Quick Quilt Retreat

I headed out last Thursday with my SIL, to a quilt retreat in Chesaning, MI. 
 The retreat was at Creative Passions.  

We were in the basement of the big green house.

  We love retreating there.  

Our friend, Cori was not able to join us this year though and we really missed her!  

Mary and I spread out our "stuff" and that was nice too.
You can see my set up on the right. 

 Hers on the left and the gigantic pile of fabric.

I was working on my Ocean Wave blocks. 

 I started these several years ago now. 

 I even cut into my precious Neptune fabric! 

 I thought I had everything I needed to finish up the 8 blocks but alas, I did not. 

 I was missing the white squares for the final 3 blocks.  

Since it was an OOP fabric I had to wait until I got home to be able to cut more. 

 I guess these will be coming with me to NC!

 I did finish the five I had fabric for though.

I brought some old bee blocks I found when cleaning recently.

They were all made from vintage sheets.

I got that top put together.

I joined up with my local LQS during the pandemic to do their block of the week.

I kept up for half of the year then we left for NC.  

I brought the rest of the patterns and fabric to make the rest of the blocks with me.

I finished all 52 blocks!!!  They were super time consuming since they are 8" blocks.

We stayed in for our food and ate what we brought for most of our meals.

This allowed us to continue to sew.  

We got up early and stayed up late.

The one break we did take was to go to the quilt shop.

That always takes a bit of time as Seven Sisters is a little ways away.

We had a great time and got quite a bit finished.

I am leaving on Thursday for NC for 3 months.

Just packed up some projects and we shall see what I get done.

Will be playing with my grandson so not sure.

We will be meeting up with our friend, Kailie at the campground.

She is a quilter and we like to sew together.

Looking forward to all of it.

(Especially seeing GS and getting into warmer weather)

~XOP~

Traveling Quilts

I am a part of a group of women that are working on a set of traveling quilts.  

There are 5 of us in the group.  

I have 2 more of the quilts to work on. 

I received Mel's quilt in December and am finally getting it out today!  PHEW!  

Sorry for that delay, Mel.  

Her theme is rainbow.  

She made the center and then sent it off for us to add to it.  

I had some ideas so finally had time to play with it.

I selected these fabrics to use in a Migrating Geese formation for the side of the quilt. 

I used the technique sheet from Deb Tucker.  

If you need to make some MG too you can find the sheet available for purchase here.

It was not a difficult technique but you did need to pay attention and mark where she tells you.

This is what the quilt looked like when I received it.

I realized that I didn't take any photos of the triangles I put at the top. 

I did 2" strips into sets then cut out the triangle. 

I cut a matching triangle out of the white and sewed them together. 

 I was just going to do triangles but decided it didn't add enough height

so turned them into diamonds. 

 I reversed the colors to form half of the diamond then

 put them together with their counter part color.  

I am pretty happy with my additions.

You can also see the migrating geese on the right.  Great technique and I will use this one again.

I did my bee blocks for January and came to the conclusion that I needed to leave the bee. 

 I loved this month's blocks though and can't wait to see what the quilt looks like.

I have more to share but am out of time.  Stop back for more tomorrow!

~XOP~

Sewing, Sewing Sewing

I decided that I needed to get my bee blocks for January finished so worked on those this weekend.

I really enjoyed making these blocks and found that the pattern went together very easily.

I love the meandering black fabric.  

It is an old Denise Schmidt fabric. 

It looks really cool in this block.  

These were paper pieced from a free pattern at Whole Circle Studio

These will be the last of my bee blocks for awhile.

I am stepping away from the bee for the time being.

I am working on some blocks "bee style" with my friends at work.

More on that later.

I have been steadily sewing baby burp cloths using up left over flannel from quilt backs.  

I finally had enough of them to list them in my ETSY shop.  

If you need some for gifts please go take a look.  

There are LOADS to choose from.  

I will be making more as I have more flannel available.

Here are a few examples:  

Some have rick rack around them and some are plain.

I loved these fighter jets!

I had them all stacked up on my coffee table when little Sir decided he needed to "claim" them!

I hope you will find something you love if you go and check them out.  

They make wonderful shower gifts and 

there are different ones in addition to the ones you see here too.

Have a wonderful day!

~XOP~

Bee Blocks for October

I worked on my October Bee blocks this weekend and got them done.  

We were doing a granny square block using 3" squares in pink and aqua.  

For a little girl in need.

They were quick and fun to make.

I am almost done with the alligator quilt top too!  More on that later.

