WIP Wednesday

I am sooooooo close to finishing this Sea Glass quilt!  It is my almost finished WIP 

(linking up to Freshly Pieced WIP Wednesday).  

I decided to do a two color binding and thought I would share with you what that looks like. 

 I wanted the Kona Pepper on the front and 

several of the greens in the front for the binding on the back.

In this photo 

you can see that the seam between the two colors actually falls right on the edge of the quilt.  

This makes it extremely easy to turn and gives you the exact same amount on both sides.  

Neat huh?

In this photo you can see the binding is all glue basted into place and ready for me to hand stitch.

Since I am developing arthritis in my hands (thanks for that body) gluing the binding down before I sew allows me to use less pressure with my left hand and that means less pain. 

 I used to hold so tight that the pain would shoot all the way up into my shoulder.  

It's at the point now where the left side of my left thumb is numb all the time.  

There is a name for it, that I don't remember but basically there is some nerve damage.

  Oh well, it doesn't stop me!  It just makes me find new ways to do things.

Of course I had my BFF "helping " me with this. 

 I sure hope the folks I am gifting this too don't mind a few stray cat hairs!

This is my view as I am finishing the binding.  Its the one strip down the middle of the back.

  My friend Kathy of Thread Bear Quilting did the amazing feather quilting.

I have approximately one more side to finish stitching down and 

then I can get to work on the Bee Positive quilt.  

Thank you for all your kind offers of blocks. 

 I can't wait to see what you all have made.  

As I left my room to go get my dinner last night this is what I saw.  

An incredibly messy sewing space, full of the things I love! 

 My beautiful quilt art on the walls, my table piled with current projects and fabric

 and a cat that I adore.  

Not to mention my beloved Bernina!  

I am so blessed!

~XOP~

A Call For Help

I hope you all had a great weekend!  I had a pretty busy one.  

Well, let's be honest here, they are all busy in the summer right? 

 I decided that I need to make a quilt for a good friend that is ill.  

It was not on my "to do" list, and a few other things need to get moved around, but I can't help but feel like it's the right thing to do. 

 I want my friend covered in love and prayers!  

I participated in making a quilt for someone else that had cancer 

and my friend Lucia hosted it.  

You can read all about it on her blog post found here. 

 I am going to use her directions but different colors.

Here is the beautiful quilt we send out blocks for!

I just simply don't have the time to make all the blocks myself so I am asking for your help.  I also want my friend to know there are others praying for him.  

I want to make a simple cross quilt.  

This will let him know that there are many people praying for his recovery. 

 I chose a limited color palette to keep the 

quilt a little calmer than some that I have seen.  

I love the one above.  

I am asking for greens in the kelly, lime and forest color way as well as ANY gray from dark to light. 

The gray should be in the more clear gray not tending toward brown or blue.  Light, medium or dark are fine, keeping to modern, more manly fabric,

 not girly or novelty 

(unless you happen to have a Sparty!).  

Solids or prints are GREAT!  

Square, pieced, wonky, single, multiple skinny or fat, that part is up to you.  The only consistent part is the height needs to be 9".  

This means the finished size in the quilt will be 8.5", and the width is up to YOU.

Want to see a few examples?

 See the double cross in the top left corner?  I made 2 smaller crosses and sewed them together then cut the entire height to be 9"

As you can see I made some with a gray background and green crosses, 

and some with gray crosses.  

I made some with green backgrounds but only gray crosses.  

I'm trying to get an equitable distribution of gray and green but as I learned on the purple and gray wedding quilt, the color very quickly overwhelms the gray.  

**I need the blocks mailed to arrive by August 9th.**  

If you are willing to help, please email me at mamaspark@gmail.com 

I will send you my address.

Here is a recap of the block details:

• design: cross / plus (wonky, squared up, pieced, single, multiple) Like in this quilt here
• size: 9″ high (8.5″ finished) and I’ll leave the width up to you (so that it looks like the cross blocks in the inspiration quilt above).
• fabric colors: masculine greens and grays
• fabric style: solids and prints (anything but feminine or juvenile prints).
• deadline: August 9th or sooner
• If you are on Instagram please post your photos and include the #beepositive

Just in case you need a tutorial you can find one right here on Mrs.Schmenkman's blog.  

As you can see the help is already pouring in, lazy cat!

If you are on Instagram I am using the #beepositivequilt  

I love the fact that we are making this an online "Bee".  I know why people do bees.  

It is so great to have all that *positive* energy all put into one quilt!!!

I realize it is a short turn around time but I certainly appreciate any help you can give.  

I am also hoping to get someone to quilt it at a discount as now that it is just me bringing home the bacon, these things add up!

