WIPS With Friends

So I have soooo much to say but not much time this morning. 

 I want to tell you all about my trip to the Finger Lakes in NY 

but that is going to have to wait for a few days.  Today is for WIPs With Friends day, YAY!

I have to say that I am making a snail's amount of progress on the Hallowedding things 

(including the quilt).  

I have made some progress on other parts of the Hallowedding prep.

We are using wine in mini bottles as wedding favors.  

My friend, Robin, designed the labels for the bottles.  

That meant I had to soak the labels off of 100 bottles of wine, sigh. 

 I re-labeled some of the bottles and

figured out that I hated the blue cap with the new, very chic, Hallowedding wine labels.

What to do, what to do?  I wanted them black.  Paint? Nooooo wax!!  How do I do that??  

How will people open the bottles? Google to the rescue.  

I found out that I needed 1/4" strapping tape 

to wrap around the cap prior to dipping the caps into wax. 

 I found and ordered the tape and the black wax pellets before I left for NY.  

You can see the tape around the tops in the picture above.

Last night I decided was the night to try my little craft project. 

 I did not want to ruin a pan so I bought a pot pie pan. 

 I poured some of the pellets into the pan and put in in a pot of water 

(like a homemade double boiler)

 and melted the wax.

This is what the pellets looked like before melting.

And here they are in the disposable pan all melted. 

 I used a wooden chopstick that I had to stir the pellets until they all melted.  

It was a little tricky as my wax pan was smaller than the water pan. 

 If I pushed too hard the wax pan could dip and water get into the wax.  

I used the chopstick to scoot it so the lip of the wax pan was over the water pan on the side closest to me and then stirred.  

Now came the fun part, dipping the caps! 

 I did just that.  

Inverted the bottle and pushed the top into the wax and turned it until the cap was covered 

(I had to pay attention to the direction so the tape tab got covered too).  

Then I tipped the bottle to let the excess drip off the tape, 

thus ensuring that the tape was covered in wax too.  

It only took a few seconds for the wax to set enough that it was not a drippy mess and I put the bottle upright on waxed paper (JIC).  

There was a little dripping down the bottle on some but 

I kinda thought that added to the effect I was going for. 

 I dipped 100 bottles last night and it took me a about 1 1/2 hours.  

I know you are dying to see what they looked like finished right?

I thought they turned out so great!!  Here is an entire case all finished.

Lest you think I have forgotten the Hallowedding quilt, I have not. 

 I did finish another block.  

I wanted to take the original art work of Michele Warner, who did the costumed Raven for the wedding invitation and make it into one of the blocks for the quilt. 

 It was not quite as easy as you might have imagined (or maybe I am not as talented as all that).

Here is what I came up with. 

 I enlarged the bird and then traced his body using my light box, onto fusible.

I then fused him onto my background 

(I chose spider webs because on the upper left of the invite there is a big ole spider web.)  

Then I drew some tail spines with a Frixion pen and went to town stitching feathers. 

 I also stitched his crown using thread and fm scribbling,

The eyes of the feathers were a little trickier. 

 I wanted a clean look so I appliqued these onto the feathers and then 

stitched around each of the three fabrics using free motion stitching.  

I wish this showed up a little better but I scribble stitched the raven incorporating blue threads to give that typical blue black sheen you see in these birds.  

First I just free motion stitched the eye but you couldn't really see it so I appliqued a piece of gray fabric and they stitched to fill it in a little.  

At least this way you can tell he *has* an eye!  

The crown is free motion stitched as well.  

Straight stitch and then a circular scribble to fill in the circles on top.

The bad part is that the feathers really, REALLY scrunched the fabric up. 

Also, very tempting to iron but then all your drawn lines would disappear, cuz Frixion pen.

 When I did the names I found this to happen so used interfacing, 

but it really did not help as much as I had hoped.

  I think maybe heavier interfacing may have been a better idea, but live and learn.  

After all that hard work, I was determined to make this work. 

So I pressed the he** out of it using steam and spray starch, LOL. 

 It was a little wonky but I was able to trim it . 

 I was smart enough to make the length long enough to get the final length I needed 

but I goofed up on the width.  

I will have to see where this fits in the quilt and adjust from there with "coping strips".  

I only needed 1/2" more to make the whole thing 12.5" x 12.5"

 so may end up cutting it down to 9.5" x 12.5".  

Whew that is a lot! 

 I will link up with Let's Bee Social but I want you to link up here and 

tell us all what YOU have been working on too!  

You should know the drill by now.  

Click on the blue "inlinkz" button to add your link.  

If you are only on Instagram use the #wipswithfriends.

~XOP~

Now it's your turn to link up your finishes here. 

 Remember that if you do post in the link up here

 you should post a link back to this post on your own blog too.

So now it's your turn to share what you are working on.  

Please use the linky to link up and share that you linked up to WIPs With Friends on your blog too.  If using Instagram please use the hashtag

#wipswithfriends.  

We can't wait to see what you are working on!

Use the blue Inllinkz button to link up and spread the word by linking back to this post!

An InLinkz Link-up