~XOP~

Bee Blocks and Cleaning

Just a quick minute to share.

I finished my bee blocks for September.

Cole was my helper.

Additionally, my SIL is gearing up for a garage sale this weekend. 

We have been bringing stuff to her, going through stuff from our garage and basement. 

 I decided last weekend to go through the fabric I had in bins, in my basement.  

I managed to clear out EIGHT bins worth of fabric for the sale!!! 

I sure hope someone can use all this fabric.  

Lest you think I have none left, I still have many more bins left.  

I need to do a second purge but I am pretty happy with getting 8 bins out of my house for now, 

along with all the other stuff we sent.  

Two pick up truck loads full of stuff!!!

~XOP~

WIPs with Friends Thursday

Sorry for missing WIP Wednesday but I was out of town.  

My sister was having some surgery and I had to be there to make sure she was alright.  

I was and she was so here we are on WIP Thursday instead.

I am freaking out a little bit about all of the commitments I have for this month.  

What is wrong with me?  I know the word no but rarely use it, LOL.  

So what have I been working on?

I managed to sew my May bee blocks up and put them in the mail.

Every month I try to sew at least 2 Scrappy Triangles and this month I got 4 done!  

Two in each color way!

So that's it for me for this week.  I have been at the hospital or driving the rest of the time.

What are YOU working on?  Please post your current projects for us to see!  

~XOP~

WIPs With Friends the Thursday Edition

Sorry guys, for not posting yesterday.  

I was at the hospital with my son.  

He had his IVC filter removed yesterday through his Juggler Vein! 

 It went well but it was a bit scary for him (and us).

I have been working on a few things so that I would have time to work on 

my center for my traveling quilt.

I sent my flying geese blocks and the woman that received all our bee blocks put this together.  

Looks pretty sweet so far!

I'm in a Tula Granny Square group and this is my first block in the series.  

We are going to be doing one per month. 

 The leader challenged us to use non-white backgrounds and supplied the center squares for all of us.

I got 3 more Ocean Waves block components sewn and trimmed.  

I also made one more OW block so now I am up to 20!

I got 2 sets of Scrappy Triangle blocks finished.

I got my April bee blocks finished, just need to mail them.

I joined in the scrappy vortex 100 days project on IG.  

I'm pretty sure I can sew pairs together for awhile.  

If you need to see the scrappy vortex you can see what it is on Crazy Mom Quilts blog.

Next up is pulling scraps and trimming them so I can sew some more together.  

I am finding them in layers, as projects finished.  

This means I have to mix them up or my quilt will be pretty strange looking with chunks of colors rather than all over scrappy goodness!

I am going to post the link up here and you should link whatever you are working on at the moment.

~XOP~

Please link up here:

An InLinkz Link-up

Quilty Goals For The Year and Month

I work with some wonderful women that I also sew with. 

 There are 3 of them.  

Usually, once a year we actually gather at one of the houses and sew together.  

Mostly we just talk about sewing and fabric throughout each day. 

 It's a nice perk of my work.  

We seem to often be talking about how we have so much we *want* to do and never seem to *actually* get all of those things done. 

 So THIS year I decided to make a google doc and have each of us put our yearly goals in it.  

Then I got to thinking that it would be even better to break it down by month.  

Plus the added bonus of getting to achieve smaller, more attainable things.  

So I put in February.  

We all had to list the things we want to try to do this month.  

We change the color on the font when we finish something on the list. 

 I will be linking this post up with the One Monthly Goal post over at Elm Street Quilts too.

Here is my list:

Put top together for one of these

JR QAL, strip quilt or Chubby Chicks

Bind and label Mermaid, Unicorn and T baby quilts

Sew 2 scrappy Triangle blocks

Bee Blocks for February

Sew 1 OW block

As you can see, I was able to finish my bee blocks for February and 

sew one more Ocean Waves block.  

We had to make flowers for our bee blocks.

This is block 19/36 of my Ocean Waves blocks.

So as you can also see I have put these in blue to denote that they are finished.

For my One Monthly Goal I am going to use the put the 

Jelly Roll/Strip/Chubby Chick quilt top together.  

Not all three, just one of the three.  

It kind of depends on which one I can put my hands on first, LOL. 

I am thinking that Chubby Chicks would be fun, since 

there seem to be so many babies around as of late.

I think the chicks are all finished.  I need to find the box and check.

So on to getting stuff done!

I am pretty competitive so this should be fun.

I did tell them there would be prizes, so one of them needs to win this month!

How do you handle being productive?

~XOP~