If you quilt, you’re probably familiar with blobby little Sunbonnet Sue: She and her various hats are a favorite sampler quilt for beginners.

Stella Australis Quilts has done a different take on ol’ Sue, making her pagan and giving her pointy hats and accessories like cauldrons and athames. The pattern is available for free download, but only in EQ4 (Electronic Quilt software) format.

A few years ago I happened to run across image files for several of the blocks and saved them to my computer (which is fortunate, since the site that posted them is now defunct). If you don’t have EQ4 software to view the pattern, these larger images might give you an idea of how to get started:

Basic Hat
Hat, Broom, Cauldron
Hat, Athame
Cape, Wand, Cauldron
Cape, Stonehenge
Cape, Maypole

The Stella Australis site also offers several other free pagan-themed patterns, such as appliqued goddesses and a pretty Green Man. If you use any of them, be sure to click their Donate button and help them keep the site up and running.

Pretty!

Bonus Link: For another riff on the same pattern, check out The Sun Sets on Sunbonnet Sue, a group quilt which features Sue meeting her demise in a variety of entertaining ways (crushed by Skylab, eaten by Jaws, drinking poisoned Kool-Aid).

Over on the Halloween-L listserv, haunter extraordinaire Screamin’ Scott posted photos of his 2008 yard display. I was particularly taken with his awesome cemetery entrance gate, which included these decorative bats.

He commented that he was trying for a “Halloween trellis” look, which struck me as a fantastic year-round use for something similar. The bats could be cut out of wood or heavy plastic using a jigsaw (or you could get really ambitious and have a local metalworker make them from wrought iron), then anchored with standard trellis posts. They’d look wonderful with ivy or climbing roses twining around them.

…you might want to send one to Hannah Garman. It’s good for the karma.

(Unlike the occasional “send a dying child a card” hoaxes you see floating around, Snopes verifies this one as genuine.)

I’m a bit late to the party on this one, but I just found it yesterday.* Fortunately, it’ll be fun to play catch-up.

Creepy Christmas is a site featuring short films by indie fright directors like Larry Fessenden, Voltaire, Sara Driver, and David Goldin. They’re all inspired by a huge holiday diorama built by Beck Underwood, and allow you to “peer into the secret, unsettling world hidden behind the doors and windows of traditional Christmas dioramas.” It’s kind of like a big advent calendar only instead of candy you get blood.

A new film is premiering every day from December 1st to the 25th; you can go to the calendar page to view past entries. (I’d link directly to it, but the navigation is all Flash. Boo, hiss.) They’ve also got a shop featuring ornaments decorated with creepy dolls, and you can purchase all of the films on DVD.

If you’re looking for an antidote to warm-and-fuzzy holiday feelings, this oughta do it.

*I hate stumbling upon seasonal countdown features when they’re nearly over. I didn’t find Gothtober until October 30. Yeesh.

I’ve been meaning to do the occasional post about goth gardening for a while now but keep getting distracted by shiny objects. I’m finally ready, so let’s all ignore the fact that I’m talking about gardening in the dead of winter. (Readers in the Southern Hemisphere, this one’s for you.)

Despite the very real danger of winding up with a tan, gardening is a rewarding hobby and offers an excellent opportunity to extend your personality to the outside of your home. With a little effort, anything from a proper Victorian front garden to a Goreyesque my-yard-eats-the-occasional-passerby vibe can be achieved.

Incidentally, even if you don’t have a yard you can still indulge in a little gardening: Many plants are perfectly happy living in pots. I particularly like using strawberry jars for container gardening, putting a different plant in each pocket. HGTV has instructions for planting and caring for a strawberry-jar garden, if you aren’t sure how to proceed. If you have absolutely no access to the outside, you can grow plants in a sunny window or in a terrarium. Here’s a short primer on setting up a simple terrarium.

If you’re new to gardening (or if you have a black thumb), herbs are a good choice for a starter garden. They tend to be fairly hardy and resistant to drought and disease, plus you can use them for cooking or crafts. They’re also lovely landscaping plants if you have the room: They come in a variety of colors, so it’s possible to put together, say, an all-silver herb planting.

You can grow a selection of herbs for culinary use (rosemary, sage, basil, dill, mint, tarragon, parsley, chives, thyme), for herbal teas (peppermint, lemon verbena, chamomile, lemon balm, spearmint, lemongrass, sweet woodruff), beauty products (lavender, mugwort, wormwood, tea roses, marigolds), or natural dyes (alkanet, bloodroot, clematis, coreopsis, lady’s bedstraw, yarrow).

It’s also easy to grow an abundance of herbs for projects like wreaths or sachets, it’s much much cheaper than purchasing the same quantity of material, and the quality is almost always better, to boot.

You can go also darker. Before Shadowboy came along I had a poison garden featuring henbane, monkshood, deadly nightshade, wolfsbane, belladonna, and many others (Richters Herbs carries an extensive selection). These plants tend to like shady, damp conditions, so my little garden was a perfect fit for an area where sun-loving plants wouldn’t grow. (Obviously, if you have small children or pets that are likely to eat stuff at random, a similar garden would be a Very Bad Idea.)

