Boo Who?

    I seem to start plenty of conversations with "It's been a little crazy around here".  So many of them that I think I am going to have to redefine my idea of "normal".  It is possible that a bit of chaos IS the norm in my life.  

    Most of the upheaval revolves around our house renovations.  We bought a fixer upper that is on a quiet street, close enough to walk to the beach, with a perfect sewing room.  Then we proceeded to change everything else about the house.  I could go on, and on about living with the debris of our latest project. 

    Building a new second floor over our current living room has turned my house upside down.  There are two sofas in the kitchen where the table should be.  End tables, lamps and artwork line the walls in the dining room.  Plastic drape with zipper openings covers most of the doorways on both the first and second floor.  Despite the plastic and our contractors' best attempts, drywall dust is everywhere.  This is the first time since we moved here that I have found myself wishing I could leave the house for work.  

    This week, my work includes taking the style shots of my latest Jaftex project.  BOO! is the name of the fabric collection by Delphine Cubitt for Henry Glass Fabrics. I couldn't resist working the name of the fabric line into the quilt. The whole quilt is made using 4.5" cut squares from every fabric in the line. There are a few half square triangles and a few clipped corners mixed in. Even better, the whole fabric line glows in the dark! The white background prints that I used for the letters are from the "Lower the Volume" group from Blank Quilting, another of the Jaftex brands.

    The quilt has been finished, quilted and bound for several weeks. My problem was finding a spot to take a great photo. It doesn't look like the contractors will be done before my deadline, so I have decided to make the best of things. Notice the new drywall and missing plug cover in that photo? I will do a little creative cropping to make this photo work. Normally I can take outdoor shots of the larger quilts. Obviously Halloween happens in the fall, so this one is a bit tougher. It is very hard to make spring in north Florida look like fall when everything is blooming.

    In addition to the quilt, I needed to make something for the Scrap Crazy Challenge for the Brand Ambassadors. All of the Ambassadors have received a set of the 6" templates and one of my books to inspire them. It is very fun, especially for me, to see what they have come up with.

    For my part, I chose to make a runner using the A template from the Scrap Crazy 6" set. I alternated those stars with a stack-and-whack style block cut from the stripe that is part of the fabric line. Those blocks are also made with the A template. Once again, all of the white you see in the fabric prints glows in the dark! It looks great when the lights go out.

    Luckily the bin of our Halloween decorations was easy to reach in our attic space. No wide-angle shots of this runner, unless you want to see the cartons of stone that will soon be the face of our new fireplace in the background. I am going to consider my BOO! projects complete and tuck them away until October. Keep your fingers crossed that construction will be complete and my house will be back in order long before the real Halloween rolls around!