Charity Quilts A2MQG

Being one of the chairs of the A2MQG, I get to photograph and deliver the quilts to

 Mott Children's Hospital in Ann Arbor.  

I have decided that I should photograph them and credit their makers.  

So grab a cuppa (or in my case a Diet Coke) and settle in for a little quilt show!

First up, are these adorable Elizabeth Hartman animal quilts. 

 I love this little fox made by Jackie MacGregor.  

She said it went together quickly and would recommend making these for donation quilts.

Jackie also made this amazing Hazel the Hedgehog quilt.  

Some little is going to be thrilled with these!

The next two were made by Kim Ulrich and Susan Ulrich from kits that I cut from my stash.

Never underestimate how great a simple patchwork quilt can look!

Thanks ladies!  

Notice the cat model? 

Next up is a super sweet quilt made by one of the other Pam's in the guild, Pam Eckler.  

You will not meet a sweeter person than this Pam.  

(Maybe it's the name?)

This next beauty was made by Debbie Grifka.  She is making one charity quilt a month.  

So happy we got this month's work!

I was able to finish quilting my charity quilt too.  

So will link up to Crazymom Quilts Finish it up Friday.

I am also linking up to 100 Quilts For Kids.

I did some straight line quilting on this one.  I also put the binding on by machine. 

 It goes so fast to do it this way!  

I have yards and yards of this flannel, so you may be seeing it again in the future.

A BIG thank you to my assistant photographer, Mosen, 

who just chased his sister under that tree, which you can see her if you look hard enough.

Lots of things to do this weekend and all of them involve me sewing.  

What a happy prospect to look forward to!

Have a happy weekend!

~XOP~

Charity Quilt From YOU, My Friends

I figured that I needed to work with the extra blocks you all sent to me and 

make that charity quilt that I said I would make.  

I pulled out the blocks and lo and behold, there were not that many extras.  

In fact, not even enough to make a small charity quilt.  

What's a girl to do?  

I diligently begun to make more to put with these. 

 Autumn thought I was crazy! 

 She's a cat, so what does she know?

I made what I thought was enough and it was not.  

Looked like I needed to make one more row.

  Or did I? 

 Maybe I could put sashing between the rows and call it good enough?  

YES, I certainly could do that and so that's exactly what I ended up doing.

I had this amazingly adorable sea life flannel just hanging around so I used that for the back.  

It is all pinned and ready to quilt. 

 Straight line quilting is what is on board for this little quilt.

When it is finished I will link up to the 100 Quilts for Kids.  

Linking up to the WIP Wednesday over at Freshly Pieced too.

Are you considering making a quilt for the 100 Quilts for Kids?  

If you are not, you should consider it.

~XOP~

Wedding Weekend

My niece got married this past weekend.  

It was a beautiful day and she was radiant! 

 I don't have very many photos of her but thought this one was nice of her and her daddy.

I was very entertained by all the little people that were at the wedding.  

There are 4 littles that belong to one of my other nieces.  

Adorable too.  

This little one loved my husband so much!

This is her brother.

Just look at that face!  I love her she is so hilarious and quirky!!

You can see the baby sister in this photo too, being held by her mom. 

 Their grandma is in the white sweater, another niece in the wedding and

 my husband's aunt on the end.  Look at the pure joy on that little girl's face!

We also got to see my husband's aunt and uncle that we seldom get to see and

 it was so nice catching up with them!

More littles.  This one is always happy and smiling!  

Baby with grandma and Uncle James.

Grandma with Jame's daughter.

My son (blue shirt) and his cousin love to hang out together.

They love it even more when they can annoy their Aunt = )

The tables were beautiful!  I even got our name cards!  Happy accident.

I was finally able to gift the quilt. 

 I will share more of that later this week. 

 Here it is all wrapped (with the matching pillowcases) and ready to gift!

Such a fun time!  Congratulations Ashley and Christopher!  We wish you every happiness.

~XOP~

Improvising Traditions Wedding Quilt

It is finally finished!  I finished the binding on this one last night.  

I can't wait to be able to gift it. 

 I blacked out the names of the bride and groom until they actually see this as they are on Facebook!  Two of the women I work with and I worked on this masterpiece. 

 I did the green, Judith the aqua and Robin the royal blue sections of the quilt.  

Kathy Koch did the amazing quilting job.  We loved it!  

You can't really see it in these photos but I put a small section of each color into the binding too.  

Well, maybe you can just make it out on the bottom right near the corner.

 You can see the organic line quilting better in this photo. 

I used a lime, aqua and royal for the backing.  

Three strips, horizontal across the back. 

 Kona Charcoal for the binding.

I made this improv fabric, framed label after hand embroidering the words.  That took a LONG time.

I am linking up to Crazy Mom Quilts Finish It Up Friday.

Have you finished up anything fun recently? 

 I hope you all are busy quilting but I bet a lot of you are getting ready for the back to school rush too. 

 Have a wonderful weekend! 

 We are heading to a wedding on Saturday for our niece. 

