WIPs With Friends

I was busy, busy BUSY over the weekend!  I have loads to share with you all.

I got 2 count them 2 quilts back from my fabulous long arm quilter, Kathy, at Thread Bear Quilting.  The first one is the baby Big Foot quilt.  

I had to put away the fishies to work on binding this one.  T

he baby is due any minute now so I need to have it trimmed and bound.

I chose an aqua and white stripe binding for this one.  

The aqua matched the chest and face on the Yeti that is on the back.  

I did get it all sewn on and turned and glue basted in place. 

 I even managed to stitch about 1/4 of the way by hand too.  

I will take a photo of the whole quilt once I get the binding finished.

The other quilt that I got back is the Hallowedding quilt!!!  

As you can see Hallie (short for Halloween) claimed it for her own!  

This while I was trying to sew on the binding.

I will show some close ups once I can gift it.

The groom is working out of state for awhile so not sure when that will be.

Maybe a few sneak peeks though!

I had a friend ask me about what did I mean "glue basted" the binding. 

 I use Elmer's School glue 

(it's washable)

 and put a thin line between the stitch line and the raw edge of the quilt.  

Then I carefully turn the binding until the fold is just over the stitching line 

and using my iron, press it into place.  

This allows me to take the quilt anywhere and bind and not have to worry about pins. 

 It is also MUCH easier on my hands not to have to hold it in place while it stitch 

(or have pins or clips in my way)

The quilting detail is amazing on this (Thank you Kathy!)  Again, Hal thought this was hers!

I managed to get my 4 bee blocks done too.  

I did work on another chenille blanket and some burp cloths but since the baby shower is this upcoming Saturday, I won't show these until after the shower.

I will link up with Sew Fresh Quilts Let's Bee Social

Now it's your turn. 

 Show me what you are working on! 

 Please link up using the blue Inlinkz button.

Don't forget to share on social media using #WIPsWithFriends and link back to this post!

~XOP~

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WIPs With Friends Hallowedding Progress

I am continuing progress on the Hallowedding quilt top.  

I lost one of the spider webs and finally found it this weekend.  

Then I thought I had lost the 2 witch's hats and the 2 candy corn blocks but 

they were actually hiding under the other spider web block.  

(Of course I discovered this after I made new ones, LOL.)

I had made a few extra coffin blocks and was lamenting this when another friend suggested that I use them in my filler block locations.  

BRILLIANT (this is why she is by BFF).  

I hand appliqued 4 individual coffin blocks and trimmed them to fit in the places that I needed the filler blocks. 

 Remember that since the ring was 6" larger, I had to find a way to enlarge the quilt top to make it fit.  I dug out the graph paper and started working. 

 As it turns out there was only one partial seam in the quilt top piecing. 

 How lucky was that?  

The first section I worked on was this one.  See the four filler blocks? 

 I was happy to use that skeleton hand fabric forming hearts. 

 It came from my friend.

I think this one with the cat, fish and boy (holding up the peacock) is my favorite.  

I was totally going for this look too.  So cool!

I wanted to find a way to use Sebastian in the quilt wherever I could and this large pink cat was purrrrfect!

A different friend also send a Ghastly peacock so I had to use him.  

See that pumpkin fabric?  I was dying to find a way to include that in this quilt.

I was under the mistaken idea that I needed to make more candy corns so made this one with the cat.

Turns out the others were hiding under that blue web!  

(They will be on the back)

Another "must use" fabric was this haunted forest.

Last adorable filler I will share is Sebastian on the picture frame.  

These were all so perfect for my quilt.

So this is my progress after the weekend.
Linking up with Sew Fresh Quilts

~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!

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Hallowedding Quilt Update

Yesterday, I was showing a friend what the Ghastlies fabric looked like. 

I Googled it and clicked on Images.  

I clicked on an image and guess what was in that frame??  You'll never guess!

A PEACOCK!!!! 

