Our valley has been full of smoke the last few days. We haven’t had many local fires this year, but we have been experiencing very poor air quality from smoke coming up from Washington/Oregon. Whilst I’m grateful we are not directly threatened by the fires, I am disappointed that the cool, clear, possibly even damp days of fall have not so far materialised.

For about three days we kept the windows closed and it was too warm and very stuffy inside. I tried running the furnace fan one day to see if it helped, but it didn’t. As soon as I could see a slight thinning of the smoke layer, I threw open the windows again.

So let’s see, what crafty progress have I made? The Habitat Cardigan hasn’t changed much from the progress photo at the end of August. The collar has been added to, but then it languished again as I went into manic sewing mode.

I am very pleased with the bags I made this week.

This is my Pumpkin Bag. The materials are a pink wool-like fabric, that’s actually wool-free – it may be a poly/rayon blend, I don’t remember – curtain grommets from the place where I work, and lots and lots of scraps. The pumpkin applique is made from lots of strips of quilting cotton, overlapped and zigzagged down to a base of fusible interfacing. I made a rectangle of this “new fabric” then just trimmed it to a pumpkin shape and used one of the offcuts to make the stem.

The lining is also made from scraps, again with the edges un-neatened, overlapped and zigzagged on a base of broadcloth.

This was all done in a single 6-hour sewing session. Lunch was late that day!

Then that evening I started making scrappy squares, sewn onto a backing of quilt batting. I made eight, with each one having a different colour scheme. They became this bag:

For this one, I popped out and bought some new batik fabric for the lining and handles. These photos were taken in my sewing room in artificial light, so they’re not as good as they could be!

That was an intense couple of days!

I’ve also, as usual for this time of year, got the pumpkin bug, and have made a number of fabric pumpkins.

I made two of those orange fleece ones. The second looked a lot less wonky than the first.

All of the items in this blog post are currently on display at work, just to brighten the place up for a while. And then I’ll bring them home and they can brighten up my place!