Voting Is Now Open In The Blogger's Quilt Festival

Just a quick note to let you know that voting is underway at the Blogger's Quilt Festival.  

If you go here you can vote for Viewer's Choice 

(one of my quilts, Charmalade, from the quilt photography category is there). 

 You can also click on each category and cast your vote in each category. 

 I have a quilt in photography and also in professionally quilted quilts (the dollie quilt). 

 If you would like to vote for my quilts I would appreciate it but if another takes your fancy,

 by all means please go and vote!  

You cast your vote by clicking on the heart in the upper right of the photo.

I appreciate your vote!! 

 More later.

~XOP~

Blogger's Quilt Festival Quilt Photography

I debated on writing a post about this quilt.  

I am totally in love with the photo I took of this quilt while in Traverse City.

I made this quilt for the MBS and you can find the pattern right here. 

 I love the fabric, Marmalade by Bonnie and Cammile, 

I love the quilting, done on my friend's long arm machine, 

and how could you not love Traverse City Michigan?!

It was raining lightly but I was determined to get a good photo of this quilt 

for the money shot on the MBS.  

I had seen this little church on the bay earlier in the day and 

asked hubby to drive me (and the quilt) back there.  

I leaped out of the car, flung the quilt over the fence, snapped two pictures, 

scooped it back up and off we went.  

All the while with me saying, I think I got *the* shot!  Of course he thought I was mad, 

but I really do think this is a beautiful shot of this quilt.

You can see some of the quilting better in this photo.

This one always reminded me of Jack claiming this quilt for his!

Probably my all time favorite photo of both Jack and this quilt.  

He passed away a year ago, but I think of him everyday and miss him so much!

I have entered the first picture in the Blogger's Quilt Festival in the quilt photography category.  

I would love it if someone would nominate it for a viewer's choice!  

If you would like to see more photos of this beautiful quilt please check out the MBS and my blog.

Have a great time visiting all the fabulous entries!

~XOP~

Blogger's Quilt Festival

Life has been crazy here at my house lately but I wanted to get in on the Blogger's Quilt Festival.  

I am going to talk about a quilt I just recently blogged about.
 It is a dolly quilt that I made with 2 of my friends for another friend that was having a baby girl.
You can read all about the quilt here.
 One of my co workers was expecting a baby girl.
 I was using these dolls for heads and tails projects and
 brought the dolls into the lab to show my 2 quilting friends.
 They went absolutely crazy for them!
So it was decided that we would each make a certain number of them and I would put the quilt together.
 Of course we all made more than we were supposed to
so we laid them all out and chose from what we had made for the quilt.  

We each made dolls that represented ourselves too.
 Here is Judith's.
 She loves insects.

Robin's was made with Robin fabric

Mine had creepy bunnies.
 I love creepy things and I work with and love bunnies too.

 We made an "I spy" type of border using fabric from our three stashes for it.
 We each had to make a certain number of the squares so
 we got a nice variety and not one single print was duplicated!

We all work at U of M but you know I could not resist putting in my Spartan "S"!!

Our other friend Liz, did the quilting and she did a fabulous job!
Every girl was outlined, flowers in the open blocks and in the border.  

I love everything about this quilt and can't wait to make another one!
The last thing to do was make the label and I thought a heart was a good choice.

I hope you have enjoyed my dolly quilt and are having fun on the Blogger's Quilt Festival too!

~XOP~

Voting For The Blogger's Quilt Festival Has Begun!

I just have a quick minute to post. 

 I have entered Charmalade in the Blogger's Quilt Festival.  

Voting opens today right here.

My quilt is number 42, so if you like it I certainly would appreciate your vote.  

Here is what it looks like just in case you forgot.

Have a wonderful Memorial Day weekend everyone in the states!!

~XOP~

Nominations and Voting Begin Today

You have all seen the quilt I entered in the Blogger's Quilt Festival, Charmalade.  

Nominations are open beginning today for each of the categories.  

You can go HERE to make your nominations for each category. 

 I am hoping to get some nominations for best throw. 

 My quilt is #532.  

Please make choices for each category!  

Voting for Viewer's Choice are open also.  

You can go directly HERE  and vote for your favorite. 

 Be sure to click on the star directly ABOVE the quilt you want to vote for!! 

 Is it 532?? 

 LOL

So go and look at all the BEAUTIFUL eye candy, make your nominations and vote for your favorite!

Have a wonderful day everyone and happy quilting!

~XOP~

Blogger's Quilt Festival Quilt #532

I have been trying to decide which quilt to enter into the Blogger's Quilt Festival and 

finally settled on Charmalade.   

Many of you have seen this quilt over at the Moda Bake Shop, 

where I did a tutorial on how to make it.

Funny story, I took this quilt with me on vacation to Petosky, MI and had to apply the binding.  

I got the binding all done and thought it would be fun to photograph it 

in a beautiful setting near Lake Michigan. 

 It rained almost the entire time we were there and was incredibly windy.  

For the above photo I hopped out of the car, flung the quilt over the fence, quickly snapped 2 pictures and wadded the quilt back up and threw it in the trunk. 

 I was frantically hoping one of the 2 pictures would be "the one".  

This is the one I used and I love how it came out.

 I quilted feathers in the snow portion.  

I'm not sure you can tell but I used light aqua thread.

 I quilted straight lines down the colored lines and out into the border.  

My LAQ, Liz did the circles in the colored border.

If you know me you know that I have 5 cats, so everything has to be "cat approved".

 I think if Jack felt he could nap on it it must be good enough to stay!

