Fellow Quilters,

What is your go-to snack?  Do you prefer sweet or salty nibbles?  I’m a sweets lover – I’ll take chocolate over potato chips any day!  And not just any chocolate – no!  I want the good stuff, a.k.a. the expensive brands that have their own shops, where the chocolates are sold individually, and one is never enough.

I’m also a sucker (no pun intended) for candy, especially if it’s chewy.  My colleague Susanne has a weakness for the tiny Jelly Belly jellybeans, except the cantaloupe and pear flavors, so my job is to search through each bag to remove them (and eat them of course!) before she mistakenly pops one into her mouth.

Sweets is this month’s theme for the Quilt Block Mania blog tour, so I googled ‘sweets” for inspiration and found an old favorite – salt water taffy!   These chewy pastel-colored treats are not in fact made from salt water.  Through the pulling process, which makes the candy lighter and chewier, air is added by stretching out the mixture, folding it over, and stretching it again.  The fruit-flavored candy is then cut into bite-size pieces and wrapped in waxed paper to keep it soft.  Here is my Salt Water Taffy block

Salt Water Taffy quilt block by Patti’s Patchwork

You can find the pattern here If you want to try your hand at making a batch of salt water taffy, here is a recipe that I saw online.

In Canada at this time of year, you can find Halloween kisses, a form of molasses taffy candy, in shops alongside the usual trick or treat offerings.  When I was young, my siblings did not like them so I would barter small quantities of my other Halloween treats for larger quantities of their Halloween kisses – yum!  Canadians apparently either love them or hate them.  Most kids do NOT like them, however the stores sell out every Fall despite increased quantities being produced.  Maybe kids would like them if they tried making them a.k.a participated in a good old-fashioned taffy pull.  Here is a recipe for homemade Halloween kisses.

Thirteen other pattern designers also made sweet blocks for this month – you can find the links to their free blocks below.

Donut Quilt Block by Carolina Moore
Swirly Lollipop by Patchwork Breeze
Caramel Apples by Crafty Staci
Scrappy Cookie by Katie Mae Quilts
Gingerbread People by Inquiring Quilter
Sweet Hearts by Scrapdash
Chocolate Roll by QuiltFabrication
Salt Water Taffy by Patti’s Patchwork
Sugar Skull Quilt Block by Brown Bird Designs
Lollipop Bear by Colette Belt Designs
Chocolate Box by Tourmaline & Thyme Quilts
Let them Eat Cake
Yummy Yummy
Banana Split by Appliques Quilts and More
Sweet Slice by Cristy Fincher

I haven’t given away any treats for a while, so let’s have a Halloween giveaway. For your chance to win a packet of candy-colored Northcott precuts and some Halloween kisses, please leave a comment by midnight October 7 telling me your go-to sweet or salty snack, and whether you like (or not!) Halloween kisses if you’ve tried them.  Bonus points if you’ve made salt water taffy 😊

Cheers,

Patti