Ahhhh, Fall. My favorite season of the year. Even though, or maybe because, I’m a life-long Southeast Texas girl, I love this time of year. Maybe it’s because of the cooler weather. Hey, 90 degrees in October IS cooler than 100+ degrees in August! Or maybe it’s the lovely Fall decor that shows up in stores, or maybe it’s even because it leads in to my two favorite holidays of the year – Thanksgiving and Christmas. Whatever the reason, the start of school at the end of August signals the beginning of my favorite time of year. It also inspires me to get back into the studio and start working on some holiday projects.

I’m currently working on a couple of Christmas gifts, so I won’t be sharing those just yet. But one thing I am working on that I can share is this adorable Halloween table runner.

This is, as you probably realize, just a charm pack that I’ve laid out and started sewing together. I love charm packs for a few reasons. Fist off, they are almost always an “instant project” just waiting to happen. Forty-ish 5″ squares precut and ready to be sewn together in to your own creative vision. In this case, I literally just laid out the squares in to rows and started sewing. I got the lay out done and more than half of the sewing done during my hour long lunch break last Thursday, then finished off the top during lunch Friday. Saturday, I stopped by the quilt shop to pick up something for backing, and I’m hoping I’ll get back to it today and have it finished tomorrow. It’s going to look great on my big dining table!

I also plan to do the same thing using a more generic Fall charm pack to adorn my table starting November 1. I was a little late with the Halloween runner, but I’ll have the November runner done in plenty of time for lots of use this year. I picked up a backing for it, too, on Saturday.

I really do love to dive in to various projects during the Fall and Winter months, because the days get shorter, the nights get longer, and I find that I prefer to spend a lot of that time holed up in my studio making pretty things. Don’t get me wrong, I really love Spring, too, but I tend to tolerate Winter and Summer. I get my biggest creative bursts during Fall, though.

After I finish the table runners and the Christmas project I’m working on, I plan to pick up the Prairie Days quilt again and finish it. I got a little frustrated with the quilting on it, but I really want to get it finished so we have another quilt for the living room this winter, so it’s fairly high on my list of projects to complete. After that … well, there will be more Christmas projects and maybe a couple of home decor projects, too! Stay tuned for more excitement in the world of Texas Quilt Girl. 😉