Tula Pink 10" Square Swap

**US and International welcome!**

I just have a few minutes to tell you that I am hosting a 10" square, Tula Pink swap. 

 It works like this, you go here for all the details. 

 Once you are at the Flickr group go into the discussions and look for the 

"Sign up for the swap here" discussion.  

Read the rules and at the end if you want to sign up click on the link where it says "here" 

and fill out the form.

Once I have the form I will add you to the group. 

 Upload a photo of the Tula Pink fabric you want to use to the group photo section.  

Here is my choice of fabric:

Make sure you check the group photo pool so you don't choose a duplicate!  

You will need 2 yards of the fabric you choose and you will cut that into 28 - 10" squares.  

You will send them to me and I will sort and send back a set of 28- 10" squares to you.  

Easy Peasy, right?  

Now who wants in??

You know you want to !!!

~XOP~

It's Been A Long Week!

I've been unusually quiet I know but life has gotten crazier than usual. 

 Last Sunday I went to the Checker Distributors open house with Cori and Pauline. 

 I bought a few fabric cards and thought I would share what I bought.

 I am planning on swapping these whales

 And the "It's a boy" fabric on the right

 And the Madrona Road, if anyone is interested.

Now here is the naughty part. 

 I also bought 2 bolts of fabric!!  

YIKES!! 

 One was a bolt of Kona white which I use all the time and 

the other one was so freaking adorable I just couldn't pass it up!!

Have you people seen Sarah Jane's new line Out to Sea??  

I really love it.  

I just remembered I did not take a picture of my fabric so it is night time and my pic is kind of bad but if you go here you will see it in it's true color.

 (The white spot was from my light)

I believe the pirate girls and the Narwhals will eventually have to join in the fun too.

While we were at the open house I got to rub elbows with someone most everyone knows too.

Alrighty then, this takes me up to the rest of the week now. 

 I left to go to Grand Rapids on Thursday afternoon and will pick up there tomorrow. 

~XOP~

Some Recent Purchases

When I went to Fort Wayne to take the class from Jacquie we all went to a quilt shop together.

 I made a few purchases while I was there and thought I would share what I got.

 I love the Paris map fabric and the blueprint fabric too.

 My favorite though was the wavy line, gradated fabric.

 It is so cool! 

I also bought this purple fabric and some gray too.

 I never buy purple but I really liked this one. 

I also formed a new friendship with Jenny while I was there.  

She and I were talking about the typewriter fabric from Ruby Star Shining. 

 I love that fabric!  

I had no idea how large those typewriters really were 

until Jenny sent me a couple of them (thanks Jenny). 

 She also send a few scraps of the Mendocino swimming sisters.

  Isn't she just the sweetest??

 When I got back home I was perusing Fabric.com and found some Nightshade by Tula Pink.  Hmmm, that bird one needed to come and live with me.  

I'm not sure which color I like the best and check out that selvedge!

  It's worth buying some for that alone! 

 Any of you Tula Pink fans?

That's it for now my peeps. 

 I will pop back in soon. 

If you live in the US have a Happy 4th of July!!

It's GREAT to be free!!  Have a wonderful holiday!!

~XOP~

Swapping Surprise

I had done a little swap with my friend Lisa who lives in Tasmania.
 I sent her some vintage buttons and she sent me some great fabric.
Apparently she thought she didn't send enough so I received this little package from her yesterday, complete with another Porn for Women card!
 LOL

Three Denyse Schmidt (Available in Australia only) 

 Some adorable Heather Ross dogs and rabbits and race cars fabric 

as well as that incredibly cute spider bookmark. 

 Now how did she know I love Halloween??

Blogging friends are the BEST!! 

I'm not sure I mentioned it yet but

 I am going to meet up with another blogging friend when I go to Raleigh in May. 

Freda over at

The Adventures of the Empress of the Universe 

and I will go quilt shop hopping one Saturday when I am in town. 

 If there are any other bloggers reading this that are in the area over Memorial weekend 

let me know and we will see if we can all meet up!

I am working on something very exciting for all of you.  

The announcement will be coming near the end of April.

I *promise* you it is something FUN!!

I am working furiously to have it ready soon.

~XOP~

Weekend Goings On

How was everyone's weekend?  Mine seemed to be spend doing a lot of "stuff" and not very exciting stuff at that.  I had a lot of things I needed to do and then there was the exciting MSU football game on Saturday night!!!