If herbs aren’t really your thing, consider a theme garden. As the name suggests, these are gardens devoted to a particular subject (one popular choice is a selection of plants mentioned in Shakespeare’s works). You can choose any theme that strikes your fancy: Traditional witches’ plants, plants with “blood” in their name (bloodroot, bleeding heart, blood lily), or plants reputed to attract fairies (bluebells, forget-me-not, jasmine, white lotus).

There’s no reason why “spooky” should stay inside the house. Slather on the sunblock, grab a trowel, and let your darker side out to play.

The work that MiniMotion does is absolutely mind-blowing. They create intricate miniatures and shadowboxes with unbelievable detail, many of which are animated: There’s a little witch stirring a cauldron, a teeny trapped fairy fluttering inside a bell jar, and an armoire with a magic mirror.

They also have a “how-to” section, explaining how to make your own custom staircases and haunted trees, plus an extensive links page for the miniature enthusiast.

If you’re interested in creating spooky vignettes of your own, this site is a fantastic source of inspiration. (Assuming it doesn’t make you feel really inadequate.) I’m quite impressed with all of the little details, and love the whimsy in so many of the scenes. Do go take a look, if only to drool.

Here’s an entertaining way to transform a purse or other accessory: Cover it with googly eyes.

The basic idea comes from Crafty Crafty, and although no instructions are provided the method seems pretty straightforward: 1) Get a bunch of googly eyes. 2) Glue ’em on.

I like the varying eye sizes on the purse; it adds a bit of textural interest.

You could do this with other kinds of eyes, too. There are many varieties of plastic eyes meant for dolls or stuffed animals, in all kinds of colors (like the creepy red ones I use in my zombie frogs). Some types have a plastic stem on the back, but they’re easily removed with wire cutters.

It’d be fun to cover a clutch with malevolently staring eyes. Tell people it’s where you keep your Mad Money. (:::snort, guffaw:::)

(via Evil Mad Scientist Labs)

I’d seen Etsy seller CraftyHedgeHog’s knit dissected frog previously, but she’s now added a lab rat. I love their fuzzy little organs.

She sells both the finished creatures and patterns to knit them yourself, so if you’re looking for a real conversation piece this would certainly be a good candidate.

It’d be fun to knit one of these into the fabric of a hat or sweater, too.

Remember what I said about SF/F convention masquerade costumes being elaborate? This is Exhibit A.

This costume was worn at a recent DragonCon and was inspired by the Doctor Who episode Blink, the plot of which involved statues that moved when you weren’t looking at them. Astonishingly, it’s mostly painted cloth.

Over at the Replica Prop Forum, member penwiper has posted detailed instructions with lots of pictures explaining how she made this clever costume. I’m particularly impressed with her solution for making her exposed skin look like stone.

If you’re feeling ambitious, something like this would certainly make an impressive Halloween costume. (And if you’re like me, you’d have to start right now in order to finish by Halloween.) You could also do a somewhat simpler version by using a hooded cloak and dressing as a pleurant.

What’s spookier than cemetery statuary? Cemetery statuary that moves when you aren’t watching, boogedy-boogedy.

(via The Anticraft)

More randomness from the depths of my Drafts folder. It’s a pity I can’t harness my blog-cleaning energies and turn them to housework.

But First, an Important Announcement:
If you’re a crafter in the U.S. and you sell your work, go here and read about what you can do to stop a proposed law that would essentially make it illegal to sell handmade crafts. Zoiks.

Now on to the random links….

Real Monsters – Mental Floss takes a look at the science behind some of the legends.

Best Ghost Photos Ever Taken. A gallery of some of the more “convincing” ghost photos. Some of them–particularly the older images–look more like sundogs or double exposures, and I wonder if they’d still be considered good examples of ghost photos if they didn’t have the patina of legend surrounding them. (In particular the alleged image of Lord Combermere makes me wonder: It looks like a double exposure, and the only evidence that it isn’t is the family’s word that it isn’t.) Still, creepy.

Blue Q – Offers merchandise with entertaining titles like “Evil Twin” gum and “Instant Rehab” breath spray.

Despair, Inc. – The source for “demotivational” posters and all sorts of other items like calendars and “Despairwear.”

Alien Loves Predator – One of my favorite Webcomics has revived itself after a long absence. Best to start at the beginning.

Chocolate Larvae – Japanese candy shaped to look like grubs. Yum! Or, um, not.

Ugly Overload – The antidote to Cute Overload. Everything featured here is hairy, possesses too many eyes, or has really unfortunate feeding habits. Yay, vampire squid!

Day of the Dead Crafts – New book featuring instructions for making a variety of Dia de los Muertos crafts, including calaveras and jewelry.

Gorey Details – Online shop featuring all sorts of Edward Gorey-themed merchandise.

Spaghetti Cake – I need to make this for somebody’s birthday.

Barbie of the Undead – Photos (but no text instructions) detailing the process of turning a Barbie doll into a zombie. I like the partially-rotted face with the jawbone peeking through.

Just in time for the holidays: Bid on a chance to have a newly-discovered bat species named after you or a loved one.