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Tuesday, July 31, 2018

Sewing With Friends

This past weekend I spent Saturday sewing at my friend, Robin's house with some friends.  
She has an amazing screened in porch.  
She always does an amazing job with the food too, way over the top!
This was no exception.  
It was such a fun time!



Isn't this an amazing space?  Beautiful Michigan summer day.


I am always so amazed at my friend's Tula stash too.  



 Our food spread was amazing.  
We had quiche for breakfast and she served it plus grilled chicken and lemon parmesan 
spaghetti squash and all you see here for our lunch!



I can't wait to go back and do it again!  I worked on the second wedding quilt I have to make.  
I realized that I trimmed half of my HST incorrectly so ended up 
trimming them all down to the mistake size. 
 I think it will be ok though.

More photos of that tomorrow.

~XOP~


Wednesday, July 18, 2018

WIPs With Friends

I finished the top for the sisterhood traveling quilt. 
I had Paula's center which was an amazing purple Monarch butterfly. 
 Unfortunately I did not get close up pictures of the blocks that I added. 
 I only took one of the finished top.


I have previously shown these blocks but will group them here too. 
 I made these and brought them to the retreat with me but added 
another flower, the bunny, squirrel and the word GROW.






I also taught my SIL how to paper piece while we were at the retreat.
She made the same bunny and is turning it into a pillow for her granddaughter.

This quilt needed to go to it's next home and that happened to be with Traci. 
 I handed it over to her before I realized that I had not taken any pictures of the additional blocks.
I'm hoping she will take some photos for me.

Your turn to share.
Please link up what you are working on.

~XOP~

Use the linky button to link up what you are working on!



Tuesday, July 17, 2018

Quilt Retreat 2018

I set up a quilt retreat with my friends Cori and Traci and my SIL, Mary, at Creative Passions.  
It is only about an hour and 45 minutes away from my house.  
Traci flew in from Wisconsin and we all drove to the retreat.  
Captain Jack was helping me get packed.  
We had lots of wine!   


 Also a lot of snacks, we would not go hungry!

Beautiful view of the river on a walk one morning!


I was working on my parts that needed to be made for the Traveling Sisterhood quilt.  


I was working on a bunny too.


We went out for dinner at the Pintuck and had really great Pizza.  See Traci and Cori with me.



My SIL, Mary, and me.

Traci made her center for her traveling quilt so it could be sent away too.  Isn't it cool??


Breakfast for me one day was a Vegan cinnamon roll and Diet Coke!


We went to the Seven Sisters quilt shop too.  I made the girls stand for a photo.


Then they made me get in one too.


There was a Patch the cat and a super cute cat bed in the shop.  I guess he sheds way less than an actual cat! LOL.


I worked on my center and will show you tomorrow. 
I am already planning our next retreat in February!

~XOP~


Wednesday, July 11, 2018

Happy Birthday

Hey Hey, it's my birthday today!!  Another year is a wonderful gift, don't you think?

Not sure what this next year will bring but I am looking forward to it.  


I hope YOU all have a wonderful day today too!!

Go enjoy a FREE Slurpee at 7-11 today to celebrate my birthday!
(oh and theirs too, = )


~XOP~


WIPs With Friends

I have been pretty busy getting ready for my quilt retreat this weekend.  
I was finishing up a few things and mostly cleaning my house and packing. 
 I made some design boards to bring along. 
I found the tutorial from Lori Holt.  


She uses foam core board and hot glues batting to the board.  
Then she glues binding around the outside.  
Looked easy enough.  
Welllll, it was a little bit trickier than I thought to make them. 
 I am fairly happy with how they came out though.  

These are the ones I made.


This one was the first one I made.  


And this one was the last.  
The join got better with each one as did the equal amounts 
of fabric binding on both sides of the board.  


I bought this doll quilt on IG from a friend.  
She had it all put together and even pin basted. 
 I quilted it this weekend and put this binding on it.  
I need to hand stitch the binding down yet.


This was the back of the quilt.  
I know exactly who I am going to send this to.  
Probably at Christmas time with a stuffed cat (since her "mean" mommy won't let her have a cat). 
 I just love the Tiger Lily line of fabric.  One of my all time favorites!


I may take this to the retreat to finish it.  Thanks, Lee, it is purfect!!

What are you working on?

Link up and share with us!

~XOP~


Tuesday, July 10, 2018

Happy Tuesday

When we were in GR for our visit we stopped at a garage sale on the way home.
I found this darling needle case there.
The lady just gave it to me.
Made my day!


We stopped in Mason on our way home too.  I picked up some fabrics that were on a pretty good sale.
Mendocino octopi.


This great background fabric from Allison Glass.  Sure wish they had more of this one!


These other 2 Allison Glass prints too.  
There is a friend in the traveling quilt group that adores AG, 
and I have very little of her fabric in my stash.


On Saturday morning this goofball brought me his "toy".  
He has spongy balls that he LOVES me to throw for him.  He brings them back every time.  
You should see how high he jumps sometimes to get them.  
I guess I need to try to video it sometime.  
Obviously he couldn't find a ball so he brought me my kitchen sponge.  
Silly kitty!