One of the kind of different things I did was DH and I made mozzarella cheese together.  My friend gave us some fresh goat milk and we tried making cheese with it.  Here you can see it formed and then DH stretching it.

He was having so much fun stretching it that he stretched it too much and it turned out tough. So he just grated it. I will let you know how it tastes when I use it in something. I think I would like to try it again and see if we can do a better job of it. It didn't take very long either!

I also had some swaps come in this last week too. Are you guys as happy to receive swaps as I am? I got two packages this past week.

I took this dress apart and it came out very well!!

What cool swap stuff have you received (or sent) ?

~XOP~

Another Swap Received

I have just a minute before I have to head off to the dentist for a crown (someone I worked with told me that once I got my crown I would be a princess...I told him I'm already a princess and would just as soon pass on this particular crown!) and thought I would chat for a few minutes.  I HATE going to the dentist, especially for something like a crown.  UGH, I sit all white knuckled and everything while they work.  I think I may ask them for gas today to help with my dental anxiety!  ACK!  OK, taking my mind off that,  I received another wonderful swap package in the mail recently and thought I would share with you.

Some Flea Market Fancy with a little Heather Ross thrown in for good measure. Sweet huh?

Have you heard of Zulily? Me either, until my friend Mary sent me an invite. So off I went to check it out and guess what they happen to have on sale right now? Munki Munki pjs! Check out the pair I got. I'd show you but it won't let me borrow their image. It has skaters all over it. I love Munki Munki. I don't use them except to cut up and use in my quilts. Any of you Munki fans? If so you can use my code and I will get credit.

http://www.zulily.com/invite/plincoln485

So if you are a BIG fan like me, use my invite and order up a storm. I also found a percent off coupon code coupguru922 and received an additional amount off my purchase. When I subtracted it from my shipping I ended up only paying $1.95 for shipping.

Let me know if you check it out. Have a wonderful afternoon!! ~XOP~

Look Who Came To Visit

I was sitting at my sewing table minding my own business when I happened to look out the window.  What did I see?  The most adorable Gold Finch feasting on the seeds from my Cone Flowers.  How adorable is she?

I was looking over my latest swaps. I thought I would take just a minute or two of your time and share them with you too!
First up was this honey bun of Sweet along with some yardage. SWEET!

Next up was a visit from my my favorite characters, the Ghastlies!! Who doesn't love them? I am not sure what I will use them in but I needed them to stop in for a visit.

I'm really liking that green color way too. Do you guys have some of this? If you do what are you making with yours?
Then I had bought a Groupon and it was to This and That Japan. It was going to expire soon so I had to use it. This is the loot I picked out with my Groupon.

I love those cats and those bunnies are to die for!  If you haven't checked out This and That you certainly should!  I'm just trying to keep my head above water this week, so incredibly busy at my paying job!  Might be a quiet blog week for me but who knows.  ~XOP~

I Know How To Have FUN!

I sure do!  DH has been away in Canada all week and I took the day off yesterday and cleaned the carpet!!  HAHA, boy do I know how to have fun eh?  I did the entire family room, the upstairs hallway and then I was out of solution.  I ran over to Cori's house and we worked on some ideas for her blog so check it out and let us know what you think.  Then off to the store for some more solution so I could do the steps.  WHEW, so much work but it looks so good!


I took a few pics of some recent swaps I have received so thought I would share those while I am waiting for my friends to show up. I swapped out some Henna Garden for this:

I swapped some more and got these. SWEET!!

Some friends are coming over and I haven't seen them for sooo long like 4 or 5 years!! I hope they arrive soon. We are going to get some food (my favorite Chinese) and I'm starved!

I leave you with these pics of my goofy cats that were "helping" me clean.

I had just cleaned all the cat hair off that chair. Oh well. Have a wonderful Labor Day weekend everyone. My sweetie comes home tomorrow night and I am so excited to see him!

Don't You Just LOVE Swapping??

WHAT??  You say you have never tried swapping??  Why not?  I have done several trades using Flickr groups and they have been amazing!  I know I have talked about this before but I did some serious swapping recently.  One woman that I swapped with previously had a dragon print listed in her ISO, but no photo of the print.  I FM (Flickr Mailed) her but I just *knew* it was the print I had in a tub in the basement.  Sure enough, it was!  So we swapped.  I sent her that print and some other things and a few $$ and lookie what I got in return!

An entire FQ set of AMH Loulouthi!!! I was beyond THRILLED!! If you haven't seen it in person let me tell you some of these prints are fabulous!! I like it so much more IRL than I even did from the pictures of it. I'm especially in love with the jelly fish looking print (the three in the front on the left) and that zig zag stripe is so cool!!

