Spooky All Points Patchwork Blog Hop!

This is the Halloween leg of the All Points Patchwork book tour...
Diane has really made this super fun, pulling together English Paper Piecers for different themed challenges month after month.  All week people have been showing off their Halloween themed EPP projects and today it's my turn:

Halloween Pentagon Table Runner

A couple years back, when I met my friend Eri, she was working on a blue and white pentagon pattern, alternating two fabrics and piecing together rings of 10 shapes each.  I was deep in a hexie addiction at the time and couldn't quite understand what you would do with all these little rings of pentagons, but filed the idea away under "cool" in my mental library and decided to try it when I had a chance.

Rings of pentagons, it so happens, are AWESOME for fussy cutting cute novelty prints.  I even played with stripes, which I'm not that comfortable with.

I made a bunch of rings from 1.5" and 1" pentagons and started playing around with layouts.  The boys helped, of course.

Once I had them where I wanted them, I marked a ring with my white marking pencil (I love that thing), removed the templates, gave each ring a good press, and pinned it into place.

Then, staying very close to the edge of the pentagons, I top stitched them into place by machine.  I stitched around the inner ring and up and down the points on the outside, removing pins as I went.

Once they were all securely stitched on, I layered, pinbasted, and quilted in "organic" crosshatch circle-ish things.  I like the light thread on the dark background, and I like how the round shapes play with the pentagon rings, but.. I think I might want to add some perle cotton stitches in fun colors somewhere too.  I've got 2 weeks til Halloween, we'll see what I come up with.

So that's it!  My contribution to the All Points Patchwork Halloween Hop.  If you haven't checked out a copy of All Points Patchwork, please treat yourself and do so!  The book is absolutely beautiful and full of ideas for how to add even small bits of English Paper Piecing to every area of your life.  Make sure to visit the other Halloween Hop crafters.. there's tons to learn and see in the links below~

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