I'll think of something.

Anyway, doesn't the old saying go, "If you sew a fancy witch hat, the occasion for wearing said fancy witch hat will come?" When the occasion arrives, I shall be prepared!

I used this free witch hat pattern from Keiko Lynn to get started, although I sort of riffed on it and did my own thing regarding construction. The pattern has the perfect dimensions, 17" across and 22" tall, and looks adorable on everyone I've seen wearing it. 

My fabric stash is appallingly disorganized, which actually has the benefit of causing me to make some delightful discoveries while I'm in the process of digging through every inch of fabric I own to uncover the one small swatch that I know I have somewhere around here. So while I was looking for the nice black Kona cotton that I knew I'd bought a pretty large remnant of the other day--

--I also came across the flower-embroidered tulle that I (over)bought a few years ago to make the kid a dance skirt:

It looked delightful stitched over the black cotton, so then when I was cleaning out my kid's old Trashion/Refashion Show fabric stash and found a length of white tulle embroidered with gold--I think it used to be a curtain?--I remembered the rest of my wedding dress that I've been cutting up and sewing into cute stuff for a few months now:

The perfect interfacing, I've decided, is Pellon 809. I tried to go stiffer for one hat, but it was nearly impossible to stitch curves when sewing with it, and while I like how nice and sticky-out the brim is, it kinda hurts my head to wear it. The Pellon 809 makes a slightly drapier brim--

--but at least you can sew it and wear it without tears!

I managed to get three entire witch hats out of the black cotton/black embellished tulle combo: one for me, one for my younger kid--because if you do not dress as a witch sometime in October, do you even attend a historically women's college?--and one that I sold in my Pumpkin+Bear etsy shop:

I only had enough wedding dress fabric to make one hat, also already sold:

And of course, is it even a proper witch hat if it hasn't been blessed by one's familiar?

I am actually dying to make more of these hats, which tbh I do not need to do because I just finished piecing a Little Ghost Who Was a Quilt quilt (if you need to radicalize any young friends/relatives into the true and correct conviction that quilts are special and magical so that you can give them quilts for every occasion and have a fighting chance that they'll like them, I highly recommend this book!) and still need to back and quilt and bind it and get it in the mail to my niece. Also my current coasters are too summery and I want to make some autumn ones. And I got this book from the library and so obviously I now need to make name buntings for my younger kid and her roommates. 

So it's for the best that I literally do not have anymore fabric in my stash to be sewing witch hats with. But if I end up at Goodwill this weekend and somebody's tacky old prom dress with its hundred yards of embellished tulle just happens to fall into my cart... well, life is tough sometimes! 

P.S. Want to follow along with my craft projects, books I'm reading, road trips to random little towns, looming mid-life crisis, and other various adventures on the daily? Find me on my Craft Knife Facebook page!

You Should Take Pumpkinhead Photos

This tutorial was originally published on Crafting a Green World in 2022!

It's unwieldy, unbalanced, and will definitely put a crick in your neck, but it's so worth it! 

This photo shoot with Jack-o-lanterns on our heads is one of the funnest Halloween activities I've done yet in my life. And I used to get paid actual cash money to work in a haunted house and scare the snot out of people! 

And happily enough, this pumpkinhead photo shoot is also one of the most eco-friendly Halloween activities! You don't need any single-serve candy with assorted wrappers. There are no costume components to source. No plastic, no face paint. All that's required is a fresh pumpkin from a local farm, your favorite comfy fall clothes, and a lovely natural space, ideally with deciduous trees in the process of transitioning.  Here are all the components for the perfect pumpkinhead photo shoot:

• fresh, whole carving pumpkin. You have to go pretty big with these, so I found a place that was selling them per pumpkin, not per pound. I can eyeball it better now, but the first time I took my teenager with me and held pumpkins up to her head to make sure I wasn't buying one that was too small. The trick is to find a pumpkin tall enough that it can touch your shoulders. Too short, and not only will it slide around, but the top of your head will be taking the entire weight of the pumpkin, which is HEAVY!
• pumpkin carving tools. Yes, I use those cheap-looking mostly-plastic carving kits that all the big-box stores sell, but, um. Those pumpkin carving kits are the bomb! Not only are they easy to use and give super accurate results, but my family has been using the same cheap tools for probably over a decade by now. If you gave me one of these nice stainless steel and wood pumpkin carving sets, though, I wouldn't be sad...
• autumn apparel. Jeans, boots, and flannel shirts look suitably autumnal.
• head protection (optional). The Jack-o-lanterns really are quite heavy! To provide a little padding and avoid getting pumpkin guts on your hair, you can opt to wear a washable fuzzy beanie or a shower cap.
• wagon (optional). We walked down a local trail for a bit to find the perfect autumn scene for our photo shoot. A folding wagon made sure we didn't have to lug Jack-o-lanterns in our arms while we hiked!