So, thanks in advance to all of you for listening, and never fear, even if you are unable to send me a block or two, all prayers are GREATLY appreciated!

Have a blessed day!

~XOP~

WIP Wednesday

I also managed to get some paper piecing done for another project. 

 I needed to make a flower and a leaf.  

The pattern is from Ayumi's book Patchwork Please. 

 It is a great book. 

 I think you saw the hot pads I was making last Christmas and they were from this book! 

 I love her patterns!

This one is called Swedish Bloom Time and it is adorable!  

The flower is larger than I expected it to be for some reason.  

I have learned that I like paper piecing smaller things, like 1/4" geese, LOL, 

MUCH better then bigger things like this.  

All in all I am happy with how it turned out though. 

 So it needs to go into a larger project so...another WIP.

Linking to Lee's WIP Wednesday post.

It took some major brain power to figure out how to get the cats to come out like that though. 

 I have read that quilting is good for your brain as it causes you to do a lot of calculations 

and thinking, so good for us!!!

I had some adorable supervision while working too.  

How do cats make every place seem like the most comfortable place in the world to sleep?

You can see the tippy top of my sewing machine there on the bottom of the picture. 

 That was the view I had over the top of my machine while I was working.  

I love Autumn!

I have decided to work with a really dear friend of mine on another quilt. 

 First it was planned and then I decided

 I was not going to do it as I was running out of time for the "deadline".  

I have personally extended my deadline and enlisted help! 

 I can't say much about it other than to say I am making this pattern.  

No more about it for the moment though.  

If you want to purchase the same pattern and quilt along with me that would be fun, right? 

 Who's in??

~XOP~

A Destash

As I said previously, I have been finishing up some things. 

 I got the binding finished for the wedding quilt. 

 I now have the quilt back from the quilter and need to attach said binding, LOL,

 then hand sew it down.  I also need to finish that label.

Over the weekend I managed to complete a label for a jointly made quilt, perhaps you remember it?

I can't show the label as it is for a gift, but suffice it to say, even though I had all the embroidery finished, making the label took me over 4 hours!!

Then I decided to destash some fabric.  Maybe someone out there is interested?  

Here is what I have available.

Curious Nature by Parson Gray 14 half yard cuts and 9 FQ.  There are 23 of the 24 fabrics in the line.

$105 shipped in FRE.  Leave Paypal if interested.

Various 1 yard cuts labeled A-H, $6/yard. Shipping is extra.  Leave letter and paypal

I only have the two on the right left.  Each are half yards, B and C.  $3/HY.  Shipping is extra. 

 Leave letter and Paypal if interested.

Assorted yardage, priced as marked.  Shipping is extra.  

Leave which you are interested in and Paypal.  

The middle one on the bottom is sold.

Mary Engelbreit panels $5 each plus shipping

Leave paypal and which panel

"It's Good To Be Queen"

Princess of Quite-A-Lot

So that took me some time.  I am determined to destash!

Please help me out with this!

I would LOVE to re-home this fabric!!

~XOP~

Finishing Some Things Up

It is always bitter sweet to begin the finishing of a quilt for me. 

 Maybe a bit of a let down, once it goes off to the quilter. 

(More on this at the bottom of the post).  

I usually make the binding and now I embroider the label and make that.  

So it was with the wedding quilt I have been working on. 

 I have the top finished and it is at the quilter.  

Kathy does an amazing job and she can make my vision for this quilt a reality. 

 I won't show the quilt until I can gift it now, as my SIL reads this and

 I want the finished quilt to be a surprise.  

I will say that I was working out what I wanted to do for the binding last night. 

 I used this pretty DS Quilts print for the back (along with some piecing, again a secret).  

Two of my friends on IG helped me find enough of this print to be able to use it on the back. 

 I love how it compliments the front!

What I was unsure about was how Kona Pepper would look on the back. 

 It is what I used for the middle bars on the front and it looks great for the front binding 

but not so hot with the navy on the back.  

What to do, what to do...hmmm.  

Oh wait, I know the answer to this one, make a two color binding!  

One color for the front (Kona Pepper) and a different 

(or several different in this case) shades of the greens I used in the blocks on the front. 

 So here you see me joining the two "halves" of my binding.  

I was busily working away, wondering where that lazy quilt inspector was 

when all of a sudden she showed up! 

 Thank goodness she arrived or who knows what kind of crazy binding would have happened!  

Here is my finished binding in all it's two toned goodness!  

Now if you want to make some two toned binding for your next quilt you can follow this link to a tutorial I did showing you how you too can make this fabulous binding! 

 It is not difficult, maybe slightly more time consuming to make 

but sometimes your quilt just begs for it!

I also finished my Bee blocks last night. 

