It’s almost Halloween! I love Halloween. I’m not super big on the spooky side of Halloween, but I can do cute! That’s why I’m so thrilled with my most recent quilt finish, a flowering snowball block Halloween Quilt!

A Flowering Snowball block uses templates to cut three different shapes that make up the block. The “petals,” or the corner pieces, the background, and the center. The Flowering Snowball block is deceptively named, since a Snowball Block is so easy! But in truth, the Snowball Block produces an optical illusion, and that exactly what this block is (even though it is based on an Orange Peel design, not Snowball!).

I drew my own templates in Adobe Illustrator to create a finished 12″ block, but I know there are free templates all over the internet, for all different sizes! After LOTS of time cutting out my fabric, I decided that next time… I’m buying acrylic templates 😉 Or, I know AccuQuilt has a die for this block too! My method was a lot of effort, and my cardstock templates eventually got shaved down to a smaller size- NOT great when you are trying to have accurate piecing!

I love how this block creates such an eye-moving pattern. It never ceases to amaze me! I used it for my niece’s On Trend Shieldmaiden quilt and that still runs as one of my top 10 favorite quilts, ever. This time, the scrappy background stole my heart! I love everything about it.

When I set about making this quilt, I had a small pile of cute Halloween fabrics. I pulled others from my stash that weren’t holiday-related, so the Halloween theme is pretty subtle overall. From afar, the purple, black, aqua, and gray doesn’t scream “THIS IS HALLOWEEN!” at all, which means I can keep it out awhile before and after the holiday and totally get away with it 😉 Orange makes a rare appearance, only a few times in prints and then the flower centers are different orange fabrics. I think the rarity of orange helps sell it as a not-overly-Halloween quilt. As for the specific fabrics, I know several are Cotton and Steel from ages ago, and there are a few Dear Stella ones in there too. I can’t remember well enough to share more than that, though!

Since I used 12″ blocks, the quilt finishes at a perfect 60″x 72″ throw size. We love throw quilts around here. I think I fold and put away at least 3 quilts at the end of each day!

I debated on how to quilt this, since I had spent so many years pulling it out of a bucket to work on during the Halloween season! I wanted it to be just perfect. In the end, I quilted it on my home machine, first echoing the circles and then filling in the background spaces with a snaking line, and the petals with grid quilting. It took For. E. Ver. My machine is not specifically for quilting, so the throat is quite small. It was an intense workout getting this all quilted!

Despite all the threads all over the house from burying my stops and starts, everyone in the house loves this quilt. I think the quilting added such a softness to it- it will wash up amazingly, I’m sure! Now we have three Halloween quilts (I made the Magic Charm quilt, which is a Freebie!, last year) and that means we have more Halloween quilts than Christmas quilts! I better get sewing, Christmas is two months away! 😉