Quoth the raven, "Nevermore."

I made this mini raven quilt to send to the OnlyChild as a little Halloween surprise. It was quick and easy and she can hang it on the wall or use it as a mug rug.

 

I'll give you some quick instructions to make one, although you could probably figure it out for yourselves fairly easily.

I started by looking online for a suitable image. I googled "crow silhouette" and found plenty. I had to pick one that didn't have too many skinny pieces (such as bird legs) because I wanted to appliqué the design, but I wasn't up for embroidery.

I chose this image from here. What I really liked about this picture was the opportunity to add some colour to the little quilt with the moon.

Ignore the watermark (it won't make a difference) and save the picture to your files. There are tons of great images available for Halloween - cats, witches and witches' hats, bats, ghosts...

Insert your chosen picture into a Word document so you can play with the size. I re-sized my image to 6"x6" and then printed it in black and white on plain paper.

Using my handy "light box", I traced the image to Heat n' Bond light.

 

Yes, my "light box" is my sewing room window. It works. I actually had the image taped to the window backwards so that I could have the bird facing right in my final product. But it doesn't matter - that was just a personal preference.

I didn't take any photos of the actual process, but I fused the Heat n' Bond to my black fabric, cut out the "moon" of my image and around the edges, and then fused the black fabric to a slightly larger piece of orange fabric.

Then I made a little quilt sandwich with the top, a piece of batting and another piece of black fabric. I spray basted these layers together with some 505 spray.

The next step was to sew around the raven, tree branch and moon with a straight stitch, right through all the layers, so I appliquéd and quilted in one step.

I trimmed my piece to 6"x6" and then, with a wide zig-zag, stitched around the outer edges. I could have put a binding on this little quilt, I suppose, but I liked the more primitive finish.

And...voilà.

I think a few of these together would make a cute wall-hanging or table runner. Here are a few more images I might try (all images are clipart):

 

What fun!