 I will get to gift her quilt tomorrow too.  

Photos of that will come next week, after it has been gifted too.

Have a great weekend!!!

~XOP~

Improvising Traditions and Autumn

Our collaborative quilt using the Improvising Traditions book has returned from the quilter.  

I had to square up the quilt, make the binding and then I sewed on.  

Now I need to turn it and hand sew it down. 

WIP that I hope to get the binding finished on soon so it can be gifted!

 As per usual my "helper" kitty was there.  

I hope the new owners find it as comfortable as Autumn does!

I love the organic line quilting that Kathy did on this one!

Not sure how I am going to get her off this quilt.

~XOP~

AQS In Grand Rapids

Last Friday my friend, Judith and I drove to Grand Rapids to attend the AQS quilt show.  

We drove right there and we got there just as it was opening. 

We had a fabulous half day at the show.  

We met up with my friend Windy and she is always fun to hang out with.

 In addition, I got to meet one of the founders of the national Modern Quilt Guild, Latifah Saafir!!  What a sweetheart!  I did take some photos but not too many.  

First were some of the guild challenge quilts. 

 I tried to catch the tag with the info on it as to who the artist was.

I loved this one called When Raven Dreams, by Stacy Hurt. 

I have seen a photo of these bees before but they were even cuter in person.  

I believe this peacock quilt won best in show.  It was hand quilted and gorgeous!

Close up of those birds!

This one had peacocks too!

This Storm at Sea was pretty sweet.

 This quilt was simple but the quilting was just stunning!  

I really loved the way it looked like plants in the background too.  

After we looked at the quilts we hit the venders.  

I have to say that I was disappointed in the fabric selection at the show.  

Almost no modern designer fabrics. 

 Also, Bloc Loc rulers (which I love) always sells out of their show specials and 

this weekend was no exception.  

That was disappointing.

There was a cool new Creative Grid ruler called Stripology that you can use to cut strips and squares with and both Judith and Windy bought one.  

I was sorely tempted! 

 I did buy a pattern to make this beauty.  

Designer Laura Heine (Fiberworks) had the BEST booth at the show.  I love her patterns!

We left the show and drove to the Westsider for lunch. 

 I seriously love that place!  

Windy rode with us so we brought her back to the downtown and headed out to Stitched Studio.  

One of the best modern fabric shops. 

 You can see Judith buying some fabric here.  

I picked up some Tula voile and a little bit of her True Colors line.

One of the fabrics that we had been on the hunt for the entire trip 

is this Zinnia in lime, by Kaffe Fassett.  

We made one stop on the way home at the quilt shop in Holt, as I wanted their Row By Row pattern.  We were shopping and when Judith looked down, there was a bolt of this!!!  

Unfortunately she was still 3 yards short (it is for the back of a quilt she is making). 

 I found the additional 3 yards on ETSY this weekend!

We arrived safely back at Judith's house, looked at her garden (so jealous), had a cocktail, did some consultation on her latest 2 quilts talked for awhile then headed home.  

All in all it was a fabulous outing.

I worked on the Bee Positive quilt all weekend and got the top put together, 

embroidered the label and put the back together. 

I dropped it off with Kathy at lunch and asked her to work her magic.  

I even got the binding all set for when I comes back!  

How was your weekend??

~XOP~

Bee Blocks

I kicked off the weekend with dinner out with my son.  

He actually texted me to see if I wanted to go out for dinner.  

How nice right?

I am still waiting for a few more cross blocks for my Bee Positive quilt.  

I decided that I would take time to actually do some cleaning around my house before my husband returned home from his week long adventure to Canada.  

I spent all day on Saturday cleaning!  UGH, but doesn't it feel so good when everything is clean? 

 He arrived home in the evening so no sewing for me on Saturday at all.

Sunday was my middle daughter's birthday.  

I wish we could have been with her to celebrate but sometimes that is just not in the cards.  

She is such a wonderful person and we are so very proud of her!  

I also decided that since I am still waiting for a few more blocks, 

I would get my other August commitments out of the way. 

That meant getting my bee blocks done and working on the Round and Round quilt blocks. 

 I got my August Bee blocks finished and ready to put in the mail.  

They are from a pattern on the Modern Quilt Guild's site 

so if you are a member you can find the pattern here. 

 The quilt is called Use Your Illusion and is by Cheryl Brickey.

This is my round and Round progress. 

 For some reason this block just went together with so much difficulty! 

 I can't even tell you how many times I ripped it apart!  

I have all the rows for the last block (that I have to make) 

finished so hope to sew them into a block tonight!  

Progress is being made!!!  

The secret wedding quilt is ready for pick up at the quilters today.  I can't wait to see it. 

 None of us can remember what happened to the binding so (and I didn't tell anyone) 

I am going to just remake it from the cut offs of the edges of the backing of the quilt when I get it. 

 I think I remember what we did so will do my best to recreate it.  

I just want it DONE!  

Done is better than perfect right? 

RIGHT?

So that was my weekend.  What did you do?  Anything fun?

~XOP~