Halloween Zig Zag Table Runner

I love Halloween! Before having a child, Halloween was my favourite holiday (now it's tied with Christmas) and I still love decorating my home with pumpkins and ghosts and other bits and bobs. 

About a month ago, I was online shopping for supplies for this year's Christmas Presents (more on those nearer the time) when this cute Halloween fabric caught my eye. Usually I knit or crochet the presents for my immediate family, however this means months and months of work. When you hear knitters/crocheters refer to "Christmas in July" this is what they mean - if you're making something for Christmas, you generally need to start it in the summer. Last year, despite starting early, I was still putting the finishing touches to stuff on Christmas Eve! So, I decided this year that I'd do fabric based presents, in the hopes that I'd be able to put them together a little bit faster and therefore cut down on the pre-Christmas stress. 

After I chose what presents I would make for everyone, I was on the internet ordering the fabric that I'd need. Of course what with it being near Halloween, I had to have a look through the seasonal fabrics they had in stock. When I saw the Cheeky Pumpkins Charm Pack by Studio E I just couldn't resist - it went straight in my shopping cart! The handy thing with charm packs is there's a multitude of simple projects you can make with them. They're a really great option for someone who's new to sewing and is a bit nervous about cutting, or someone who wants the 'patchwork' look for a project, but doesn't have a rotary cutter or quilting mat and ruler so cutting the squares could be a bit daunting. 

My initial plan had been to make cushion covers for the scatter cushions on my couch, however when the fabric arrived and I measured up the cushions, I realised that I'd have needed 64 squares of fabric. Charm packs come with 42 squares as standard, so I didn't have enough. Unfortunately I couldn't source that fabric anywhere locally, and if I was to order it from the States again, it wouldn't have arrived in time for Halloween (and let's not forget that I'd possibly get hit for customs charges again in Dublin, grrr!) I had a look on YouTube for ideas on what else I could make, and I found the Zig Zag Charm Pack Table Runner by the Missouri Star Quilt Company. It was the perfect project!

As you can see in the video, you can pretty much make the runner any length that you want. I've got a really small kitchen table - it does extend, but unless I've got people over for dinner, I leave it folded up - so I decided to go with 7 rows of squares. I didn't want anything hanging too far over the edges, seeing as I've got a 4 year old, and 2 crazy dogs who could very well get curious, and pull the thing down on the floor to play with!

my table is a mess!

I started off by separating out the charm squares and sorting them by pattern. (In this charm pack I got 3-4 of each fabric, other charm packs vary depending on how many patterns are in the range; sometimes you'd only get 1 or 2 pieces of each, other times 6 or more, but it will say on the pack, so you'll know before you buy.) Once I had that done, I started laying them out on my table, and playing around with colour and pattern combinations until I found a layout that I was happy with. 

When I'd settled on a layout, I made sure to take a photo with my phone so that I'd remember what way the pieces were arranged. This is a really good tip if you're making anything that has to be pieced together, whether it's knit, crochet, or sewing, and it's something I'd definitely recommend doing. In a lot of cases when you're sewing pieces together, you're sewing them with their 'right' sides together, and it can sometimes be a bit confusing trying to work out which edge you're supposed to be sewing along. Having a photo that you can refer back to just makes the process a whole lot easier and can save you the time and stress of having to go back and unpick stitches!

Once you have your patches stitched together in rows, it's time to hit the ironing board. I absolutely hate ironing, and I'm going to be honest and say that I never iron any clothes for my family - the only exception being stuff like dress shirts where there's no option but to iron them. I'm dreading when my little boy starts school and has a uniform, because that'll definitely have to be ironed! I've seen some videos and blogs where people don't iron their seams, but to me that's complete madness! Believe me, if there was a way to avoid having to iron stuff, I'd be all over it, but it's essential to iron out seams - it keeps your projects flat, secures your seams, and makes your stitch lines sit more evenly.  It's unfortunate, but ironing goes hand-in-hand with sewing projects, there's just no way around it. I like to iron my seams 'open' as opposed to ironing them all laying the one direction. Some people will swear by one way over the other, but I reckon it's personal preference. I find it a lot easier to line pieces up if my seams are open.

ironing the seams open makes it easier for me to line up my pieces. use pins to ensure they stay in place

When I had all my seams pressed open, it was time to start attaching the rows. I did mine 2 rows at a time. You could pin all your rows together and bring the whole thing over to the sewing machine, but for me there'd be too much of a chance that a pin could fall out, or something could go wrong. I find that doing them 2 rows at a time forces you to check your work, and also if you do go wrong, it takes a lot less time to unpick one row of stitches than it does to unpick the whole thing! When I'm pinning my pieces together, I like to line up the two seams, and put a pin vertically down through them to hold them together. Some people don't pin at all, and more power to them I say! I just find that if I don't pin, my seams are off by miles and it drives me nuts. I envy those who manage to get their seams all nicely lined up, while avoiding stabbing themselves with quilting pins over and over again!

