Are you looking for a cute and not scary block for Halloween? How about a cute little cat face on a pumpkin? This adorable block will work on trick-or-treat bags, table runners, mini quilts, and larger quilts.
Pattern
For a limited time, this cute cat jack-o-lantern quilt pattern is on sale in a favorite Halloween craft magazine. You can choose to purchase a hard copy that is mailed to you or a PDF download, which you can download to your computer.
Here’s a look at my block:
I loved using a pumpkin-themed fabric for my cat face! Aren’t those little cat-faced pumpkins with fangs just adorable? I want to make several different fabric combinations using different oranges, blacks, and low-volume backgrounds and create a lap quilt.
For my block, I used the following fabrics:
Background fabric: white dotted fabric from “Too Cute to Spook” by Me and My Sisters Designs.
Cat and handle fabric: purple/orange pumpkin fabric from “Bring Your Own Boos” by Cotton + Steel
Pumpkin fabric: orange fabric from “All Hallow’s Eve” by Fig Tree Quilts
This block is a great stash buster, and you can really have great fun with different fabric combinations. I love seeing a cat face block with the whiskers. It adds a nice element of whimsy to the block.
The quilt pattern in the magazine has a great layout with plus-shaped blocks added between rows of cat jack o’ lanterns and makes a finished quilt at 45″ x 48″.
I completed a new quilt called Black Diamonds from the Fat Quarter Shop. This quilt features a new ruler called the half triangle trimmer, which helps you to create perfect 2″ x 4″ half rectangle blocks.
If you purchase the supplies for this quilt using the links in my post, I get a small percentage of the sale to help offset the costs of running this blog. I appreciate any and all purchases via my affiliate links!!
Quilt Kit and Pattern Available Soon!
The Fat Quarter Shop will be announcing this new quilt pattern and quilt kit later in August or early September so watch for an announcement on their social media. The quilt kit will feature a fabric line called “Create” by Alli K Designs.
For my version of the quilt, I used the Too Cute to Spook line by Me and My Sister Designs. I thought this pattern would make a really cute Halloween themed quilt.
Supplies for my Black Diamonds quilt: Too Cute to Spook Fat Eighth bundle, background fabric, pumpkin fabric for center blocks, binding fabric, half rectangle trimmer, and pattern
This pattern is really simple to make because it only contains 2 blocks: a star block and a diamond block. Both blocks use the half rectangle trimmer. I decided to make a test block before cutting out all the pieces and chain piecing.
Here’s my test star block:
Black Diamonds quilt: a test star block
Usually, star blocks are made with half square triangles so I really like the look of this elongated star using the half triangle trimmer tool. It’s a really fun shape! I also made a test diamond block, which went together perfectly.
I decided to go for it and cut out all of my fabric pieces according to the directions. For my center squares in my star blocks, I used the same fabric for consistency. If you decide to go this route, then you’ll need a 1/2 yard of fabric. If you go scrappy, then you could use fat eighths or fat quarters.
TIP: A Stripology ruler saves you so much time and effort when cutting out strips of fabric.
I chain-pieced the star block units first and then the diamond block units. In this pattern, pay special attention to directions because you need to make right-side facing units and left-side facing units.
TIP: Use a Sue Daley rotating cutting mat when trimming your half rectangle units. As a bonus, I also use this mat to cut out pieces for English paper piecing.
Here’s a look at all my completed star blocks and diamond blocks:
Completed blocks for the Black Diamonds quilt
Aren’t they cute? When I pieced the units together, I didn’t worry about having 2 of the same fabrics touching each other. There is so much movement in the finished quilt that no one will notice!
After I had completed all these blocks, I laid them out on the floor with the help of my quilt assistant. As a way to check my placement, I usually take a picture with my cell phone. This picture helps to identify any block placement mistakes, and it also helps me to remember what order I need to sew the blocks.
My quilt inspector checks my block placement!
My quilt inspector sometimes likes to rearrange things when I’m not looking! I sewed the rows together and finished the quilt flimsy in time to take on a little mom and son hiking trip. My son was a good sport and held up the quilt top while I took a quick picture.
Black Diamonds quilt flimsy
Once home from our short adventure, I decided to quilt it with an open free-motion stipple pattern using white thread. For the binding, I used a striped fabric from the Too Cute to Spook line, which I think is the perfect finishing touch for this quilt!
