In hindsight, things went from very very bad to way way worse in the above mentioned Horrible Hamlet of Halloween Hollow in October and November 2018....In all fairness it started in mid-September when a medium-sized white and green haired granny (me) opted to take a stroll down a spooky spine-chilling path. I posted a picture of an itsy-bitsy haunted house on Instagram in
Stash Beehive 2 with a roadmap for my bee-mates to design and paper-piece a little haunted house based on one I found on-line
at Sophie Junction. It was ghastly, it was grim....it was guaranteed to be great!
My first hint that the perfectly ordinary-seeming folks in my Beehive were just a tiny bit more macabre than most was when the following haunted house popped out of my mailbox, thanks to @tracysbitsnpieces.
Yikes! The outside walls are camoflagued with humongous hydrangeas and vicious venus flytraps poised to munch on anybody who brushes up against them unawares. I see jinormous grinning green bats flapping around in a purple sky and OMGoodness Gracie, what kind of hideous chartreuse creature with three big green eyeballs is guarding the front door? Needless to say I won't be opening that door or closing MY eyes for a week at least. However, I'm sad to say this not the least of the shocking stuff that I've seen recently.
The next perilous package that got dropped onto my dining room table is so much more than a haunted house....Basically its a boulevard of badness. Two nightmare-ish houses side by side. My heart nearly stopped when I realized this dreadful duo was courtesy of @thegrinch1964 and @cocoaquilts.
At first glance these two houses don't give off a particularly gruesome vibe. It wasn't until much later that I recalled the story of an especially wicked witch with a very sweet welcoming house on the outside AND a huge cast iron pot to stuff Hansel and Gretel into on the inside. They say you can never judge a book (or a house) by its cover so I decided to take another look. Oh yes, these two houses are very scary indeed. There is plenty of weird wizardry at work here. Those black dots could be any kind of horrible wee winged beastie falling from the sky; there are great hideous orangy-yellow vines obscuring the walls and OMG there is a massive mouse riding a bicycle--a freakin bicycle-- in the upstairs window! How could you not be terrified by this? And as for the second house... Did you see those ferocious furry feline familiars in the window ---- obviously a witch or a warlock is casting spells and up to no good there. Need I say more....I thought not.
The next time I dared to sneak a peak into my mailbox I was aghast to see what @mcallisterwench pieced together for my purview.
This one is truly awe-inspiringly awful. Outside are immense ugly spiderwebs that could perchance be home to hundred pound spiders. And inside....more bats, this time in the belfry (do houses have belfrys? This one does!) The walls are drenched and doused with deadly potions in pretty pastel vials. There are multiple skulls and assorted unattached leg bones on the floor upstairs and in the front doorway, a mummy (definitely NOT the kind who married daddy) defies anyone to enter. FYI nobody with a lick of sense would want to enter that house.
But that was not the end of the awe-fullness. No it was not. The other day, I tentatively, cautiously and oh-so-carefully opened my mailbox again and this package of patchwork was waiting for me.
I truly don't know where to start with this. I'm pretty sure this is @lmnop864's attempt to scare me to half to death. Alfred Hitchcock would be proud to live in this little orange house, or perhaps he'd want to share it with Edgar Allen Poe. I'm really curious how that little black raven could sleep with all those birds dive bombing him and his bro's too. That's probably the scariest jack-o-lantern I ever did see grinning in the upstairs window; and I betcha those tiny black hoot owls are hiding in the doorway because they had the feathers frightened off them.
So what could be worse than you've already seen. Check out the gruesome twosome that @jentexas06 foisted onto me via USPS and Canada Post just the other day.
Yup, more of those winged wee beasties dropping out of the sky onto a haunted house covered with noxious purple leaves and vines. I don't know for sure, but a quick glance in the window suggests that there is a witch's cauldron burning and bubbling and spewing out trouble somewhere inside. But the scariest thing by far about the first house is the front door. It looks like a thermometer or a ruler, or some other unholy gadget hanging upside down.....seriously nightmare inducing stuff.
