Eerie shadows throwing
As the moonbeams flit;
Black cats up on fences
Howl at the night;
Witches riding broomsticks,
What a scary sight!

A French folk song by Grace Budd

Oh for the love of all that’s spooky, LOOK at the quilts that have been popping up in the flickr universe!

This spooktacular wall hanging was made by mkissa who found my jack-o-lantern and kitty patterns over at www.sewhooked.org . Looks like she made great use of the amazing collection of letters over there as well.

Let’s take a closer look at one of those pumpkins shall we?

Oh is he not just the cutest jolly pumpkin ever? Great fabric choices all around! *wild applause*

And now Miss Kitty, gracefully arched before the light of a full moon none the less:

Can’t you just hear her “mmmrrowing”?

Oh! What’s this?

Do I spy another jolly jack-o-lantern in the midst of  a mighty spooky laugh?

Why yes! There he is!

Sewtobed is the braniac behind this mini quilt creation, and I love him! In all his bright and quirky fabric randomness, he’s perfect!

But wait! Look what else she made!

Oh Miss Kitty is funking it up tonight! Great use of the black fabric, and the balance of the white scratchies is fabulous.

Well done ladies!! I bow to your festive, funky creations!

Seriously. Where did my weekend go? I was just Friday, I swear it was!  *shakes head in disbelief*

Ok. let’s think back……

Last night – work

Saturday morning – work

Friday evening – work

Oooh right. I’m not really complaining, I actually really love my job. I guess I just got used to the overwhelming lack of clients (and extra sleep!) for the better part of this year.

Well at least Maya dragged me outside for a lovely, albeit brisk walk into town on … Saturday was is it?

Hmm, seems I have a thing for trees…

This is Maya’s favorite spot to play. I think she calls it Fairy Hollow.

Well. There’s laundry to be done and a son to feed.

Happy Monday to you, dear readers!

I can see the finish line….ooh I’m nearly there…the Sew Connected 2 boat is sew close I can almost reach it…

For Sodeste:

Reveals a something new depending upon your perspective:

The colors are to die for!

Many thanks to Caryl Bryer Fallert ,whose unbelievable gallery of some of the most amazing quilts I’ve ever seen, provided hours of inspiration for me when thinking about this quilt block

Um… my name’s Sonja and … well, I’m a creative workaholic. I didn’t intend to end up this way. But there’s just so much to do and learn! I can’t help myself. I already have about a million creative projects, and overdue deadlines, clients, unpacking, housecleaning, but I’ve been really into photography lately.

It started out innocently enough. I just wanted to get ready for all the weddings that we were going to this summer. But now I have to admit, I’m sneaking out on the weekends to capture shots around the neighbourhood:

I can’t even blame my husband for enabling this habit with a new Nikon D 5000 for my birthday. I was already addicted long before this.

I guess that’s why I’ve come to this meeting. To find some kind of peace with my ways. It’s ok to love creating isn’t it? To constantly be searching for new and exciting ways of doing things, or finding new skills to master? I guess I should apologize to my children. Even when I’m out supervising their playtime outside, I’m studying bracketing and flash compensation.

And I’m sorry to my Aunt. I just couldn’t help myself during my last visit to see you..

I don’t know what else to say. Except maybe thank-you to my hubby for his patience and understanding. Funny how he never seems to mind that going out for dinner just about every night of the week. I’m just too busy with my artistic creations and projects to set foot into our well applianced kitchen. Well, that is until next week when I might suddenly decide that I want to explore the culinary realm of artistic development and expression… But first I think I have a book cover to edit somewhere?

Hee hee!! I can not even begin to tell you how completely tickled I am over all of  my latest gnome sightings on Flickr.

Check these beauties out! With cute little faces embroidered on! Kris really did a great job here.

Photo by Kris "skovy"

If you remember, Kris made this fantabulous witch.

Sarah, the free piecer extraordinaire, has been giving gnomes to her friends:

Photo by Sarah "krommama"

This cute mushroom was made by Jenni who blogs over at Parrish Platz. Click over to see her adorable gnomlette!

Photo by Jenni P "parrishplatz"

Have you ever seen gnomeling’s fancy party dress?

Photo by Lisa Piinette "Ipinette"

Lisa made darn sure her little gnomeling is ready to celebrate!

… and oh my word, gnomes have even been spotted in the infamous Doll Quilt Swap, round 7!

photo by Adrienne "arnden"

Here, Adrienne has modified the Gnomeling pattern to make Ma and Pa Gnomes to adorn her truly delightful doll quilt. Come take a closer look:

photo by Adrienne "arnden"

See the snow white beard on Pa, and the 2 piece lace trimmed outfit Ma Gnome is wearing? Be still my heart! I asked Adrienne if she kept a copy of her pattern alteration, but alas, she hadn’t.

Great work ladies! I’m keeping my eyes peeled for more gnomes to spot!

This particular girl was spotted by Santa of all people. Man she’s hard core flying around in the dead of winter.