Here’s a look at my completed Black Diamonds quilt, Halloween style!!
Completed Black Diamonds quilt
This quilt finishes at 60.5″ x 60.5″ so it’s a perfect lap size. You can easily enlarge it by making more blocks to expand it, and be sure to watch the Fat Quarter Shop for a blog post announcing the pattern and quilt kit plus a look at all the sample quilts. Watch for a live tutorial by the Fat Quarter Shop launching on September 8th.
Have you heard about the Spooky Box from Fat Quarter Shop? Each year, they release a Halloween themed mystery box, filled with quilting goodies including a project with fabric and notions! You can still buy the 2021 box at Fat Quarter Shop with this link.
For last year’s 2020 Spooky Box, the quilt project was a fun Cat O’ Lantern mini quilt. I pieced this quilt last October, but then set it aside in my to-quilt pile. I was inspired to pull it out and quilt it recently as I was decorating my yard for Halloween.
I made a few modifications from the original pattern. I swapped the black and purple fabrics so that I could have black cat popping up from behind the pumpkin. I also changed the shape of the cat’s eyes and nose from squares into diamonds and a triangle. I knew that I’d quilt in more face details such as whiskers and the famous cat grin.
I did all free-motion and hand guided ruler work using Glide thread in Apricot Blush for most of the quilt and Glide thread in Black on the cat.
Here’s a look at a little spider that I added to each of the black triangles at the top and bottom portions of the quilt:
A little quilted spider
In the orange triangles, I quilted little ghost shapes. I did some basic fills in the background portion, and a swirly pumpkin fill in the purple behind the cat.
For the cat face, I added some eyebrows, whiskers, pupils, and grin. I later enhanced the pupils with an outline of black thread.
I gave the cat a little dimension by quilting some swirls on the forehead, checks, paws, and tail. For the pumpkin, I kept it simple with straight-line quilting to keep the emphasis on the sweet cat!
We went to pick pumpkins last weekend, and my son held the quilt up while I snapped a quick picture in between other pumpkin hunters. I love a striped binding so I used this black/gray/white striped fabric in my stash that I think really frames this little Cat O’ Lantern quilt perfectly.
Happy Halloween from the cat at the pumpkin patch!
I added the finishing touches to my Happy Halloween quilt this week. This quilt is designed by Amy Bradley and you can read about my progress in earlier posts here.
I hand-stitched the binding to the quilt back over several evenings this week (while watching movies with the family). Once the binding was completed, I then hand-stitched on the button eyes for each character. I still need to create a quilt label and add it to the quilt back.
Here’s a photo of the completed quilt:
Completed Happy Halloween Quilt
And, of course, another photo with my outdoor “quilting” cat. He likes to supervise any and all outdoor projects, including the photographing of said projects. In this photo, he had just given his sniff of approval to the quilt!
Cat Approved Halloween Quilt
I hope you’ve enjoyed following my progress on this quilt! I’ve also been working on a Christmas block-of-the-month project from a different designer. I will soon post about that project as it’s nearly complete, but it will be really close if I finish it by this Christmas.
Yippee – I recently completed the final row in my “Happy Halloween” quilt designed by Amy Bradley. This final row features 4 adorable little critters! They are without their eye buttons for now, but I hope to be able to get the whole thing quilted this weekend.
Go to this post for earlier pictures and details about this fun project.
Here’s Mr. Werewolf and Mr. Death’s up close photo:
Werewolf and Death Close-Ups
And the Mummy and Cat close-up photo. The black line detail on the mummy are actual stitching lines over a piece of white fabric!
Mummy and Cat Close-Up
Now that I have all the Halloween critters assembled, I sewed them together into one large rectangle with a “Happy Halloween” row separating the 1st character row from the 2nd character row.
Here is the quilt top before I added the borders. There will be a small black and white inner border and then a larger purple polka-dotted outer border.
Happy Halloween Quilt Before Borders
I will post again showing what the finished project looks like with the borders, quilting, binding, eyes, and other finishing details. This has been such a fun project for me and a great way to use up some of my Halloween fabric stash. All the different colors that you see in the various critters are little individual pieces of fabric appliqued onto a background block.
NW Quilted Cat 