Happy Halloween!!

Here are some pumpkin and squash blocks; the patterns were taken from Ruth McDowell's book "Pieced Vegetables".

Head over to the Passionpatchwork blog at http://passionpatchwork.wordpress.com/ to see another version of this pumpkin block. I was impressed to find out that the book has been translated into French - "Legumes en Patchwork" - as in all my years of teaching I have only ever met one other person who had bought this book! It's an odd book but I love it.....

Here is a Turk's Head squash block - I love choosing the colours for these blocks and playing around with them - "auditioning them " - to see what happens, before sewing the pieces together - its amazing how the most unlikely fabrics seem to "work" in this type of design.

I have ALL of Ruth's books and enjoy looking at her work.

I never used to buy fat quarters of fabric - only yardage - but of course small pieces are ideal for this type of work as you only need a small amount of each. And Ruth likes the rather outrageous fabrics - they work very well for her - I could never bring myself to buy very much of some of these fabrics - but after a trip up to Kisco in Leicester several years ago, I came away with an arm full of fat quarters in "loud" fabrics with large prints that were great fun. There are some hand dyed fabrics in here as well.

Happy Halloween!

More photos from Lampeter, Minerva and Gregynog soon.