I love it when a plan quilt comes together!

Once all the pins were in, I brought the piece over to the machine and started to sew. As you can see, the pieces are positioned 'right sides' together, and because I'm sewing along the edge, it's impossible to see the piece underneath. For me, this is really why it's so important to use the pins - so that when I get to the end, I don't discover that the piece underneath has somehow shifted and my stitches have missed a section. The tutorial calls for a quarter inch seam, and I'm actually using a quarter inch quilting foot on my machine, which makes it easier to see where I should be sewing. This is completely optional, I'm useless at 'eyeballing' stuff, so if there's some sort of gadget or tool I can use to help, I'm all for it! This foot was relatively inexpensive, and I've found it hugely useful, so for me it was worth it, but it's not really an essential. (I'll put links below to where I got mine, but remember that the different accessories are often machine spacific, so double check before buying!)

I leave the pins in right until the needle is about to hit them

As I'm sewing along and I'm approaching a pin, I'll slow down. This is for 2 reasons - firstly I want to make sure that my seam doesn't bunch up as it's going under the presser foot, and secondly I don't want to run over the pin with my needle. If the needle hits the pin as you're sewing, you'll blunt your needle, and that's the best case scenario. Worst case scenario, you break your machine! Generally what'll happen is you can break the needle, which isn't the worst thing in the world, but it's a complete pain in the arse to have to change a needle in the middle of a piece. The way I avoid this is by slowing down as I approach the pinned piece; then if it looks like the needle is going to hit the pin, I'll pull the pin out right as it gets to the needle. If the pin isn't in the way, I'll continue sewing slowly (in case I misjudged) and then speed up again when I've gone past it. Once I finished sewing the two rows together, it'd be back over to the ironing board to iron out the seams, and repeat the process until all the rows were sewn together.

Sewing the layers together was very straightforward, and the best bit was that once that was done, there was no need to put binding on the quilt! I just used plain black fabric for the backing, and I had a half meter of quilt batting left over from another project, so that fit nicely as the filling. 

stitch in the ditch

Next part was the top-stitching, which is always my favourite bit, because it means I'm into the home stretch, and I can really see how my project is going to look when it's finished. I did mine slightly differently to how they did it in the video; I did my 'stitch in the ditch' first, and then after I'd finished that, I did a quarter inch seam all around the outside edges of the runner. The only exception to this was the section where it was left open to facilitate turning it 'right sides out' again, after the backing and batting were sewn on. I did my quarter inch seam along that side first, just to secure everything.

quarter inch seam around the edges

And that was it! It's now sitting prettily on my kitchen table! I'm delighted with how it turned out, and also with how quickly I was able to finish it. I'm thinking of doing another one with Christmas fabric when that time of year approaches. I've also got a few other random charm squares floating around the place, so I might put those together and make another 'everyday' one for when it's not a holiday - having the runner on the table has been quite effective at stopping both me and my husband from coming in and dumping stuff on the table! There were a few squares left out of that charm pack, and I've got an idea in mind for what I'm going to do with them.....stay tuned!!

Fabric: Charm Squares ~ Cheeky Pumpkins by Studio E

            Backing ~ plain craft cotton from Hickeys Home Focus

            Batting ~ cotton lightweight batting from Hickeys Home Focus

Thread: Piecing ~ Moon plain white (any 100% cotton white thread will do)

             Top Stitching ~ Gutermann Black (any good quality thread will do)

Stuff you'll definitely need: 

    Sewing machine (unless you want to do it by hand like a loon)

    Good scissors

    Pins (the longer the better, ones with glass heads are great because you can iron over         them and they won't melt)

    Iron and ironing board - make sure you've got the steam set to full!

    Stitch unpicker (just in case)

    Measuring tape (ruler will do in a pinch)

Stuff that's not essential, but may be handy to have: 

    Quilting mat

    Rotary cutter

    Quilting ruler

    Quarter inch foot for sewing machine

    Stitch in the ditch foot for sewing machine

    Quilting extension for sewing machine

In case anyone is wondering, my sewing machine is a Pfaff Ambition Essential

Halloween Blanket

I wish I was still young enough to trick-or-treat

Greetings folks! I'm back to give the skinny on my latest project!

If any of you read my Red Heart yarn review, then you may remember I mentioned that the reason I took the plunge and bought the yarn was because I wanted to make a blanket for my son. When I wrote my review on the yarn, I was a few squares in to the blanket, and I'm happy to say that having completed the whole thing, I'm still every bit as in love with the yarn as I was then. Phew!

