Introducing Polka Dot Playground With A Giveaway

I am happy to let you all know that I have a quilt in the April/May 2016 issue of
McCalls Quick Quilt magazine this month!

Subscription issues began shipping February 9, 2016. By March 1, 2016, the issue will be available on newsstands, as well as in print or digital download format at QuiltandSewShop.com at the following link here if you would like to purchase it.

This is my quilt.  

It's called Polka Dot Playground.  

You can find the Issue here if you want to preview it.

If you are interested in my quilt specifically you can check it out over here on the McCalls page.

I have 2 issues of McCalls Quick Quilts to giveaway (provided by McCalls).

In addition the Fat Quarter Shop has provided me 2 copies of Cozy Cottage Calendar to give away!

The FQS is such a generous sponsor!

If you are interested in winning a either thing, pop over to this link 

and leave me a comment.

Then come back here and tell me that you did.

For a second chance tell me what YOU are working on!

Please be certain that I can contact you via email.

If you are no-reply, leave your email in your comment.

That's it!

I am so excited to be able to share this new quilt with you all!

I will link up with Finish It Friday at Crazy Mom quilts too.

Have a wonderful weekend!!

~XOP~

Wedding Quilt For Amy and Grant

I am posting about a quilt I finished quite a long time ago.  

It has a long convoluted story but I am not going to go into that right now.  

Instead I am going to talk about how happy I was to be able to gift this quilt to a very special, young couple that got married last January.  

Amy has been a friend of my middle daughter's since they were both 5 years old.  

They were besties for many years and when they talk it's like things pick right up where they left off.  I think most of us have friends like that right? 

She spent so much time at our house she is like another daughter to us!

 Anyway, I designed this quilt for their wedding.  Without further ado I will just share the photos.

This quilt may look like some others but I assure you it was completely designed by me using EQ7.  Kathy Koch did the amazing quilting.

This is the quilt on their bed.

I love how the colors look in this photo here on the bed.

A quick shot of the label

The quilt was fairly large so I ended up having to piece the back.  I could not be happier with how amazing the back turned out!

Of course you can see Kathy's amazing quilting on the back too. 

Here is a photo of Amy and Grant from their wedding.  

(borrowed from Amy's FB page)

This is an oldie but a goodie of Amy and my daughter up north at Hardy Dam.

They both look so young to me here!  

I hope you have enjoyed the quilt and the story too.  

I am linking up to Finish it up Friday over at Crazy Mom Quilts.

Have a great weekend and happy sewing!

~XOP~

. Trip to NYC Day 1

We were up bright and early yesterday morning and left around 6am.  I think I slept through most of Ohio!  We were almost into Pennsylvania when I started paying attention.  We did stop at a toll stop along the Ohio toll road to stretch and potty and get a bite to eat.  Then back into the car.  DH let's me choose a couple of quilt shops on the way out to stop at so I was busy looking for a shop.  Finally decided on one, took us 15 min out of our way.  They didn't open until noon on Wed.  (he was not very happy with me) but I redeemed myself when I put the next one in the GPS and it got us right back on track.  It was one we had stopped at 2 years ago.  It was a quilt shop and a country store.  I can't remember the name of it but will look it up later and let you know.  Can you believe I did not buy any quilt related items??Although they did have a lot of OOP Moda pre-cuts like Swanky which I really like) I did however find a rug that is perfect for my front door. (photos later) and an adorable green sweater jacket.  Funny thing when I brought the jacket to show him he told me he had been looking at the same one b/c it matched my green shoes!!  Gotta love him!!  So that's what I bought there.  Off to the second shop. 

. 

This one was one we had not been to before and it was HUGE.  Cool thing?  There were loads of older lines so if there was something you were looking for you might be able to find it there.  I even managed to score a JR of Sweet!!!  I also got 2 yards of Sebastian the cat on orange (from the Ghastlies line) again photos later of the loot.

