Hocus Pocus Quilt
Last year I participated in a two week quilt-along hosted by Corinne Sovey (@corinne.sovey on Instagram) to piece their Hocus Pocus Quilt pattern in two weeks. It started mid October and called for one type of block to be completed each day (gasp). The Hocus Pocus Quilt has a very graphic design (all of Corinne’s patterns do) and screams Halloween cuteness. To no one’s surprise, the back cat block is what initially brought this pattern to my attention but everything together is just chef’s kiss (mwuah).
When figuring out my fabric pull I wanted to go with the traditional orange/black Halloween colors but muted and also incorporate some greens so it would still fit in our living room. After many coloring pages were tossed on the floor I found a color combo that I liked and picked the Kona colors to match. The final pick ended up being: Bone, Putty, Yarrow, Gold, Terracotta, Ivy, Avocado and Black I am overall very happy with this pull. Bone and Putty ended up looking pretty similar to each other in photos but IRL you can clearly see the difference which is all that matters to me.
Making the actual blocks was definitely a roller coaster ride. Each block that the pattern calls for was progressively more complex to make. We started out with making three simple striped blocks. Easy. I can do that. No problem. Then we moved on to some pumpkins that required a couple smaller pieces but still mostly stripes with a little bit of point matching. Not too bad. Again, the potion, black cat and bat blocks were increasingly harder but still just regular piecing. Then came the broom where foundation paper piecing made its first appearance. FPP is not necessarily hard but for some reason it takes me a long time to figure out which way to sew on a piece so that when it is pressed open it covers what it's supposed to cover. The inset circles were next. Yes. Plural circles. One inside of the other. This was the first time I had made any kind of curved piece so it took me a few days to gather the courage to even attempt it. Once I did, the results were not perfect (because nothing is) but close enough for me to call it perfect and be extremely happy about it. I haven’t attempted a curve since but I don’t think I will need a hype-myself-up period before I attempt it again. Ms. Corinne really saved the best for last though because the last thing we needed to sew were THREE star blocks that required quite a lot of Y-seams. This was also my first time sewing a Y-seam and took a lot of seam ripping to get them to look like stars. Despite all of the seam ripping that needed to be done to get this quilt together I quite enjoyed learning something new in the process of making this top. Though it’s technically not a sampler quilt (where you sample different and varied patchwork blocks and types of patchwork fabric in one quilt) it has a nice sampling of techniques without having to dedicate an entire quilt to one technique… If I had to Y-seam my way through an entire quilt top I would not have a good time.
I didn’t quite keep up with the quilt-along schedule due to trying to sew myself a costume at the same time BUT I did finish piecing the top before starting anything new and it only took me until mid November. I made a joke that it would take me another year to get it quilted but it didn’t! It was finished and bound by the end of February and has been patiently waiting for its time to shine since then.
Once the top was done, on our next trip to see A’s family in eastern Washington, I dropped it, along with the denim quilt, off with his aunt to be quilted on her super fancy long arm. Using black thread, we went with a repeating panto design that reminded me of crescent moons but that would also blend into the background because the blocks are what this quilt is all about.
To finish it off black and white striped binding was used for the edges and I might be biased but it looks GOOD. I don’t know if I will make another graphic quilt like this any time soon. All of Corinne’s patterns are hard to say no to but I am finding it hard to display (we do not have a lot of quilt sized walls in our house) and getting myself to use it is harder than I thought because I don’t want to get it dirty after all the time I put into piecing. I will probably get over that second issue at some point but until that time it will continue to awkwardly float from chair to couch to bench in our living room until it is put away for the season :D