 I love this photo as it looks like he is claiming it all for himself!

 

So this is Charmalade

A charm pack friendly quilt made using Marmalade.

If you want to make one too, please check out my post on the Moda Bake Shop.

If you stop over to the MBS, leave me a comment over there and let me know!

 

Bloggers Quilt Festival Stats:

Size is 56" X 68"

Technique: Pieced

Quilted by me on my friends long arm machine and my domestic machine, 

and one border by Liz Bowman

Quilt # for voting is 532

Best Category:  Best Lap size quit, best pieced, or Viewer's Choice

Blogger's Quilt Festival 2011

That's right it's Blogger's Quilt Festival time.  Amy has hosted this amazing festival for the past little while and if you haven't heard about it be prepared to be blown away by all the inspiration out there!  We are supposed to choose one quilt to share with everyone and tell the story behind the quilt.  I had the amazing opportunity to be the person selected to put together a very special quilt.  A group of Flickr peeps got together, virtually and everyone was assigned a color.  The block style was chosen and we all went to work.

Here is my block.

My friend Pauline made a block also.

OK I've teased you enough here is the entire quilt!

I chose the layout and put the top together, my friend Liz did the quilting and my friend Pauline embroidered the label and did the binding. Know who we sent it off in the mail to? Heather Ross!!! She was expecting her first baby and we thought it would be perfect for her. We had to use some of Heather's fabric in our block too. Here is the label and you can see the quilting better here too.

I designed the label and the saying was one of Heather's. Pauline did a great job hand embroidering the label too.

I hope you have enjoyed my quilt and the story that goes along with it. Thanks for stopping by!!

Blogger's Quilt Festival

Every year, Amy, runs a Blogger's Quilt Festival and this year is no exception. I want to participate but which quilt to post about? I finally decided on "Sparkle". I wrote about this quilt before but just in case you missed it here is the story.

My DD1 has drawn for a long time.  She loves to draw dragons.  A LOT.  She drew a purple dragon of herself in dragonform and called it "Sparkle".  In case you were wondering that is where my blog name came from, mama of Sparkle, aka Mama Spark.  When she graduated from high school I asked her to draw Sparkle so I could use it for a party invite.  This is the dragon she drew, and the invite said, "Graduate?  Already?"  (I left the words off)  Here is the applique and the original drawing:

I think they are pretty close.  I hope you have enjoyed this little quilt!  I have enjoyed sharing it with you.  ~XOP~

Blogger's Quilt Festival

Yep it's that time of year. The wonderful Amy over at Amy's Creative Side is hosting her annual Blogger's Quilt Festival. Which quilt to choose, which one? Hmmm I was reading a blog where the person said the one she finished last was always her new favorite. I feel like that sometimes too. I did have a recent finish of a top but I forgot to take pictures before sending it to the quilter! I digress. I think I am going to share my Mermaid Quilt.


I just love this mini quilt! I promised a mini quilt for a quilt auction and this is what I came up with. I had bought this mermaid pattern many years ago with some others. Now I have no idea where the other mermaids went but I love this one. I may need to go on a mission to find them. I also have no idea who the artist is, if I knew I would just buy more! If anyone else knows maybe you can share it with me! I sent her off to the auction. As it turns out I loved it so much I bought it back! I even quilted this one myself so don't look too closely!
I did all of the embroidery by hand and I really enjoyed doing that. I strip pieced the back too just for a little added interest.

Both of my daughters were swimmers and always pretended to be mermaids when they were small. This kind of reminds me of my girls. I hope you enjoy seeing her too!

Blogger's Quilt Festival Begins TODAY!!!

Yep you read that correctly. The Blogger's Quilt Festival begins today over on Amy's Blog. If you have a quilt that you want to share with everyone this is the place to do it. She also has an amazing list of sponsors for fabulous prizes. I have a quilt to share with you. I have blogged about this quilt already but would love to share it again.

When my DD2 graduated from high school we had a party, duh like everyone else does. I decided to make some white squares and put them in a basket with some fabric pens with instructions for everyone to write their thoughts and well wishes on for my DD as she was leaving for college. I knew I would make it into a quilt eventually. Of course I had no idea what I was going to do but knew I would figure it out later.

Both her HS and university use a block "S" as a symbol of the school. Her HS colors were royal blue and white and the university's were green and white. Have you ever had one of those "ah ha" moments? Well I did. I had a friend make DD2's party invites with a block "S" split diagonally and colored blue and green with her senior picture in the center. I decided to make a block "S" out of the white squares and diagonally split the background into blue and green.



I finished the top a few months ago and decided to use flannel for the back (she adores flannel on the back of her quilts) I happened to find Michigan State University flannel, woot, woot, so I used that.

My good friend and excellent quilter LTW did an amazing job and quilted a block "S" into each and every block.

This is what I wrote to her on my square:

I made the decision to give it to her upon her recent graduation from university. She graduated a few weekends ago with honors. We are so proud of her! So I labeled it and presented her with it the day of her graduation (only 4 years later than the initial squares were made)

She was moving to an apt in another city the following week but she pulled me aside as we were leaving to ask if she could keep the quilt overnight because she wanted to sleep under it. She called me the next day to tell me that as she read the things people had said to her from 4 years ago it made her a little sad, she felt like she should have tried harder but we both knew she always tries her best and she did graduate with honors. We talked about it and she was so grateful to have such a wonderful reminder of both her high school and university years!

Thank you, Amy, for allowing me to share this story and my quilt. I love the Blogger's Quilt Festival!!