October Bee Blocks - Book Shelves!

 I didn't do much Halloween sewing this year.  Last year was Halloween mad.  I finished my Halloween quilt I'd been working on for 2 years and made a banner, place mats and a trick or treat bag for the Halloween swap.  This year, while keeping an eye on the door for the kids (our doorbell is broken!) I took out my leftovers from last year and some new Stitchy witch fabric I had bought to make some Bee blocks. 

It felt right to be working with spooky pumpkins and the last of my dancing skeletons on Halloween night!  For our Modern Irish Bee, Tomomi of Slaney Handcraft asked for bookshelf blocks that represented a book genre or theme using the fabrics.  I've seen travel and animals so I decided to do Horror and Photography!

My first fabric pull was way to wide, blocks were meant to be 12.5 to 13.5 and I was up at about 20"  Tomomi doesn't like prints that are too childish so I played around a bit and left in the spooky tree, pumpkin faces, stitchy granny and a witches hat (reminds me of Harry Potter!)  I used orange and green to co-ordinate to bring up to 13.5" wide x 12.5" tall.  Hope this is ok and not too much!

For my second shelf, I made a photography section!  I've been collecting camera fabrics and some I'd ordered off Etsy from links Yvonne sent me had arrived.  Claire had given me a fat quarter too so I cut the 4.5" strips I needed for my quilt project and then used some of the fabric to make 1.5 to 2.5" strips for the books.  I did re-use 2 fabrics twice but you often get volume 1 and volume 2 in photo books so that's ok in my mind anyway!

I really love how this last one turned out.  Tomomi's guide to making these blocks is here on the Modern Quilters Ireland blog.  Putting these in the post today!