So to get right down in to it, first I'll give you the basics of the blanket design (I'll link the pattern below for anyone who wants to have a crack at it themselves) it's a fairly simple layout - 9 squares and a border around the edges. Obviously there are varying colours and such, I'll get to that further down.

The squares are solid granny squares, and I have to say I really like how these are constructed. Usually in a granny square - solid or traditional - you increase when you get to the corner space where there's a chain2 gap, and into that gap, you put two double crochet, chain two, two double crochet. With this method you always end up with a little gap in the corners, so it's never completely solid.

there ends up being an X shape across your work

However, using the method in this pattern you get a completely solid, and in my opinion, much neater looking square. The difference is that when you get to the last stitch in a side you do two doubles and one treble in that stitch, then one treble and two doubles in the first stitch on the next side, which makes the point in the corner solid, while also increasing the number of stitches in the next round. 

Each round ends with a slip stitch and the next round starts with a chain3 and continues as before, the only thing you need to watch out for is that you don't accidentally skip the slipped stitch when you get to the end of the next round, otherwise that side will be one stitch short. Because of the way each row is almost fastened off before the next one begins, it made changing colours very easy, and the join between the colours is seamless.

The squares worked up quite quickly, I would be able to get a whole one done while I was sitting watching TV in the evening. Once the squares were done, it was time to start the faces.

The many faces of Halloween

As you can see in the picture above, four of the squares have assorted faces, and one says 'Boo!'. The faces were easy enough to make, although I found with some of them there were still a lot of gaps showing between the stitches when they were finished. For example, the triangle eyes and noses were quite 'gap-y' and so were the oval shaped eyes on the second face from the left in the picture above. The instructions tell you to leave a long tail after you fasten off, so I left an extra long tail and used a yarn needle to weave the yarn in and out of the stitches to fill in the gaps.

The 'Boo!' was slightly more difficult, to make. The two letter 'O's were fine, as was the exclamation mark. The 'B' was slightly trickier, and it ended up looking like a number 8. It took a fair amount of manipulating it, when I was stitching it to the square, to get it to look like a 'B'.

Once all the faces were done, it was just a matter of stitching them on to the various squares. One thing I will say is plan carefully when you're putting the face pieces on to the squares - I'll go in to a bit more detail about this further down. I found the easiest way to get the faces right was to lay the square out flat and then pin the pieces down before sewing them on. It would be extremely rare that I'd pin anything in crochet. In fact, I don't think I've ever done it before, however it was the best way to keep all the pieces in the places you want them, because I found that even the piece I was working on tended to move around a lot as I was sewing it - I'd leave the pins in right until I had the whole piece pretty much sewn on.

Never have I been happier to finish seaming a piece together

Next step was sewing all the pieces together. It said on the pattern to sew the pieces together using the back loops only. It didn't specify what sort of stitch to use, so I used a mattress stitch to give as seamless a join as possible. Mattress stitch is a fairly strong stitch - it's also used to sew sleeves and seams in sweaters, so I figured this would be a good robust stitch which would be capable of standing up to a vigorous toddler.

Sewing through the back loops only was a bit of a faff, to be honest. There ended up being a gap where 4 pieces intersected, which I had to go back and sew tighter when the whole thing was completed. The way I put it together was I sewed the top three squares together, then the middle three, and then the bottom three, so that I ended up with three long strips. I then sewed the strips together. 

I mentioned earlier about planning the layout of the faces carefully, the reason I say this is because when you're sewing the pieces together through the back loops, it's hard to weave in tail ends of yarn neatly. When you lay out your face pieces, do it so that when they're sewn on, the yarn tail from the square will be pointing towards the outside of the blanket. Similarly, when you're sewing the pieces together, rotate the multicoloured pieces so that their yarn tail is pointing towards the outside as well. Obviously, you won't be able to do this with the 'BOO!' square, because it's in the centre. The first round of the border is just double crochets, so the yarn tails from the squares can be woven in neatly and securely with those stitches.

Before your boder is on, the blanket should look like some sort of Halloween amoeba 

Once the pieces were sewn together, the border was a piece of cake. The first round was just double crochets using the grey yarn, then the second round was 'shells' using the black yarn. A 'shell' is when you make a single crochet, skip two stitches, put 5 double crochets in the next stitch, skip two stitches, then repeat all the way around.

So there you have it! The Halloween blanket is finished and my little boy is delighted with it. He's been sleeping under it every night since I gave it to him. I think overall it took me about 10 days to finish it. I really like this pattern, and I think it's something that could be adapted quite easily to be used for a different occasion, like Christmas, Valentine's day, etc.

