the air is wild with leaves...

The leaves here haven't started changing yet -- the ones shown here have been slowly decaying on the hood of my husband's old truck since last Fall. 

For my Leafs Me Happy block, I wanted to combine piecing and embroidery. Coming up with the text was the hard part - everything I thought up myself was just too lame.. Then I stumbled across this absolutely perfect quote by Humbert Wolfe:

Listen! 
The wind is rising, and the air is wild with leaves,
We have had out summer evenings, now for October Eves! 

The fabric choices were easy. I raided some background fabric from Hocuspocusville, which should be fine since I bought plenty of extra for the pieced center. The fabric for the leaves came from another kitted up project. I doubt I'll miss an inch or two when I finally get started on that one.

Piecing the leaves, which finish at 3", was the easy part. I used my die cutter to cut the 1" finished half square triangles. I'd love that cutter even if all it did was triangles -- those pre-cut dog ears make things so much less fiddly! The 1 1/2" squares, I cut with my rotary cutter.

Once I had my leaves together, I needed to start my embroidery. For days, I tried to figure out how to scatter the leaves around the words. Nothing seemed quite right until I decided to just run them down left hand side.

My handwriting is legible but unattractive, not something I wanted to display on my quilt block. I did some searching online and found all kinds of resources for creating printable worksheets (maybe I can use those with the kids later), but nothing that would make my text pretty enough to embroider over.

Then it finally dawned on me. Microsoft Works came installed on the computer...it might have some fonts I could use... Freestyle Script turned out to be just what I was looking for. I figured out how large my embroidery could be, then printed out the words in the largest font available and traced it onto my background fabric.

Then there was the math and cutting the embroidery so my 10 1/2" block didn't come out too large or too small. My strip of leaves finished at 3" wide, leaving 7" for the embroidery...I measured the words, I figured out how much blank fabric to leave at top and bottom so it would be centered, held my breath until the block was assembled...and I got it right!

Don't forget to visit today's other participants --

Mrs. Pickles Garden, Gingersnaps Quilts, Petite Design Co, A Passion for Applique, Annie Oak Designs, Cherry's Prairie Primitives, krislovesfabric,  Scrapbook-ChickADoodle  You can find the entire schedule in the sidebar at Cherry Blossoms Quilting Studio.