Photo by Fern Treacy

And they’re getting cheeky with their outfits!

Photo by Kris "skovy"

The first of these night fliers was made by Fern Treacy who blogs over at Not Nigella. She was a Christmas present for her sister.  How lucky is she? I mean a witch mini quilt, for Christmas?!

Funky flier number two was created by Kris who blogs at Summer at Grandma’s house. She took the pattern one step further to allow for customizable stocking and shoe options for those fashion conscious spell makers! I was over the moon when I saw her version and pretty much begged Kris to post her new and improved pattern over at the Artisania patterns quilt gallery. Click here to find the pattern.  Thanks Kris, perfect timing with Halloween just around the corner!

I’ll be adding Kris’ great pattern soon to the free pattern links over there to the right ———->

If you’re hankering for some more Halloween patterns, be sure to check out my free Cat and Jack-o-lantern patterns.

Even though our fabulous new home is still in utter renovation – I haven’t had time to brush my hair never mind actually unpack anything – chaos, my little sewing hutch is now parked in the corner of the master bedroom right next to the lovely and sunlight filled patio door.

On my to-sew list:

- one overdue wedding gift,

- and five, no make that 4 Sew connected 2 blocks. God help me,  I am 4 months behind on my beloved flickr swap.

I finally dug deep into my still boxed up fabric stash to retrieve the package of  heartwarming fabrics sent to me by Amanda, who blogs at Sasikirana Handmade. Who incidentally, has just given birth to her second baby – a beautiful little boy! Ooh Congratulations Amanda!!

Here’s the block I made for her the other day.

Isn’t her embroidery just so perfect?

I love getting selvedges to play with!

I thought long and hard about how I wanted to incorporate my initals Amanda so thoughtfully included in the fabric package. She had requested an improvised block, something unplanned that comes together spontaneously. Ooh boy, for those who are familiar with my style, I have a hard time not planning. Really? No pattern? No mulling about layout and fabric for days, testing and thinking and testing again? Spontaneous sewing? *gulp*

Ok now look closely. This star is not perfect. It just so happens that our printer is not yet hooked up, so this star’s pattern was hand-drawn out of sheer desperation with the only ruler I could find. The long honking 20″ quilting rectangle. It turned out pretty well eh?  There. I was spontaneous.

Perhaps I should start back in June when I was eyeballs deep in wedding dress construction.

At that same time we decided to list our little 2 bedroom condo for sale. So we launched right into hauling up 80% of our belongings into storage (which includes my great aunts basement – Thanks Auntie Gisa!) and pretty substantial renos. We painted all of the wood cabinets, painted all the walls, doors trim, replaced all the yucky worn brass knobs with nice nickel lever handles and then 2 weeks later listed.

Kitchen before:

Kitchen after:

The living room after:

All this while, I had to drive in the evenings an hour down the freeway to sew at my aunts house.

Our condo was sold by the evening of the first day. Yay!!

Ok,

Then I desperately needed to finish the dress as the wedding was looming closer. Oh yeah, AND sew 7 fully lined silk shawls for the bridesmaids. Hmmm.

All the while looking for a new place to live. We found it.

A block and a half down the street from the condo, and a block away from the kids school. OMG we totally lucked out. It’s twice the size of the condo, a little yard and garden, 4 bedrooms, 4 bathrooms including an office/studio space I get to share with the hubby! I’m so excited about this you have no idea! Especially when you consider my old creative space was the tiny wall next to the couch in the living room.

Here’s the room under construction:

Oh man check those greenish yellow walls. Oy. Usually I like yellow, but this looks like it was painted over the mint green that was there before, so it just looks … ill. Yuck.

I also was informed today that the house value has already risen @ $70k since June.*happy dance* You can see more photos of the before pictures here. We’re planning on painting everything.

Ok, so my last post was literally the weekend before the wedding. (Somehow at the same time of the stagette. Photos here if you’re interested.)  DRESS IS DONE AND LOOKS LIKE A MILLION BUCKS!! She’s happy, I’m ecstatic, and I dive into finishing the shawls. I finish those up literally the night before we leave. I even wrapped each shawl with nice wide ribbon and personalized tags. I’ll have to show those when I get the photos from Glen, the photographer and my unofficial brother:

Now I’ve kinda been stalling to show you the dress until I got some nice/proper shots from Glen. But dang it, it’s taking too long! (Ok in all fairness to my bro, he does have a full time day job with photography as a side business) So without further ado, here are what I’ve managed to collect from my own few shots, and from friends around facebook.

Let’s start with the bridal photo shoot. These are my own shots I was able to snag.

You can see more here.

Just a quick note: These shots were shared on facebook by friends of Mike and Analise. Unfortunately I didn’t take note on whose photos they were. Oops! I hope this is ok, however please let me know if you’d like me to remove your photo and I will immediately.

Here you can see the chocolate silk shawl:

And I’ll have you know that she jumped and danced for literally 3 hours straight and didn’t have to adjust the dress once!

Mission accomplished.

She loves it…

*tears*

I love it too.