A Fabricatted Tale Quilt Finished

 Would you believe I have finally finished this quilt?! I never thought when I started this project, last year back in September, that it would have taken this long to complete. Somehow this project just kept growing and growing. Oh, not in size mind you, just in details. So much so that I thought more than once, it was all just too much. But now that it is finished, to the very last stitch, I am rather fond of it after all. Grant you it is not a large quilt by any means, in fact many would probably just call it a small wall hanging or doll quilt. It is only 31.5 inches by 36.5 inches, but what it lacks in size it makes up for in depth and complications. It started out simply enough, I just wanted to add a few more cats, but then a story began to grow in my mind, and in the end I couldn't help myself so I ran with it.

As a refresher, here is one of the original panels I bought many years ago, in its original condition. The fabric design was by Leere' Aldrich for Clothworks, and was part of a series called Scribble Monsters. Its title was, "Happy Halloween." Never having been a fan of Halloween, I was determined to make changes to it from the moment I bought it, but it, along with an identical panel languished and were soon forgotten in my fabric stash. Well no longer!

With the help of these two delightful fabrics I found on Spoonflower, I was able to make the most delightful changes, in what would soon become my story quilt. I just love the mice and crickets.

The little mouse I cut from the fabric became Timothy Tidymouse, a fine tailor who lives in the Withey Woods, along with his friends the seven Cricket brothers, who are very fun fiddlers indeed.

I decided to do some applique and so started with adding the cats. I will not bore you with the infinite details of how much appliqueing I finally did. Suffice it to say it came to, 30 cats, 7 crickets, 1 mouse, 12 pumpkins, and 21 leaves. Not to mention the hand drawn mouse on the house, and modifying the large bat in the sky, because to me he looked more like an owl than a bat. I named him Camphor Owl. Please don't howl. lol

Here are the modified star shapes I turned into cobwebs. Once again I will not bore you with how absolutely mind numbingly long it took to stitch these. The smallest ones I top-worked before I put the fabric on the quilt frame, the medium and large webs I saved for quilting. To give you a slight idea of how crazy this was, there are on average 40 stitches per small webs, 55 stitches per medium webs, and 85 stitches on the largest webs. Just don't ask me to count all of the webs on the fabric, or I shall go mad. If you want to try and count them, feel free, I shall not mind. I went nearly cross-eyed just stitching them.

If that weren't enough I decided that all of the background details of the fabric would be top-stitched to give it more three dimensional texture. Here I stitched tiny random green stitches for just the fun of it. NOT!  The spiders themselves were both top-stitched and quilted. All the eyes on everything are a million little black french knots. I admit I am a glutton for punishment.

 

I didn't like the trident in this monsters hand so I made it a spider swatter instead. I think it looks much better. I also got rid of his horns by simply putting a cat on his head. Marvelous! A cat for a hat, what do you think of that?

I found coming up with different ways to add interest and depth both a challenge and a delight. So I stump worked a couple of the monster's, (what would you call those), stalks or topknots? Suddenly it all began to come to life, before my very eyes. Oh the stitched endless circles.

I mean not just my eyes, these crazy spiders eyes! When I top-stitched all of these things, for the most part I used regular sewing thread, as the embroidery thread I had was far too thick.  It worked very well and helped lower the amount of stash thread I have had in my collection for years.
 

I was a bit stumped for a while, because one of the changes I wanted to make was to this boring weird wall. I decided to draw it in as a bit of  brick facing and that helped. But I needed some tiny pumpkins to go on it and couldn't find any that would work. I decided to just draw some on a bit of the scrap orange fabric I had and applique them on. It worked like a charm and fixed the problem immediately.

 

The brick actually amazed me that it worked, because I have never drawn pumpkins before, or brick walls like that either, so it was new territory. This gave me the courage to try and free hand draw a tiny mouse onto the eaves of the house, and make the chimney brick too. I was so pleased with how they all turned out, I could have shouted for joy. Don't you just love it when a plan comes together?!

This encouraged me to embellish the monsters more, and add details like french knots everywhere there was a dot on the fabric. I imagined the monsters, (who are really Woodland Sprite's in monster costumes, made by Timothy Tidymouse), are carrying bags of candy, which the cats have caused them to spill, sending candy falling down like rain. The Sprites are candy makers who hide their true identities behind elaborate costumes, so that no one but Timothy knows what they really look like.

This fellow is so funny he has five legs. I embroidered all the arms and legs of the monsters/sprites with embroidery thread. You may not be able to tell, but also some cats have three legs and some have four. Others only have one eye. It is all very sad. But they will insist on needless fighting. Sprites are not something you should really mess with, even if you think they are only monsters.
 

 

Still even after I have nearly finished with all of my embellishments, that long black band, interspersed with pumpkins and leaves, just left me feeling blah. It just didn't blend in well enough to my liking. I just kept wondering what I could do to fix it?! Then I had the idea of using my tailors chalk pencil to draw a curvy line connecting all of the leaves and pumpkins. I had some heavy pale yellow/green vintage thread, on a big wooden spool. I tried it out as an embroidery quilting thread and it worked splendidly. It was just exactly what it needed to tie the entire quilt together, both literally and artistically.

 Here is the quilt in all of its final glory. I couldn't show you the Greek like grid pattern I did on the orange plaid strips. No matter how I took the picture, it simply wouldn't show up. Just believe me when I say I think there are 40,000 stitches in this crazy thing. It was a lot of work, but the whole point of doing it was to challenge myself, with trying something I had never done before.

Here is the back, with all of its quilted details. I thank my son for his kindness in holding it up for me. Without which I simply couldn't have taken good pictures. He said he especially liked the way the white spiderwebs showed on the back. All in all this was loads of fun, tho it took me a total of 9 months to complete.

I enjoyed the hand stitching and did so many times, to the sounds of my favorite youtuber. I highly recommend her to all of you. She is a very talented lady, whose voice and projects will delight you. If you want a pleasant experience and a boost to your creative juices, just go check out, Marion's World. I found her truly wonderful. She got me through all of my tedious stitching hours, and many of my enjoyable stitching ones too. 

I hope you all have a God blessed day, and this finds you happy and healthy. I also thank you for your patience in waiting for this final episode of my Fabricatted Tale Quilt.