Step 1: Carve your Jack-o-lantern!

Carve the opening in the pumpkin at the bottom, not the top. Make it just big enough for your head to fit.  

Scoop out all the guts, and reserve the pumpkin seeds to roast. 

Any simple face works well in a pumpkinhead photo shoot. I think that smiling faces are funnier and neutral faces are slightly creepy. I've found through trial and error that anything detailed that you might try to carve will just get lost amid all the other details in these photos. In this case, simpler is easiest AND best!

Step 2. Take a lot of photos!

Take the photos the same day that you carve the pumpkin. The only thing worse than standing around with a fresh pumpkin on your head is, well, standing around with a not-so-fresh pumpkin on your head! 

For the best results, your background should be fairly simple and autumnal, and have some depth. Fields always look good, and forests can look good if you can get a little distance from your pumpkin-headed subjects. Placing your pumpkinheads close to the camera in front of a flat vertical surface like a wall is likely going to make your photos, in turn, look flat and too posed.  

Pumpkinhead photos are awesome for people who are awkward in front of a camera lens, because they don't have to pose in any particularly cute way. They don't even have to smile! You can literally just stand there, arms hanging limply at your side, half-blinking with a weird expression on your face, and as long as you've got a Jack-o-lantern on your head, you'll look awesome.  

Certain posed photos can look especially funny, though. I searched Pinterest for family, couple, children's, and graduation photo shoots, and made a list of several to try. My partner and kid thought of more to include, as well, as we got into the groove. 

We did end up having to ditch all of our ideas that involved various dance poses or anything requiring good balance. Those heavy, wobbly Jack-o-lanterns play fast and loose with one's center of gravity!

Step 3: Edit photos to make them even spookier.

 

Your photos will look awesome as-is, but you can edit them to make them even more awesome. 

Adding grain or using a sepia filter makes the photos spookier, as does vignetting them. Play with the saturation and temperature to make the leaves and pumpkins pop. 

If you can use Photoshop, you have even more options to make your photos spooky and fun! My partner darkened the eyes and mouths of the Jack-o-lanterns, removed joggers from the background of some photos, and, as in the photo above, popped the head right off my teenager. That photo is my favorite! 

And when you're finished with your photoshoot, I actually think that having the opening at the bottom makes the pumpkin even better as a Jack-o-lantern on our porch. It's a win-win!

Pumpkin Pounding: A Halloween Project for Small Children

 

This tutorial was originally posted on Crafting a Green World way back in 2009! 

Encouraging my children's independence is VERY important to me. Not only is it easier for me to parent two small children who can pour their own milk and put on their own coats and carry their own balance bikes up and down the front porch stairs, but it's also a priority in my parenting that my girls see themselves as capable individuals who can handle challenges and perform the meaningful work of day-to-day living. 

Because of that, carving pumpkins into Jack-o-lanterns can be a really frustrating experience. 

I do permit my children to cut with sharp knives (with supervision), but not to use them on something as thick and unwieldy as a pumpkin. Although there are around-the-house materials that make pumpkin carving an activity more appropriate for small children (subject for a later post), my girls' favorite Jack-o-lantern craft is something that we call pumpkin pounding.

Pumpkin pounding is a hands-on activity that uses real tools on a real pumpkin, and each of my girls was able to do it with help at age two, and independently by age three. The best part, however, is that in the end, depending on how enthusiastic a pounder your kid has been, you end up with a real, live Jack-o-lantern for sitting on the porch steps and popping a candle inside. 

