Maximum Halloween
Ultra Maximum Halloween Supreme: a custom Halloween Quilt
As soon as this client was able to articulate the vibe of this Halloween jack-o-lantern custom quilt, I got started on turning the vibe into a snuggly quilt. The aforementioned vibe is best described as “100% Ultra Maximum Halloween Supreme”.
“My husband is obsessed with Halloween,” she said. She meant the movie and the holiday and all the accoutrements. Halloween has never been my holiday, but turning quilty visions into quilty realities is to ME what Halloween is to these customers. So I could relate. Everybody has their passions.
I got to work designing and creating a one-of-a-kind Halloween quilt that would capture the spirit of spooky season all year round.
Designing a Jack-o-Lantern themed quilt
At the heart of this quilt is a bold jack-o-lantern face. This is not just any jack-o-lantern, but the iconic glowing pumpkin from the opening credits sequence of the 1978 horror classic Halloween.
I do not watch horror movies. My oldest brother LOVED horror movies growing up, and he could get me to flee from any room he wanted to himself just by hitting play on our VHS (I know, I’m dating myself) and striking up the opening credits sequence of Halloween or A Nightmare on Elm Street, or even something fully camp like Killer Klowns from Outerspace. No thank you! Even the music gives me the heebie jeebies (which is another movie I will never watch).
So now you know how committed to these customers I am, forcing myself to watch the opening credit sequence on YouTube multiple times, and taking a screenshot, to nail these jack-o-lantern features. You’re welcome!
To make it extra special, I pieced the pumpkin from a mix of both themed and non-themed orange prints, including a jack-o-lantern print fabric, creating a meta jack-o-lantern made of jack-o-lanterns, worthy of a strange horror movie all in itself.
The customer sent me some adorable themed pumpkin fabric that she and her husband had already picked out and purchased, because they simply couldn’t NOT. So she was pretty sure he would love to have it included in this project. I turned it into some stars to mix up between the jack-o-lantern blocks.
I gave most of the jack-o-lanterns the same, happy, stereotypical faces, but aside from the main central face, we also decided to throw in some goofy faces, some more nefarious looking faces, and even a fully maxed out themed face with witch hat eyes, a ghost nose and a bat mouth, thereby guaranteeing that nobody else will have a quilt quite like this! Hilarious.
You can also see from the photos that I used some spider web orange fabric, and the whole thing uses a truly deep black constellations print from designer Lizzy House as the background fabric. I insisted on the background and I love the way it turned out, so silky smooth and practically shining with darkness.
Then to squeeze a little more out of this theme, we decided it needed some candy corn. So I added a lovely framing row on the top and the bottom of sweet candy corn triangles, that almost look like a toothy mouth, about to bite down on all those hapless jack-o-lanterns.
Even MORE Halloween? The details matter
So I made a jack-o-lantern out of Jack-o-lantern print fabrics, I stitched the iconic face of the jack-o-lantern from the opening sequence of the movie Halloween, I used a pitch black night sky as the background, and I framed the many pumpkins in giant candy corns.
But don’t you think it needs a little more Halloween…?
The customer chose this brick red/orange houndstooth flannel which gives it a great cozy heft as well as brisk autumnal vibes. I quilted the whole thing with a silvery gray thread in spiderwebs. The quilt binding is an orange and black stripe. I love using striped fabric as binding!
A fabric version of the recipient’s cartoon ghost tattoo was stitched onto the autumn houndstooth flannel on the back, prior to quilting, so that the applique stitches wouldn’t show on the front. I simply traced a photo of his tattoo, sent by the customer, and gave him a little speech bubble with a festive message, and appliqued both on with a zigzag stitch. Such a fun personal touch that I hope he will really cherish for many Halloweens to come.
All the Halloween that Fits
The result? A quilt that truly lives up to its name: Ultra Maximum Halloween Supreme. It’s packed with spooky charm and all ready for movie marathons, haunted house lounging, or curling up with a cup of cider.
If I could have crammed even more Halloween into this quilt, I would have. But this is all the Halloween that fits!
If you are looking to grant a loved one’s Halloween dreams (or whatever they dream about), check out the Custom Shop, and I’ll turn your vision into a tangible reality. I hope you will also peruse the Galleries for more quilty inspiration.
