Restyled: Around the Kitchen Halloween Edition

Happy Fall friends! Now that we've officially crossed over into fall it's time to jump into some new projects. We've got a perfect place to start - our Halloween version of the Around the Kitchen pattern! We've added a little bit of spooky and a lot of fun to our kitchen shelves and we think it's the perfect way to celebrate Halloween.

We've changed up the arrangement this time to just feature the jar blocks. That's one of the things we love about the Around the Kitchen pattern - the blocks all measure the same size so it's easy to mix and match and create your own layout. We decided for the Halloween version to just focus on the jars...sort of a mad scientist's collection of goodies. We picked our favorite halloween fabrics - we have some adorable ones this year - and sewed them up into jars. For the center jar we appliquéd a mushroom out of wool scraps. We added some embroidered details as well; the spider in the lower corner and some extra texture to the bugs at the top.

You might remember that the Around the Kitchen pattern is a paper piecing pattern. A little paper piecing experience is helpful, but this pattern is definitely a beginner level pattern. If you've never paper pieced before I would definitely recommend Clem's Into to paper piecing class. We've made a kit for you with all the fabrics we used and included templates for the mushroom and the spider so you can add the extra detail to your quilt as well. And just a tip - we found that it worked the best to add the embroidered details while the paper was still on the back of the blocks.

For this sample, Connie, Angelique and I split up the blocks, each making a few. Then Connie combined them together and quilted spiderwebs throughout the quilt. I love the extra detail the spider webs adds. Connie mapped out the straight lines a bit before she started quilting. Once those were stitched she used her walking foot and quilted the web lines around the straight diagonals. This is one of those wonderful quilting designs that looks great and adds a ton of detail without being too complicated!

I love how unique and fun the quilt turned out. It definitely gets me excited for adding more handmade touches to our halloween celebration this year. And don't forget about our bats from last year! See? Just like I told you, the perfect projects to jump into fall sewing. You can find our Around the Kitchen Halloween kit in the shop and online.

We have some exciting news to share with you! Remember our Ugly Sweater contest last winter? Well we are bringing back the contest and the theme this year will be the Around the Kitchen pattern! We have been dreaming up unique ways to use the jars, books and plant included in this pattern ever since we started writing it! We cannot wait to see the creativity you all will bring to the contest this year! The contest will officially start in January, but we'll be back with more details soon so you can get started on your project. In the meantime, start brainstorming ideas!

Happy Sewing!

Roxanne