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Mary Corbet

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I learned to embroider when I was a kid, when everyone was really into cross stitch (remember the '80s?). Eventually, I migrated to surface embroidery, teaching myself with whatever I could get my hands on...read more

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Boo! & Some Halloween Stitchery

 

Amazon Books

Happy Halloween!

Here in the States, Halloween is awfully popular. But I will go out on a limb and admit that it’s never been one of my favorite holidays.

I’ve never really gotten into Halloween. I’m not really sure why that is. It’s just not My Thing.

My childhood memories of Halloween are not that vivid, either, even though we did the typical costume-dress-up-trick-or-treating thing, and we went to Halloween parties and the like.

When I was a kid, I always got the clown costume. When I crept into the teenage years, scary movie parties on Halloween were The Thing – but not for me. I always found an excuse to be in a different room. I’m still a scary movie wimp.

As an adult, my exciting Halloween “celebration” is comprised of a card game or two while waiting for the doorbell to ring. On a busy Halloween, we might get a whopping dozen or so beggars – and half of those are usually my nieces and nephews. Welcome to quiet, small town life!

Bullion Knot Pumpkin

Halloween stitchery, therefore, has never played much of a role in my needlework life. I did, once upon a time, incorporate Jack-o-lanterns into these embroidered pillowcases.

And there’s always my wee embroidered pumpkin tutorial – how to embroider a pumpkin in less than five minutes. But it’s more “Autumn” than strictly Halloween.

Last year, I featured this great little piece of chicken scratch embroidery of a spooky black cat, embroidered by a reader.

And, if you equate autumnal scarecrows with Halloween, there’s also this free hand embroidery pattern for a goofy scarecrow that I drew up for my niece.

But that’s all I have for you in the way of remotely-Halloween-related stitchery.

Bird Brain Designs

However, if you’re looking for some cute Halloween surface embroidery designs, you might check out these fun tea towel embroidery patterns from Bird Brain Designs. A little late for this year’s party, perhaps, but fun for next year!

You can find a whole slew of Autumn-themed embroidery and needlework projects available there, too – surface embroidery & redwork patterns, felt appliqué, and all kinds of other fun stuff.

And if you need something to stitch tonight while waiting for all the little neighborhood ghouls to ring your doorbell, they even have an immediately downloadable free embroidery pattern of a witch.

Which witch? This witch.

And now, I’m going to spirit myself away to the workroom, to finish my Book Organizing Party that I started yesterday – because I know how to have real fun on Halloween!

Have a terrific day!

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(6) Comments

  1. Dear Mary

    When I was a child we didn’t celebrate Halloween but today it’s a really big thing in the UK however I don’t celebrate or agree with Halloween in our Church they have a Light party for the young people which celebrates the light of the Holy Spirit rather then witches. so Happy Light day.

    Regards Anita Simmance

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  2. You and I are in agreement. Halloween has never been a popular holiday for me either. I did do the trick-or treat thing, but my parents had a rule (inherited from my fathers family) that once we were twelve, we were “too old” to go trick or treating, so we started being the ones to give out the candy. I suspect it was actually to keep the family teens from getting sugared up, since they are harder to control than little ones. Just a guess though. I am also a scary movie wimp, (is that a new club?) We do live in a neighborhood with a lot of children, but we only get a couple of dozen ghosties etc for a couple of reasons. One, is that nearby there is a city safe Halloween thing that the city does every year, some kids go to that. There is also a mall that has a similar thing going on, and in certain cultures, Halloween is considered negative or evil, and they do not even send their children to school on Halloween or give away candy because of that idea. I worked at a school for four years and Halloween the school would lose a third of the students on Halloween, and they would all have notes from home saying they were sick….. Our neighborhood has numerous families from those cultures. In the afternoon they literally lock up their house, get in their cars and go elsewhere until the next morning so they are literally not even home on Halloween. We actually get more teen (15+)and young adult trick or treaters than little ones. Some of them are as old as 30. Though at 930pm we bring in the pumpkins and ignore the door, because all of the ones after that ARE too old to be trick or treating and they are only doing that to get the candy. They often pound on the door because they think people need to be passing out candy all night…. Before 10pm they usually take their younger siblings around (safety right?), and have a bag of their own. Then after the little ones are home, they come around (empty bag) for a second helping. The only “Halloween” thing we do every year is carve a pumpkin or two (with snap and glow sticks inside, not candles, and watch the Bette Midler movie Hocus-Pocus. Anyway, Happy October 31st!

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  3. Mary – you and I think exactly alike about Halloween – it’s never been my ‘thing’ either 🙂 Enjoy your book organizing today – organizing crafty things is always so satisfying – have fun!

    Tomi Jane in MN

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  4. You make me laugh!!! I will put my hand up as a Halloween grinch… I just don’t get it. Especially Halloween stitchery.

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  5. I have just read the other comments and it seems we are all a bit grinchy.

    In Australia, halloween has never been a big deal either, although in the past couple of years there has been a bit more attention paid to it. For the first time ever, we were visited by a group of 5 dressed up kids whose ages ranged from mid-teens down to pretty small. Fortunately we had a few snack-sized chocolate bars in the pantry and were able to appease them, so no tricks.

    I wonder how many of the people – children and adults – who get all excited about it and dress up and go t & t-ing etc even know what All Hallow’s Eve means? Or Beltane for that matter – being the ‘pagan’ festival that was appropriated by the Christians and turned into AHE.

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  6. I actually like Halloween but don’t do any celebrating myself. We got five trick or treaters this year, a big increase over last year (only three). I love to see the little ones, but don’t care to dress up myself. My sister goes nuts over it, always going to or having parties every year. I live in a very large suburban area, so it has nothing to do with small town life. When I lived in a small town in Ohio, we got dozens of kids every year. Their parents would drive them from town to town. I thought that was a bit much, but I would definitely turn off the lights at about 9 pm and just shut down if I didn’t run out of candy earlier.

    The bullion jack o’lanter is adorable.

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