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~

Traveling Quilt Update

I have been hard at work on the pieced parts of the current traveling quilt that I have.  

I have the Sea themed one.  

I thought I would show you the pieces I have done so far.  

The pieces for the top part are almost complete.  

I have to take a break to sew a binding on a baby quilt then I will resume.  

First up is Nessie.  It is an Elizabeth Hartman pattern.  I may have shown this previously.

Then I finished a mermaid.  She is a pattern by Quiet Play.

I made some low volume Friendship Stars and realized I needed a few more of these.

I have the additional stars sewn into their rows, just need to put the rows together to form the stars.

I paper pieced a gigantic word too.

THALASSOPHILE

It means lover of the sea.

It was too large to get a good pic of so I took a video!

Once I finish the binding of the baby quilt I will be back at this again.

I hope to have time this weekend to do the math to put all these pieces together for the top.

Then on to making something for the bottom of the quilt!

What are your goals for the weekend?

~XOP~

First Block On The Next Traveling Quilt

I have Jenny's sea themed quilt to work on for our traveling quilts.  

It is the one I am the most intimidated to work on so have been putting off doing anything.  

I wanted to make something to get myself started but I wanted to be able to finish it too. 

 I found a pattern by Elizabeth Hartman called "Nessie" 

(the Loch Ness Monster) that fit the bill perfectly!  

You can find the free pattern here.

I am still pondering how I want to do the water under her but for now the top part is finished. 

I LOVE her!

Close up .  You can see the bird fabric I used for the sky.  

Cool side angle.

I will be adding this to the top of the quilt but can put something in the water under her or just do some improv water like I did with the fish quilt I did last year.  

I have a few more ideas for this quilt, but we are going to go visit our daughter in NC and then on to Florida soon, so no sewing for me until we get back.

I will leave you with a couple of Finn and Cole photos to tide you over.  

Just look at that LONG arm!

Such a good boy!

If you want to follow our trip progress, find me over on Instagram.  I am @mamaspark59 over there.

~XOP~