Amy and Matt's Wedding Quilt

I finished it!!!!!!  The wedding is tomorrow and the quilt is finished! 

 I could not be more excited.  

I am hoping that Amy doesn't look at this post until after she sees the quilt in real life. 

 The photos do not do it justice!  

I may try to get some additional pictures in the snow later today.  

My friend was so kind to take these with her amazing camera.  

We can hang the quilts in a great place at work, but then we walk around to the other side of the walkway and it is a long distance to shoot from.

The pattern is called Round and Round and it is by Thimble Blossoms.  

I used my beloved Pearl Bracelets for the background AND for the back.  

This caused me a lot of anxiety because it used so much! 

 My friend at Crazy Quilt Girl Fabric Shop assures me she has more,

If you need it too.

Deep Breaths.  I must really love this girl!

The quilting was done by Kathy Koch of Thread Bear Quilting and I love it!

I embroidered the label and found the perfect fabric for framing it in.  

See that gray fabric? 

 It says

Made with (heart) love

In this photo you can see that we are quite far away from the actual quilt.  

This is before I cropped the photo.

I can not wait to celebrate the marriage of Amy and Matt tomorrow. 

 It will be bittersweet for Amy as she lost her mom in October to Ovarian cancer.  

Please pray for a beautiful day for these two great people as they begin their life together.

We love you both and wish you every happiness!!!

Linking up to the Finish along here
See my original list here

Have a wonderful weekend.

~XOP~

Linking up with Crazy Mom Quilts for Finish it Friday

Amy and Matt's Wedding Quilt Update

I have been making steady progress on the blocks for the next wedding quilt.

This is the first block that I finished.  

I have to say I am loving the Pearl Bracelets as the background!

 Of course, Autumn was right there, laying on all the fabric to help me!  

See my super cool Sparty Tervis tumbler?  

I went to the SA last week with hubby and he found three of them there for .99 each!  

That is a scream of a deal!!! 

 They are wonderful.  

I can load it up with ice and there is absolutely zero condensation on the outside of the glass.  

Perfect for in my sewing room.

This is the second block I finished.

I loved the bunny fabric in the lower left and the text print.

I am always a little nervous when Autumn decides to do something like this but at least most of the rows were sewn together already!

So here is the back story on this block.  

Amy's mom, who was also a dear friend of mine, passed away this past October. 

 I thought it might be nice to include a piece of her clothing in this quilt 

so that every time Amy used it she would think of her mom too. 

 She dropped off a blue tee shirt of her mom's on Monday.  

I stabilized it with some interfacing and used it to make this block. 

I had chosen some fabrics that kind of represent my own family for this quilt too 

and included them in "Barb's" block.  

Mine has chemical symbols, as I am a scientist.  

My older daughter raises peafowl so her star had peacocks in it.  

My younger daughter, Amy's best friend, has a cat, Mitch, that she never stops talking about, 

so her block has Sebastian in it.  

Amy loves Mitch (not really, but Mitch LOVES Amy!!)

I'm pretty sure this will be my favorite block in the entire quilt!

I asked for some fabric from Amy's MIL to be also and will make a star for her in another block. 

 I have some of the new Moda Modern Background math fabric that made me think of 

Amy (a teacher) so will put that into the block with the fabric from her MIL.  

It has been a fun way to make this personal without it being "in your face".  

Amy will know and so will her husband but anyone looking will just see all the beautiful stars.  

This is so Amy.  

I really feel honored to be able to create this wedding gift and memory of my friend for her daughter.  I am hoping to get it all together before Christmas, but we will see.  I need to make a couple of Christmas stockings and some bridal shower gifts too (shhhh don't tell Amy ). 

 I had BIG plans to do more but this pesky job seems to keep getting in the way of my sewing!!!

Linking up to WIP Wednesday over at Freshly Pieced and Let's Bee Social at Sew Fresh Quilts.

What are you sewing for Christmas??

~XOP~

WIP Wednesday

What's that you ask?  Another wedding quilt?  Why yes it is!  

I am working on getting this bad baby done so I can send it to the quilter next week.  

Once again my quilt inspector was hard at work "helping", or at least that's what she told me.

Here are 2 of the 3 rows completed.  

Sorry for the poor lighting, my hallway is pretty dark, but that is where I hung a design wall.  

Also excuse the laundry!  

I worked until about 9 on Sunday.  

I managed to get the entire center put together and the first border on.  

I still need to put on a small border and then the last outer border.  

I won't probably be showing this again until I can gift if so the person I am making it 

for won't get to see it done until she opens it.  

WHEW!  I feel like I have been chained in the quilting room!  

Hubby got home last night so 

I will be spending time with him for awhile and not in the quilting room.

WIP Wednesday for sure over here.

What are you working on?

~XOP~

Bee Blocks

I kicked off the weekend with dinner out with my son.  

He actually texted me to see if I wanted to go out for dinner.  

How nice right?

I am still waiting for a few more cross blocks for my Bee Positive quilt.  