Yep, right smack dab in the front!  Well, you know what I now need right?  

Some of the Ghastlie Holiday fabric.  I really just need a 3.5" square for one place in the quilt.  

I put the call out on Instagram asking if anyone had this fabric (in any of the color ways) and would be willing to send me a 3.5" square.  

(I didn't really need more than that).  

THREE people volunteered to help me!  

So now I have 2 of the 3.5" squares coming and one wonderful person is sending me an entire FQ!!!  Which is really cool as on the other side of the goal post looking thing is a cat that would be purrfect in another portion of the quilt! 

 Bwahahaha, my plan is coming together!

I made time to make this last spider web block last night. 

 I employed all the things I learned making the first one and STILL managed to screw up.  

The black web on the outside was supposed to be the center and 

the dots were supposed to be the outside.  

I need to mark the directions so if I ever make these again I will know which way to sew it together.  I am still happy with how it came out and the center matches exactly as it should on this one!

The last pieced block I need to make is the ring of coffins. 

 I hope to at least get the templates made tonight and maybe cut a few out. 

 I am not sure how long this one will take since there is some hand sewing involved.  

If I can get it to that point though I can hand stitch watching Christmas shows with my hubby.  

I need to get going on the decorating and those Christmas stockings (I have not forgotten, M)

Yay for progress!!

I am taking my kitty helper to the vet on Saturday.  

She has been eating and drinking like crazy (she is also 16 years old). 

 I think it may be Diabetes or Hyperthyroid.  

I am hoping the vet can take some blood and diagnose.  

Her brother left me last year in October and her sister this past March.  

DD1 has already told me that they both came to her 

and said they are just waiting for Autumn to join them = (

I am having a Lularoe Clothing party on Saturday too. 

 If anyone reading this lives locally message me and I will send you the address.  

Time is 2-4.  

If you know LLR and are interested in something in particular, if you send me your phone number I can text you photos of what is being sold.  

Alright, off to do some more work!

Have a lovely weekend.

~XOP~

My Weekend

I had a fantastic weekend.  

I still don't have much desire to sew, which is unfortunate as I have a LOT to get done.  

I am hoping if I just choose a block and start on that maybe it will come back.

I did a lot of cleaning and errands on Saturday.  

Hubby printed out a pumpkin cake recipe that he wanted me to make so I decided that while I was watching me Spartans WIN for a change I would bake the cake.  

The recipe is from the Taste of Home website and you can find it here. 

 It was easy to do and the cake was fabulous.  

I substituted 1 cup of homemade applesauce for the 1 cup of oil. I think it was a great substitute.  

I did not miss the oil at all.  

Next time I would cut down on the amount of sugar.  It called for 2 1/2 cups of sugar!!!  

Trying to make it more WW friendly, if cake can be that! 

 I let it cool for 10 minutes in the pan then turned it out.

This is before I glazed it.  I used powdered sugar with some pumpkin pie spices in it for the glaze.

My best friend was never far away from me all weekend.  She has decided that she loves this quilt.  With the fuzzy back it is very soft.  

She laid near me while I did lessons 3 and 4 in my EQ7 class online 

(Craft University).

In addition, I made one more block for the Hallowedding quilt.

These eyes were from a Block Lotto post.

Aren't they so scary??

It was a little tricky to make and this pair took me about 2 hours!  

They do not give measurements but rather it is a tutorial on how to make them.  T

he thing that saved me was she had them laid out on the cutting mat 

so I could figure out the sizes she used to make this set. 

 I have another set of different eyes to make but I ran out of time.  

I hope everyone else had an enjoyable weekend too!

~XOP~

WIPs With Friends

I have a very brief minute to make this post.  

I will be out for the rest of the week and part of next week for my daughter's wedding.

I stopped out to her farm to visit her last weekend because her oldest peacock, Blu hurt his leg. 

 He had an ankle issue and had surgery when he was young.  

It never really healed well and he pretty much stands on one foot all the time.  