 I posted a photo on IG and the queen of the bee posted that our finished size should be 11.25".  OMGosh nooooooo.  

Mine finished at 10.5". 

 I printed out regular size (not size to fit) paper pieced templates, 

and the 1" square even printed out at 1".  

What did I do wrong???  

Turns out she printed hers out at an odd size.  So I think she is remaking her blocks. 

Phew!!!

Let's talk about the let down of finishing a quilt.  

It is always a joy to actually finish something to be sure. 

 I have usually worked for such a long time on that thing that I have unnaturally bonded with it. 

 Then it is gone.  

I am left with a feeling of well, what now?  

Don't get me wrong, I have LOTS of things to work on, but I have to make a purposeful decision about what I will work on next.  

Sometimes I don't have that luxury, as in I "have to" make something 

either as a gift or some other commitment.  

I do have a commission piece that I need to begin so that is what I chose to be my next project.  

I like when I don't have a "have to" in the que. 

 It is fun to flit from one thing to another when I have a chance.  

I have bits and bobs to finish up and won't be able to show much of those until after they are gifted.  

I will begin my second Tardis quilt (all cut out!!) 

now so will keep you updated at I progress with that. 

 Maybe I will work on my son's Detroit sports quilt a little too, who knows. 

 Isn't freedom of choice a wonderful thing?

What are you going to work on this weekend?

~XOP~

Guess Who Is Guest Blogging Over At McCalls Today?

It would be ME!  How fun. 

 They asked me if I would be a guest blogger to promote my That Cat quilt.  

Well OF COURSE I WOULD!  

If you want to see some behind the scenes of the making of That Cat head over to 

the McCalls blog and check it out!  

Leave me a comment on their site if you go and visit!

Have a wonderful day everyone!

~XOP~

My Birthday Extravaganza

My wonderful husband made a plan all on his own to celebrate my birthday (early) last Friday.  

He asked me to take the day off work so we could go on an adventure.  Well, color me surprised!  

We got up and headed out to a place in Ohio (we live in Michigan) for breakfast. 

 It was called The Speed Trap. 

 I really wanted their amazing sounding breakfast sammy (french toast with ham, turkey and melty swiss cheese), but what I had was 2 poached eggs and 2 pieces of bacon.

  Wayyyy less Weight Watcher points!

Isn't this place adorable?

Then he hands me this hand written list of all the quilt shops he had planned to take me to!

Now some of them were either not there, were a long arm business or were Electric Quilt Co 

(which I was not sure we could actually visit).  

First stop was a Little Touch of Heaven. Which I am pretty sure it was! Very nice owner here.

 I found some great OOP Vintage Modern here and bought all they had!

 Next up was the Door Mouse, in Bettsville, OH.  

This place was majorly overwhelming, but oh so fun to look around at!

I bought a few things here too.  Great neutrals for a quilt I have planned in my head, LOL.

The three solids are part of the above quilt.  The other 2 were "just because".

I could not resist these Scandinavian feel birds.

We were on our way to a park and saw this overflowing river.  The water was moving SO fast. 

The sheer power contained in this flowing water was fascinating.

We stopped at one park and it seemed like a nice one but he had a different one in mind 

so we motored on to it.

On the way there he stopped the car, lept out and began picking some wildflowers like a mad man.  Apparently they were for our picnic table lunch!

This is the park we stopped at. 

 He thought it would be a totally amazing park and where we were, at least, was a gravel road 

with a turn around, a port-a-potty and a "You are here" sign!  

The lunch was amazing and the wildflower view was fantastic, not to mention the great company!

See that cupcake right there?  He baked those from scratch the night before!

OK, on to more quilt shops!  The next shop was called The Busy Thimble. 

 Not much in the way of fabric for me but I bought a few Aunt Martha transfers here.

The Quilt Foundry in Maumee was an amazing shop.  

If you like Batiks they had an entire room devoted to that!  

I found some treasures here too though.

Some Christmas fabrics to make some Christmas stockings for a friend of my daughter's.

A little Marmalade and Scrumptious

I was so thrilled to find these Emma Jean Jansen prints!  Plus that gorgeous Grunge.

There was one more stop here at Quilt Heaven.  Cute shop, very friendly staff!

We did hit the Quilt Patch back in MI on the way home and I picked up some of the 

Christmas fabrics you see above at that shop.  

I picked up some sports fabric for my son's Michigan sports themed quilt.

I also bought a little pattern and template.  I am dying to use that template to cut into my scraps.  How fun would it be to get a little bit from every quilt you make and put it into a big scrap quilt??

So now my birthday celebration has come to an end.  

I hope you have enjoyed my day as much as I did! 

 Maybe you found some new shops to visit on your own travels!

Happy Travels to you.

~XOP~