I am ever so slowly working on this crib quilt.  
The entire thing is embroidered and has cats on it.  
The border is a million cat paws.  
They are so boring to stitch in my favorite color, brown...not. 
 I try to pick it up and work a little at a time.  I am not doing the cats until all these paws are done. 
 I know if I do that I will never finish it.  
Do you ever do that?  
Work on the part you like least so you can finish with the fun part?


I know I have told you that Finny LOVES my husband.  
I managed to snap this pic one morning to show you how these 2 sleep every night.  
It is so cute!  


Thank you for your show of support on my post from yesterday. 
 I really just needed to get that written down.  
When I am having a bad day I remember how much harder my life could actually be and am thankful I am the person doing the caregiving.  
I'm sure soon enough I will be the old lady receiving it.  

Happy Tuesday my friends.  Go and enjoy this day!

~XOP~


Monday, July 09, 2018

A Peek Into My Life

I don't talk much about my sisters.  
Not because I don't like them but because sometimes being their sister is hard.  
Sometimes it is the hardest thing I have to do in my life.  
Both of my sisters have pretty significant life challenges.  
My older sister, Vicki, was born mentally impaired and with cataracts on both eyes.  
They had to remove her lenses when she was small and she wears really thick glasses.
We grew up fairly normally.  
We played outside together, we went to the same school (for a little while) and 
I thought I had a pretty normal life.  
My younger sister joined our family when I was 9 and Vicki was 12.  
She had a really high fever in the incubator and was left with some damage to the motor section of her brain, (Cerebral Palsy) and slight mental impairment.  
So you see, a typical family, right?

About a year after our sister was born, things changed significantly.  
Vicki left for school in the morning and when she came home she was completely different.  
So different in fact, my mom thought someone 
had given her drugs on the field trip to the park that day.  
Turns out she had developed Schizophrenia.  
I will not make you suffer through all the trials and tribulations of what happened after except to say those years were really rough for our family. 
 Finding a new "normal" was not easy, and I am not sure we ever really did.  
Eventually, my sister found her way to an Adult Foster Care (AFC) home 
with some really great and caring people.  
She had developed some pretty severe bi-polar on top of everything else and the depression is unmanagable expect for using ect (electro convulsive therapy) every three weeks.  

My younger sister is another story.  
She was cared for by my parents and waited on hand and foot. 
 It was not until after my mom passed that she had to learn how to do much on her own and it still was not much. 
 My dad did a LOT for her and she was not very nice to him. 
 She seems to be emotionally stuck at somewhere in middle school age.  
She is very verbal so folks think she knows how to do way more than she does.  

So a few years before my dad passed away I was working to get her into an apartment, when it was clear I was going to have to move my dad into somewhere he could be watched more closely and eventually to a place closer than 3 hours away from me!  
Hubby and I drove to Grand Rapids every week to take care of him but 
clearly once a week was not enough.  
It has been no small undertaking to get her into a place where I could get helpers for her.  
Now she is settled in and we have been working on 
becoming aware that other people exist for things other than her.  
Teaching someone how to become less focused on themselves is not easy.  
I thought I was done raising teens, but NOPE!  It is slow going but some progress is being made.

I promised my dad I would take care of "the girls", that it was ok for him to go.  
So now I have two more people to take care of.  
My older sister is really not much work at all.  She is in a great place with great people.  

All this being said, I had a really good visit with both sisters this past week.  
Both are in good places in their lives (for them) right now. 

With this post, I would really like people to remember to be kind to one another.  
You never know what someone else is dealing with in their life.  
Spend time with your family, even if they are difficult.  
You only get one family.  Be the good in their life.  Lead by example.

This is Vicki, happily putting out the laundry and moving it around.  
We both have a love of touching fabric!


I thought I needed a picture of the tow of us together.


I'm sorry this was so wordy, but I needed to talk.  Have a happy day!

~XOP~


Wednesday, July 04, 2018

WIPs With Friends

I have not been posting much this summer as life seems to be quite busy.  
I have not had a lot of sewing time either.  
I did test another pattern for my friend, Mary (quiltgenius).  
It is a microscope!  
It is my favorite so far of all of the patterns I have tested for her.

I was so thrilled to get this far in one night.  


 If you have not done paper piecing, this is what my back looked like.


Last night I was able to finish piecing and got the whole block put together. 
I have been waiting for some block 
that I could use this great "sciency" fabric for the background and this one was it!  
It is a combo of two fabrics from this line (Northcott Little Genius).  
One is just the words and one is words and pictures.


I an over the moon excited with how this turned out!  

On a side note I am also looking for fabrics from this line.  
It is called Vintage Kitchen and was made for Riley Blake.
I have a few pieces already and am looking for 
some of the pinks, aquas and yellows but not the browns so much.


If anyone has any they would be willing to part with I would happily buy or trade for some.
I do have a few of the prints already.

So, now, back to what are you working on? 
Please link up.

For everyone in the US HAPPY FOURTH OF JULY!!

~XOP~