It was bound to happen that something would happen to his other foot/leg.  

She has to take him to the vet today and hopefully we will know more soon.  

He is the very first peacock that she hatched out from an egg.  I

t was while she was living in our home.  Both he and his sister and the turkey Jocelyn. 

 Osirius has passed away but Blu and Jo are still alive and kicking.  

Hopefully it is just a strain and not a slipped tendon, but we should know later today.  

He is such a pretty boy! 

 I am sure you have seen lots of photos of him thoughout the years, 

but just in case these are his last few days I wanted a few more.

Daughter was happy that he has fathered so many babies and that she still has some.  

She will keep one or two if something is seriously wrong with him. 

 She said one had Osirius's face and took me into the barn to see.  

This is what I saw. 

 It was quite dark and I thought it was three peafowl but no, it was a peafowl sandwich with a peafowl wanna be in the middle!  

As soon as I saw the three of them I knew immediately it was the bird on the far right.  

His face looks just like Osirius's did.

So now on to my WIP.  Still the Hallowedding quilt.  Now it will have a haunted house!

I am loving how this came out!

As I said, I will be on a short break until after the wedding, but please do link up.

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

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

WIPs With Friends

I have not been working on much in the way of quilt things due to getting ready for the wedding. 

 As you know the shower was last weekend on Saturday so that took up most of the day.  

Then some friends from out of town wanted to buy my dad's snowmobile so we spent a good portion of our day at the farm getting it loaded and on it's way.  

Weekends are my "get stuff done" around the house time too.  

I did clean up a space near my sewing room and 

got rid of a bag of fabric I won't use so that was good.  

I managed to piece two witches for the quilt though and plan out the next few blocks.

When I was finished with them all I could think of was the song from White Christmas...

"Sisters, sisters, there were never such devoted sisters..."

I like how they turned out but wonder if I should have made their dresses all black.  

What do you think?  

Not that I am going to change them anyway, just curious. 

 This witch pattern is available on Craftsy.  It was really easy to make too, so BONUS!

I need to take down the other things on my design wall and start putting these up there.  

It is fun to make the blocks but I need to see what I am missing.  

I will link up with Let's Bee Social over at Sew Fresh Quilts.

I know I talk about my cat Autumn a lot.  She is my constant companion in my sewing room and quite the pest most of the time when I am working. 

 She has decided that she *must* only drink water from my water bottle and only when it is full with both ice and water. 

 I think I got the video to upload.
If you turn up the sound you can hear her rough tongue scraping across the ice!

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!

~XOP~

An InLinkz Link-up

WIPs With Friends

I seem to always be posting my first post of the week on Wednesdays! 

 It is very difficult to find time to sew right now though.  

We are in FULL wedding prep mode lately.  

Seems like my entire weekend was taken up with shopping for things that are wedding related.  

The shower is planned and invites are sent out.  

I had a friend help me with a poster of a haunted house scene 

that people can stand in front of and take pictures.  

I bought some mini wine bottles to check label size for wedding favors.  

Of course I had to sample the wine and see which one I like the best.  

Now I need to go and order a LOT of those.  

My friend, Robin, is a graphic artist and she will help me make the wine bottle labels. 

 I have gathered all the dead flowers and need to spray paint those and make the table centerpieces. 

 I guess this whole Hallowedding is part of my weekly WIP right now, LOL.

On to my quilty progress though.  

I did manage to get a few things sewn ( this witches broom) and made progress on my BIG bat.

I managed to finish an entire half of this bat!  Now I want to have time to finish the other half!!

Isn't he GREAT??  I love this pattern!  The big one has been the easiest one so far.  

After him I have 2 more new to me techniques that I am nervous about doing.  

One involves curved piecing and the other one is EPP, YIKES!

I am linking up with Le't's Bee Social too.

What are you working on?  Time for you to share with all of us.

Since no one is linking up, do you want me to stop this?

~XOP~

An InLinkz Link-up