Now into the real business of driving.  We stayed off of 80 and took the back way.  Luckily DH remembered how we had done that before and it took us through the town of Benzette.  A small community that has become famous for their Elk population.  We drove through the little town and look what we saw

Of course there was lots of beautiful scenery but it is difficult to take amazing photos while speeding down the roads! LOL. Lots of hills and fall colors and we followed a river.  More pics on my Flickr if you are interested!

At one point we were in this small town and saw this adorable church

Then we kept going and I was looking for some photo ops and as we were going along an area following a rr track I saw what I thought were statues of Elk. Only they weren't statues at all it was a herd of them!! So I asked DH to turn around, we found a safe spot to get out and walked back to where they were and I took a lot of pictures and a couple of videos. There were 23 of them in the herd and the alpha male was gorgeous!

I know I was kind of far away and my camera doesn't zoom but I hope you can see them. Here is one of the videos

Traveling along the river was amazing, so beautiful!

Have you eveer been driving along and come upon something so neat but unexpected? Well here was ours:

Hahahaha, it was so cool DH turned around on his own so I could take this photo!! It was a place called Waltz's pumpkins or something like that and they had the most amazing pumpkins and gourds. I'm sorry I didn't think to get a photo of all his stuff on the other side of the street! Guess you will just have to take my word for it.

The last thing I will leave you with is the other view we had a lot of driving through the mountains which is the sheer rock faces often times on one side of the road during our drive. Just beautiful, and many times there are springs gushing forth from them.

alright that's all I have time for at the moment. I need to shower, grab a bite to eat and begin my adventure in the city!! Stay turned today is going to be a great ride!!!

PS if you are following the FQ Stars QAL at Moose on the Porch I'm pretty sure my block is up today!!(Edited to read NEXT Tuesday!!, sorry!!) I would love to know what you think! ~XOP~

Announcing...

You may (or may not) remember back in March (wow that long ago?) when I won some awesome fabric scraps from Cherry House. I have been quite busy making something from these scraps, actually I have designed an entire quilt around them. Do you remember my "peeks", here and here? I had the top almost finished but needed to do some border work and then make a back. Well this is the finished top. I really want to know if anyone likes it and if you think anyone would purchase this pattern if I take the time to write it up. (I'll be holding my breath...)

I decided to make a pieced back too using up the leftover blocks I had. I ended up using every bit of the fabric I had won and used the blue dot and the white from my stash. Here is an up close of one of the blocks.

I do have a picture of the back but I need to re-take it as my shadow is in the way, LOL. I will show you a close up of the back and you can either A)imagine the blue on the sides extends all the way out or B)if you really *need* to see it go to my Flickr account and view it with my shadow all over it, lol.

If I decide to write up a pattern it will need a name. Any suggestions? I may have a little something for the person that suggests the name I choose, you never know with me!

With EQ7 coming out I *finally* loaded EQ6 on my computer so I think I will play with writing this pattern up in it and see how it goes. I ordered the EQ7 upgrade so I guess I had better get moving and figure the earlier version out, huh?

Now just to show you the kind of "helpers" I happen to have here is Aiedn in her favorite "spot". I usually sit in this big green chair with my lap top on the left arm of the chair. She stalks me waiting for me to sit down and then assumes this position. Usually with her head on the arm of the chair just under the bottom of the lap top and her paw extended up kneading me as she purrs contentedly. Like so:

Yesterday though her brother who had been sleeping quite contentedly here

in an old pajama grams container decided that I actually needed another cat on my right side between my hip and the right arm of the chair like so:

I am quite happy to admit that this is OK now that there is actual space between my giant arse and the arm of the chair! I have managed to lose another pound this week bringing the grand total up to just under 36 pounds total since I began!

I would be most appreciative to you all if you will help me choose a name and then let me know if this should become a "real" pattern. I have thought about altering it to work with Jelly Rolls too, what do you think about that? I hope you are all enjoying your time off, I know I am. My boys came home from Canada on Friday and so my house is in chaos again, sigh. I really need to mulch today and do some more weeding (it was much more fun to sew yesterday as it was soooooo HOT here) today is a little cooler so may have to make my way outside.

Happy Memorial day to everyone in the US. Thanks to our brave men and women that have fought and who are still fighting to keep us free!!