You will need:

• field pumpkin that's not too round. You want to be able to sit it on its various sides, as well as its butt, and not have it roll all over creation.
• hammer. You can lay out a variety of hammers for your kids to experience, but the best tool for them is one that's as light as possible but has the widest hammer head
• nails. Again, lay out a variety to try out, but the best ones are as wide as possible with the widest head
• knife and scraping tool and whatever else you'll need to cut the top of the Jack-o-lantern and scrape the insides

1. Set the pumpkin up in a space where kids have enough room to swing a hammer, and where they can get in the correct hammering position--a low table or the floor or a bench, etc. 

Be prepared to leave the pumpkin in that space for a few days, to give the kids the chance to come back over and over to this activity independently. 

2. Show your child how to press the tip of the nail into the pumpkin flesh until the nail is held there by itself. That's the safest way to hammer, but older children can also be taught how to gently tap the nail into place with their hammers. 

For kids younger than three, you may need to set up a handful of nails like this for them to hammer. 

3. Let your child hammer nails into the pumpkin. 

Remind them not to hammer the pumpkin just for the heck of it, but pumpkins are extremely sturdy and surprisingly forgiving, and even though your kid will hit the pumpkin a LOT, and HARD, as they're aiming for that nail, it's not going to crack.  

4. At about five years of age, your kid can also learn how to use the claw end of the hammer to lever the nails back out of the pumpkin when she's done hammering. Otherwise, you'll probably need to do this, so give her plenty of nails to work with before she needs your help. 

5. The Jack-o-lantern will show best with as many nail holes as possible, so feel free to take a whack at the pumpkin yourself. It's amazingly cathartic. 

6. When everyone is completely finished with the pounding (and this may take several days), cut off the top of the pumpkin, and scrape out the insides to finish it. Pop in a candle, and enjoy your pretty pumpkin. 

My kids and I are, for some reason, inordinately fond of our autumn-themed craft projects. What are your favorites?

You Should Watch The Shining With One of Your Teenagers (While the Other One Hides in Her Room)

Her spooky contribution turned out to be last-minute roasted vegetables, because apparently the spookiest dinner of all is one that doesn't follow proper nutritional guidelines!

That was the night that we intended to watch The Shining, but alas, in the end I could not convince Will that vintage horror isn't actually scary--she used to be so much more gullible when she was younger! So it was a week later, over Chinese food that we bought with the excuse that I needed the specific type of break-apart disposable bamboo chopsticks for our gingerbread Cuneiform project, that three of us finally got around to watching the movie that two of us had been highly anticipating.

I was especially excited because I'd just finished reading both The Shining (started on a Friday while subbing in a high school Agriculture classroom for the day and finished the next morning because I just about could not put it down) AND its sequel that I had not even known existed, Doctor Sleep:

I'd certainly read The Shining before, because I was a hyperlexic kid who tore through Stephen King in elementary school (kudos to my grandparents for never censoring a book! We shall believe that this was for philosophical reasons and not because they DNGAF what I did as long as I wasn't bothering them). I also saw the film version multiple times on cable (see above re: grandparents and lack of censorship). My takeaways as a kid were that both were memorable and likeable, but not terribly loveable.

Lol, I guess all that stuff about alcoholism and mental health and abuse sailed right over my head, thank goodness!

So, the book version of The Shining is actually brilliant. Doctor Sleep is even better. And the film version of The Shining is also brilliant, and different enough from the book that it's still surprising even if you just read the book a week ago.

I read somewhere that Stephen King, an alcoholic, wrote The Shining at a time when he was actively, heavily drinking. And that's why Jack, who ostensibly spends 99% of the book sober, still acts drunk and has no positive coping skills to manage his sobriety. The main character of Doctor Sleep is also an alcoholic, but, like the Stephen King who wrote him, he becomes sober and, like King, utilizes AA and its resources. That sobriety, in turn, leads to the protagonist making different choices than the Jack Torrance of The Shining could have. The depiction of the alcoholic character in each book felt very real, and it's fascinating to me that it comes so directly from the author's own experiences. 

My teenager is the perfect age to appreciate the way that the film version of The Shining is a WHOLE MOOD. OMG the scenery. OMG the sound. OMG the interior design. OMG THE CARPETS!!!

I mean, look at the little organdy dresses that the Grady children wear! I 100% had almost the same dress in peach. 

You know how when your kids are tiny, you're so excited to see their little faces when something magical happens? Christmas morning when they realize that Santa came, or the first time they see Cinderella's castle at Disney, or you break open a geode? You guys. When about halfway through the movie I casually asked my kid, "So what do you think that whole 'redrum' business is all about?" and she was all, "I dunno it's weird though," I was SO EXCITED to see her face during the big reveal! 

