Bjorn Bear

My Niece and her husband are expecting their second baby.

They found out it will be a boy.

I had all the stuff to make the Elizabeth Hartman pattern, Bjorn Bear.

I used a Grunge for the background and a FQ bundle of cross weaves for the bears.

 If you look closely, 
you can see that I used fabric from each bear face in a strip along the bottom in the binding.

My quilter, Liz, did bees all around the bears.

They turned out so cute!

She did bear paws in the outer border.

I love it!

I had some bear Minky in my stash, but needed just a bit more, so my SIL cam to my rescue.

She had some that she let me use.  

I was even able to pattern match those cute bear faces.

I LOVE these labels from Ever Emblem for labeling.

So quick and easy!

I sent along some more burp cloths.

That bear one was made from left overs of the matching sheet I sent along with the quilt too.

This is the bear sheet, finished.

That lion backing goes to another quilt that has not been gifted yet. 

I mailed off the goodies to my niece.

She has received them so I felt I could now post about them.

Have you made an Elizabeth Hartman pattern?

There are a lot of pieces but her directions are very good!

~XOP~

Ocean Themed Traveling Quilt

I bet you are all pretty tired of hearing about this traveling quilt.  

Almost as tired as I am of working on it.  

While I love the quilt I am SO ready to be done.  

I could not really share all the blocks either as I wanted my finish to be a surprise.  

All week I have been hard at work frantically trying to finish up the last of the blocks I needed to do.  Last night I finished the last of them and decided to sew the strip together.  

THEN, I thought, Hey, why not add it to the quilt top and BE FINISHED?! 

 So that's exactly what I did!!!

Here is the ocean themed traveling quilt top with my top and left side additions.  

It has one more person to visit then back to the owner.

 I made stars and surrounded my mermaid with them. (pattern by Quiet Play)

 I made a "Nessie" (Loch Ness monster) pattern by Elizabeth Hartman.  

I added the word Thalassophile, which means sea/ocean lover 

using the letter patterns of From Blank Pages.

 The patterns of sea creatures were from Sarah Elizabeth Sharp.  

They are in her book Adventures in Paper Piecing & Design.  

(a totally awesome book!)

First I made invisible jelly fish.  I enlarged and shrunk the pattern.

 Next up was a sea dragon.

Followed by an octopus.

And another sea dragon.

I did a LOT of improvised water for the quilt to make all my side blocks 12".

I decimated my blue/aqua low volume stash.

I had fun making the stars too.

I took this last night as I made the final 4 stars.

Before I put them into the quilt.

Lastly my friend that was taking photos made me pose for this one.

So here it is without the side 

And completely finished and ready for me to mail!

I am very proud of the additions I did and hope that Jenny loves them as much as I do.

I think it was second only to the Hallowedding quilt for time and effort!

Have a great weekend!

~XOP~

WIPs With Friends

I have been very busy working on so many things. 

 I now have kitten "helpers".  

It is so much more difficult to get things done with them in my sewing room.  

They seem to go from one thing to another wreaking havoc! 

 Then they crash. 

 I needed to do the binding on the quilt for my priest and they finally settled in.

Finn does the BEST poses!

I did manage to get all the binding sewn down on the quilt for our priest.  

I need to gift this quilt on Saturday.  

I will take a photo of the front in the day light but isn't Finn a great model? 

I was surprised that I got all three of the cats on my table last night as Hal is not a huge kitten fan.

I got my four bee blocks done, now I just need to put them in the mail.

I am now working on putting the binding on the llama quilt. 

 This turned out soooooo cute!  

I am using that same black and white stripe for the binding.

I love that our quilter quilted in the baby's name!

My friend robin and I worked on this together. 

 The saddle on the llama is actually some fabric she brought back from Panama and it is a pocket!  You have to love Elizabeth Hartman's patterns!

I thought this was so cute of Hal.  

She fell asleep with her face pressed up against this bundle of fabric.

Now it is your turn to share what you are working on.  Please link up!

I am linking up with Sew Fresh Quilts too.

~XOP~

An InLinkz Link-up