Yarns: RedHeart.com

2 x Red Heart Super Saver #312 Black

2 x Red Heart Super Saver #254 Pumpkin

1 x Red Heart Super Saver #356 Amethyst 

1 x Red Heart Super Saver #400 Grey Heather

1 x Red Heart Super Saver #672 Spring Green

Pattern: Pumpkin Face Throw

Red Heart Yarn

Disclaimer: This review is my own honest opinion of this product. I am not sponsored by, or affiliated with the manufacturer or seller of this yarn, in any way. I purchased it myself and I am not being paid, or given free gifts, in exchange for writing this review.

"I'm in love!!"

This is the first 'review' post I've done, but since this is a product that I've been DYING to try out, I think it's a good one to start with. Perhaps I'll make reviews a regular feature, we shall see.

As I said, I've been wanting to try out Red Heart for ages. A huge number of knitting/crochet YouTube channels and blogs seem to use this yarn for their tutorials/projects. I've also made a lot of various bits and bobs using their free patterns (they've got tonnes of fantastic ones on their website). 

I've been in their online shop numerous times drooling over their wares, but what had put me off ordering up until now was that they didn't have a list of shipping rates for Ireland, and I didn't want to fill up my cart with goodies only to get to the checkout and find out that shipping costs more than the actual order (I've experienced this with a lot of sites, and I really can't justify spending $30 to have a $25 order shipped) However, their website has had a complete overhaul and they now have a super clear shipping table showing the exact prices for loads of different countries. Their shipping prices are very reasonable when you consider the size of the packaging required - when you're shipping balls of yarn it's not so much the weight that'll push costs up, it's the fact that it usually has to be shipped in a box if you're ordering more than one or two balls.

Anyhoo, enough about that. One of the projects I'm currently working on is a Halloween blanket for my son (it's another Red Heart pattern, I'll link it below) and the colours used in it are orange, spring green, royal purple, grey, and black. Now, because this is an American company, their patterns use yarn in US weight terminology. Most of them use 'worsted weight' yarn, and the UK/Irish equivalent is 'aran weight'. 

This is where I usually run into problems, because if I want my project to be the correct size, I need to use the same weight yarn (or else try to work out the stitch count with different size hooks/needles and a different weight yarn, and my poor addled brain just isn't up to that challenge). 

I have two main gripes about the aran weight yarn that's available in Ireland:

1. When it comes to variety of colours, pickings are pretty slim - if you want traditional 'tweedy' type colours, or baby colours, then you're grand. If you're looking for bold, vibrant, funky colours then you'll find it difficult to find something to suit. 
2. The yarn thickness is massively inconsistent - I've found the thickness varies hugely depending on the brand you use. I've also found that even within the same brand, certain colours are WAY thinner than others. (this was particularly problematic when I was making my stitch-cation afghan, some of the yarns which were aran yarns were as thin as a lot of double knit yarns)

So with those two things in mind, I bit the bullet, and ordered the yarn for the blanket from Red Heart. The estimated shipping time was something like 20 working days, so I was a little concerned that I'd be under the gun to get it finished in time for Halloween but it actually arrived in about a fortnight, so I was pleasantly surprised.

Now, if it's not already evident from what I've written so far, I had very high hopes for this yarn, so I was almost nervous opening the box because if it didn't live up to my expectations I'd have been devastated! 

Well, let me tell you, I was not disappointed. I can honestly say that this is, hands down, THE BEST YARN that I've ever worked with. The yarn weight and thickness is consistent throughout all the balls. The colours are beautiful (especially the purple, oh my God, the purple). It's a good sturdy yarn, exactly what an aran weight yarn should be. It's just a dream come true, right down to the little details, like how on each one of the yarn skeins there's a centre-pull and at the other you can pull from the outside, whichever you prefer (I'm a centre-pull gal, myself) and there's a handy dandy guide on the wrapper to tell you which end is which. There's also a free pattern on the reverse of the wrapper.

"idiot-proof yarn band"

So in case there was any doubt, my rating of this yarn is two very enthusiastic thumbs up. In fact if I was some sort of mutant and had extra thumbs, I'd be putting them up, too. Seriously. I know I sound like a broken record but I actually can't get over how much I love this yarn. If I wasn't already married, I'd be putting the moves on it (providing there isn't some sort of law preventing that sort of thing). It goes without saying that I'll be buying more of this, I'm planning my Christmas gifts so will likely be purchasing the supplies for those in the coming weeks. Hooray!!

Oh, in case anyone is wondering, the other yarns pictured in the top photo are Lion Brand Yarns. I'm making a poncho for my sister using those. So far, I'm liking them a lot. Hopefully I'll do another review when I've gotten further along with the poncho and have a better feel for how they are to work with.

Yarns I bought:

Red Heart Super Saver in:

Shade 312 - Black (2 skeins)

Shade 356 - Amethyst (1 skein)

Shade 254 - Pumpkin (2 skeins)

Shade 672 - Spring Green (1 skein)

Shade 400 - Grey Heather (1 skein)

Halloween blanket pattern: Pumpkin Face Throw