I decided that I would take time to actually do some cleaning around my house before my husband returned home from his week long adventure to Canada.  

I spent all day on Saturday cleaning!  UGH, but doesn't it feel so good when everything is clean? 

 He arrived home in the evening so no sewing for me on Saturday at all.

Sunday was my middle daughter's birthday.  

I wish we could have been with her to celebrate but sometimes that is just not in the cards.  

She is such a wonderful person and we are so very proud of her!  

I also decided that since I am still waiting for a few more blocks, 

I would get my other August commitments out of the way. 

That meant getting my bee blocks done and working on the Round and Round quilt blocks. 

 I got my August Bee blocks finished and ready to put in the mail.  

They are from a pattern on the Modern Quilt Guild's site 

so if you are a member you can find the pattern here. 

 The quilt is called Use Your Illusion and is by Cheryl Brickey.

This is my round and Round progress. 

 For some reason this block just went together with so much difficulty! 

 I can't even tell you how many times I ripped it apart!  

I have all the rows for the last block (that I have to make) 

finished so hope to sew them into a block tonight!  

Progress is being made!!!  

The secret wedding quilt is ready for pick up at the quilters today.  I can't wait to see it. 

 None of us can remember what happened to the binding so (and I didn't tell anyone) 

I am going to just remake it from the cut offs of the edges of the backing of the quilt when I get it. 

 I think I remember what we did so will do my best to recreate it.  

I just want it DONE!  

Done is better than perfect right? 

RIGHT?

So that was my weekend.  What did you do?  Anything fun?

~XOP~

WIP Wednesday

I had the pleasure of attending the wedding of someone that is like a daughter to me.  

Her mom and I used to call her and my daughter "The Babies".  

Now she is all grown up and married!

Mary and Eddie

She was a beautiful bride!

Mary and her Daddy

Her brother did a reading

Saying heir vows

You may kiss the bride!!!

The reception was held at Waldenwoods and the venue was BEAUTIFUL!

Just as beautiful inside too!

 Now on to the WIP part of this adventure!  

I consented to make a quilt, with a little help from a friend

 (you know who you are and since it is a surprise for Mary we are not telling)

I got the HST squares all cut out.  Gray with a splash of purple and white.  

The pattern is Round and Round by Thimbleblossoms.  

There was a LOT of cutting for all the negative space in this one.

It used the Missouri Star way to make the HST and boy was this easy!  

Basically you put two squares RST and sew 1/4" around the outer edges.  

Make 2 diagonal cuts and end up with 4 HST blocks!

Then I trimmed them down to the correct size for this pattern.

Whew, all trimmed up!

Block one is finished.  I think it finishes at about 25"!!!  These are giant blocks.

The Sebastian (aka creepy cat) star is my favorite!

I managed to make a second one too.  Woo, just 2 more for me to make.

When I made the other wedding quilt from gray and purple and white, it came out so overwhelmingly purple that I didn't want this one to look quite so purple.  

I adjusted by using mostly grays with just one purple and one white star in each block. 

 I will vary the placement of those so that they are not in the same spot for each block too. 

 I am hoping this tones down the purpleness of the quilt.

I am thinking that I may use purple for a thin border between more of the background gray and possible for the binding, but we will see how that looks once the blocks are finished.

The Moda Bella Zen gray that I used for the background is awesome!!!

It is the perfect gray.

Not too brown or blue, just right.

So there you go, my most recent WIP.

Linking up to Lee's WIP Wednesday post.

What are you working on?

~XOP~

WIP Wednesday

I also managed to get some paper piecing done for another project. 

 I needed to make a flower and a leaf.  

The pattern is from Ayumi's book Patchwork Please. 

 It is a great book. 

 I think you saw the hot pads I was making last Christmas and they were from this book! 

 I love her patterns!

This one is called Swedish Bloom Time and it is adorable!  

The flower is larger than I expected it to be for some reason.  

I have learned that I like paper piecing smaller things, like 1/4" geese, LOL, 

MUCH better then bigger things like this.  

All in all I am happy with how it turned out though. 

 So it needs to go into a larger project so...another WIP.

Linking to Lee's WIP Wednesday post.

It took some major brain power to figure out how to get the cats to come out like that though. 

 I have read that quilting is good for your brain as it causes you to do a lot of calculations 

and thinking, so good for us!!!

I had some adorable supervision while working too.  

How do cats make every place seem like the most comfortable place in the world to sleep?

You can see the tippy top of my sewing machine there on the bottom of the picture. 

 That was the view I had over the top of my machine while I was working.  

I love Autumn!

I have decided to work with a really dear friend of mine on another quilt. 

 First it was planned and then I decided

 I was not going to do it as I was running out of time for the "deadline".  

I have personally extended my deadline and enlisted help! 

 I can't say much about it other than to say I am making this pattern.  

No more about it for the moment though.  

If you want to purchase the same pattern and quilt along with me that would be fun, right? 

 Who's in??

~XOP~