If that wasn't enough another person was ISO something that I happened to have also and she was so generous with what I had a choice of swapping for too. These beauties are what I ended up with.

Both swaps were so great! So if you haven't tried swapping maybe you should think about doing it. There are 2 Flickr groups (that I know of) a Destash group and a Designer Swap group. You need a Flickr account. List your ISO (In Search Of) in your profile. You can either talk about things you have to swap or post pictures of what you have/want. People will be in touch if they have/want what you post about. Sometimes it helps to look at other's ISO's in their profiles too.

I was sewing on my quilt for Jacquie last night and on the couch behind me was this:


"What? I was just trying to keep your fabric warm? Is that a problem?"
"No Aiden, no problem!"

"All right then, I'm just going to snuggle in here and nap!"

And someone told me I manage my pet hair well, LOL! See all the plastic bags?? THAT's how I manage my pet hair!! That and I lay my quilts out somewhere other than my own house. I tried the floor and it is ok especially the wood floor because I can vacuum first, BUT all the cats and the dog feel like they need to walk through or roll around on whatever I have there. It makes it tough. So that couch you saw Aiden on? I usually lay the blocks on that, although I still have to shoo cats off of it. Sheesh, they think I put all that out for them. I wish I could have shown you Aiden this morning as I was leaving for work. She was rolling all over my cutting mat, wanting me to pet her belly. Now when I go home, before I can work, I will have to wipe all the cat hair off the mat. Mosen was on it last night too and I got some really cute pics of him but they have the new quilt in them too so I can't share them yet.

Hope you have a great Thursday and how do you manage your pet hair issues?? ~XOP~

As We Head Into The Weekend

I don't have much to talk about today as the weekend draws near.  I worked on my cat stitchery last night.  It's coming along.  I am hoping to have in finished soon.  I found out I need to do the second one as well, bummer, but will get to it.

You all know that I went to Checker with Cori (Crazy Quilt Girl) this week.  We picked up some Prince Charming, the new Tula Pink line.  They didn't have all of it but she got quite a bit of it, half the line or so.  I managed to snap these pictures of the bolts on her stairs the other night and thought I would share with you.

Trust me when I tell you they are even more beautiful in person than these pictures can convey!! I can't wait to dive into them. I think the snails and the frogs are my favorites, although I love the honeycomb too, esp in indigo. YUM!! Pop on over to her shop and check it out.

She also picked up some adorable My Kitten by Benartex. If you like cats you need to go and look at this. So adorable!!

Cori managed to find some of the first Flour Sugar line too. It is such a beautiful line. So if you missed it the first time go on over to the shop and snatch these beauties right up. They look great with Rose Parade!
The other new additions she has are pre-cuts from Riley Blake. If you have been dying to get your hands on some of their adorable fabric just click here to be taken to Nirvana!!

Ok, so let me see,most of my post has been about my friend's shop and she is not even a sponsor!! HAHA, just a really, really good friend, another BFF! If you like to get your fabric at a good price, in a timely fashion and with great customer service you found the shop for you!! Tell her Mama Spark sent you!! (do I get commission??)

I thought you might like to see what I came home to the other night after work.
I had some fabric stacked up to take pics for for a potential swap and when I got home from work this is what I found.

Aiden "warming" the stack. Thanks, Aiden. Then I looked at the couch behind her and saw this

My apparently alien cat, Mosen laying on one of my quilts! Hey, Mosen, thanks for the black fur all over the light colored quilt back!!

You guys have heard me talking about swaps so I thought I would show you one of the recent swaps I made. I sent some AMH voile's and got these beauties in return.

Menadacino and FFA?  for real??  YESSSSSS!!!!  How lucky was I?  I hope Kathleen was as happy with her AMH voiles as I was with this haul.  We are actually doing another swap shortly and I should have the whole Loulouthi line in FQ for some Hope Valley, some dragon fabric and some $$.  I love Flickr swaps!  I did a swap with Sara and got some amazing solids (no pics though).  I had some So St Croix FE to trade and she sent solids in various colors in return.  If you haven't checked into swapping through Flickr or your blog you should consider it.  It's a  great way to trade for what you want and keep rotating your stash.  There are several swap/destash groups on Flickr.

Well, for someone that didn't have a lot to say, apparently I really did!  Although anyone that knows me would not be surprised in the least!  Have a great Friday and hopefully we will talk soon.  ~XOP~