Top Ten Memory for sure!

The scene where they throw around the n-word sucked, though. They said it once and we all went, "WHOAH!" Then they said it again. And then a third time just to push the point, I guess. AND that's one of the parts that they lifted straight from the book, so... yuck.

The next day, this commentary track sustained me through coffee, breakfast, housecleaning, putting away Halloween decorations, and just some general Sunday-level puttering:

I kept having to go find people, though, to interrupt their own Sunday-level puttering and tell them all my Shining fun facts. Here are my favorites:

• The Steadicam operator (who invented the Steadicam for this film!) used a boom to raise and lower the Steadicam as it was pushed along, and at one point he discovered that young Danny weighed exactly the same as the Steadicam, so sometimes he would remove the Steadicam from the boom, put Danny on it instead, and fly him around the set while Danny shrieked with laughter.
• In my favorite scene from the film, Wendy takes a peek at the page in Jack's typewriter, and sees that all he's written, over and over, is "All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy." Weirded out, she goes over to the six-inch tall stack of pages he's already written, and starts flipping through them, only to see that they ALL SAY THE SAME THING. Every page is laid out differently, with paragraph breaks and parts for dialogue and other constructions, but it all says the same thing. It's SO GOOD. So apparently, Kubrick wanted Wendy to be able to flip through the pages at random and have everything that she pulled up look cool like that, so for months, every spare second that his secretary had was spent in typing up all those pages herself. 
• Kubrick insisted on shooting the film in chronological order, which is not how films are usually shot. The shooting also ran months over schedule, and combined with that, the Steadicam operator said that pretty much as soon as he got on set, little Danny commenced a huge growth spurt. It's not noticeable because the film was shot in order, but the operator said that if you took a shot of Danny from the first scenes of the film and put it next to a shot of him from one of the last scenes, he's visibly older by the final scene. Which probably makes the film that much more realistic on a subliminal level!

Ugh, I did not need one more must-watch horror movie to add to our yearly viewing in October, but I probably can't let another October go by without re-watching The Shining. I also dearly desire to create the REDRUMMUS and the hedge maze in pesto on top of pasta like in this viewing party, and I very much need someone to agree to dress up like the Grady children with me for trick-or-treating.

And I LOVE these decorations, because even more Halloween decorations is clearly something I was (not) needing...

Halloween 2022: Rapunzel and Her Tower

This is the last time for who knows how many years that I'll get to spend my second favorite holiday in person with all of my favorite people.

So we did it all! 

Can you be too old to trick-or-treat? NOPE! 

Syd's got ballet all Halloween evening, so at least my practically fully-grown teenagers only trick-or-treated once, here at our local state park's event. 

Rapunzel's Tower was a hit, but I think it was also Will's most awkward costume to date, and this kid has worn some awkward costumes over the years!

Can you eat too much Halloween candy? NOPE!

This Halloween snack mix looked better on TikTok. It turns out that it's nearly impossible to create a Halloween-themed movie night snack mix that the entire family will like... so instead we created one that nobody loved!

Can you watch too many scary movies! Yes, but also NOPE!

This year's traditional meatloaf mummy for our traditional Family Movie Night!

The meatloaf mummy was joined by skull mashed potatoes, cheesy breadstick bones, the above cocktails and mocktails, orange dipped pretzels, a DIY candy apple bar, and after Syd got a look at the menu, she roasted some vegetables so we don't all die of malnutrition.

Can there be too many carved Jack-o-lanterns on your porch? NOPE!

Okay, but can there be too many Jack-o-lanterns on your head? ALSO NOPE!

I am going to frame this entire photo shoot and put every photo on my walls, all year round.

But surely otherwise there can be too many Halloween craft projects. THAT IS VERY MUCH ALSO A NOPE!

These babies get to stay on the coffee table through Thanksgiving!

The only thing we're missing out on is neighborhood trick-or-treating tonight, since us country folk don't get the pleasure of kids coming around to our houses. But when we pick Syd up from ballet super late, we're still then going to pick up our traditional Halloween take-out pizza, and we're still going to stay up even super later watching our very last horror movie of the season while eating the rest of the kids' weekend trick-or-treat haul.

And then Nutcracker season begins!