House number two, also looks like it might be on fire, but its hard to tell for sure because its likely someone put a hex spell on the front door. Those are some creepy letters and not a single word to be found anywhere. I'm very afraid that the homeowner is something of an advanced mathematics wizard because the 2nd floor is papered in the writings of a demented geometry ghoul.
The next house that clattered onto my kitchen countertop was this dreadful dwelling from @sevenoakstreetquilts.
Plainly this house is in an enchanted forest, possibly its the White Witch of Narnia's residence. I'm positive the posies growing on the outside walls are beyond being bewitched and their toothy grins are truly terrifying. Whoever lives there must be a powerful enchantress because she managed to find a flock of feral felines to share her home. Lets hope she cast a powerful spell on the litter-box....otherwise I shall never set a foot inside this house either.
Think again and then once again if you presume this sickening sojourn to the Horrible Hamlet of Halloween Hallow is over because there are many more abominable abodes to visit yet.
@dimestorefloozie managed to distract and flabbergast me when this unfortunate orange hued house appeared in my mailbox. (Possibly it belongs to Peter Peter, Pumpkin Eater --- and that could be his wife's eye peering out the window....just wonderin)
Its surrounded by a murder of crows in silhouette yet. By my count, close to one thousand crows are cawing and crowing and creating a cacophony that reverberates on the rooftops. And OMG is it possible there is another of those green monster eyes in the upstairs window...Too terrible to imagine what kind of horrifying green slime snake is peering out at me. I imagine its licking its lips and hissing in anticipation of making a snack out of anyone who ventures too close.
I'm hesitant to admit this, but yesterday I was overcome with a dreadful desire to make another house to share with you, for fear it would set off an unholy need to build more and more of them. When I began digging through my scraps, I unearthed these that really seemed to need to be put together.
Lets begin with the flys surrounding the house. I loathe flys (but FYI I must admit, I really really love this fabric). Clearly the upstairs of this house is a fiery portal into the bowels of the earth and everyone knows the sort of creatures reside there. The pink skull gracing the walls in the attic makes me shudder and shake. I ask you is there anything more questionable than a man with a moustache? Well yes, its a moustache without a man....it makes my hair curl to imagine what happened to the rest of those 3 fellas. And the finishing touch of terror is that rotten raven roosting in the doorway.
Finally we are getting close to the end of this malevolent madness. I warn you that you may not be able to stomach the remainder of these residences. The one you are about to view arrived courtesy of @cedacanthus, all the way from New Zealand.
Let me just say, that there is nothing more frightful and truly terrifying than a house of horrors like this one. Everything--from the ghastly ghoulish writing in the sky to the bloody front door and the horrifying cross in the upstairs window backlit by poisonous vapours--screams "abandon hope all ye who enter here". You gotta know that if this house was on my block, I would not be stopping by to chat with the resident anytime soon.
Every haunted hamlet has a home that is outstandingly, opulently awful. This is the one where Halloween Hollow residents go when they want to get REALLY AND TRULY shivery and shaky. I blame @moonlightsewing because I aged 10 years at least when I opened the envelope this block arrived in.
Its huge, and outside its surrounded by so many more of those terrifying black wee winged beasties falling out of the sky. Its rooftops are covered with copious amounts of green goblin slime. If you look in the left wing (LOL) window there is a bespectacled boogey man looking back at you. And in the right wing of the house, you'll see a dainty pink poltergeist levitating for your amusement. And finally, finally finally, a ghost is guarding the doorway. It's either warning you away or welcoming you inside. You decide if you are gonna enter. I know I'm not!
So how was your Halloween? As you can see mine was pretty dang spectacular. It is my serious hope to have all these blocks sewn together in time for next Halloween.
It has been my very great joy to be part of Stash Beehive 2 this year and I'm looking forward to doing it all again next year with another great bunch of Quilty people in Stash Beehive 4. But....don't think for even one second that I'm going to forget about you guys in Hive 2. I'll be watching what you post every month on Instagram...and I may even hive crash once or twice.
Did you do something creative today?
