Sewing Challenge Day 3,4 and 5

I think every quilter could go on and on about fabric they ask themselves,

 "What was I thinking when I bought this?" 

 I posted this photo.

LOL because I am a Spartan!! 

 It seems like I am always working with blue and gold, EW! HAHA

The Day 4 challenge was to post about favorite fabric purchased with Day 5 something you missed out on.

Mine are one and the same. 

 I missed out of Mendocino. 

 I have since bought and swapped for some. 

 I still don't have the entire collection but I am slowly working my way toward having it.

I saw this when it first came out, at a local shop.  I thought the mermaids were kind of creepy so passed them by.  Now I just KICK myself!  Then I was at a warehouse shop with my friend and her DIL was a big HR fan.  I found many sample cards with Mendo on them and handed them over to her for her DIL.  I surely wish I had kept a little for myself, but that's life and the choices we make isn't it?

If anyone has a little of the plum swimming sisters I would be happy to trade.

I have some I could spare of some of the seahorses, and the swimming sisters in white with the pink octopi.

I have lots of  Munki Munki that I could trade too.

~XOP~

Froggy Pond Gift for My BFF's Mom

I could't share this until now. 

 I have been working on a quilt for my friend's mom for some time now. 

When  I first saw the Frog pattern I knew I had to make it for my friend's mom. 

 She is an avid frog collector. 

 She is also a BIG fan of Zumba, she has been ill recently and is taking care of a spouse that is ill also,

 oh and she shares my mom's name too! 

 Interestingly enough my friend share's my sister's name.  

Coincidence? 

 I think not. 

 I'm pretty sure God brought us together. 

 She is and always has been the yin to my yang. 

OK enough sappyness.

I was talking to my quilter about the pattern and her mom is always looking for embroidery to do 

so I handed off the pattern and cut the fabric, and she did all the embroidery for me! 

 I made the blocks and assembled the quilt and my friend, Liz did the quilting! 

 I finished the binding last weekend and my friend mailed it off to her mom, who received it today.

Made a frog pond for the back too.

Here are some close ups too

Enjoy your new quilt!

I had fun making it for you.

I hope it brightened your day.

~XOP~

#isewphotochallenge

Are you on Instagram? 

 I found a post recently that you put the hashtag isewphotochallenge on your photo post. 

 You post a photo everyday from the list:

This was posted by patterncrush. 

 I decided to play along so today the photo is a WIP.

  I have a lot of those! 

 I had quilting tonight and there is a WIP that I took with me so I chose that one.  

History of this is that I found a bunch of vintage flannel when I was moving bins to the sewing room. 

 I decided to cut it into small tumbler blocks using my GO! cuter. 

 I had grand plans to use them as leader/enders but that didn't work out. 

 Random placement was not working out so I dropped my other projects and

 began sewing on this one like my life depended on it. 

 I have no idea why! 

 I still had binding to finish and it looked like this.

Notice it didn't take Fatty McFatty long to find it!  

So I took it to quilting tonight and actually finished the binding. 

 All finished!

I need to take a photo of the back and then I will be listing it on my ETSY. 

 So if you are interested check out my ETSY. 

 It is super soft and all the flannel came from when I was a little girl,except for the back flannel.

So tomorrow is an early project. 

 Hmmmm I will have to give that some thought! 

 Want to play along? 

 Join up on Instagram or feel free to post the first photo on YOUR blog and post your photos there.

~XOP~

Bee Blocks and Flooding in Grand Rapids

I finished the last of the April blocks for Bee Vintage.  

She asked for these woven blocks.

The pattern is on the Moda Bake Shop called Simply Woven.  

You can find the pattern here.  

It was not a difficult pattern to make but to only make 2 blocks it was difficult to figure out how much of each strip to cut. 

 I also had the first block made and did the second cut only to realize that I made it in the wrong place!  

Oh well, I just made another one. 

 LOL 

I guess that will teach me to pay attention. 

 You have to pay attention to what you are doing or it would be really easy to cut wrong.

I told you I would share about the flooding in Grand Rapids too so here are some of the pictures I took while I was there recently.

The Grand River

This barn was in trouble!

This was just past the barn, at a park.

If you look closely in the center of the photo is a street sign, Like "children at play". 

 It is almost completely submerged. 

 I am guessing it is a 6-8 foot sign!!! 

 It was CRAZY!

We saw many houses along the river that were flooded too. 

 It reminds me of the rain song from Winnie the Pooh

"and the rain rain rain

came down down down

in rushing rising rivlets

till the river crept right out of it's bed

and crept right into Piglets!"

I hope those folks were ok!

I hope you are having a good weekend.

I help hubby do some cleaning in the garage, until he became Mr Grumpy Pants.

Then I cam inside to clean and do laundry!

I am hoping to get into my sewing room today.

I emptied yet another bin. 

(How many is that now anyway?)

I need to put all that fabric away and get another one.  

I will take a picture before I put it away just to show you.

~XOP~

A Funny Thing Happened

I worked a LONG day on Wednesday.  

Met my daughter for dinner in Ann Arbor because 

I was going to stay for the AA Modern Quilt Guild meeting.  

The meeting was great!  

Brenda, of Pink Castle, had moved into her shop and was having the meeting there. 

 At the end of the meeting we did a stash swap.  

Everyone brought fabrics and we put them all on one big sheet. 

 Then on "GO!" we all leapt into the fray for fabric.  

You know we don't have enough at home right?  

This is the stash I went home with.

Can you SEE all those Tula Pink strips?  

Two Neptune squares some Hope Valley and some AMH.  

Not to mention the adorable foxes and some Kaffe.  

I was so happy! 

 It was such a fun thing to do. 

 I got rid of 2 grocery bags of my fabric and only brought a wee bit home.

So by the time I got to my home it was after 9pm and I was exhausted! 

 I picked up the mail, put some chicken in the oven to make chicken salad for my lunch on Thursday and sat down to watch the latest episode of Supernatural (Love me some Sam and Dean!!)  

I realized I had not opened the mail so went back to where I had dropped the mail 

to find an envelope. 

 I was thinking it was some of the Swap packages I have been waiting for 

to close up round 4/5 in the Tula Pink swap.  

I looked at the return address and it said it was from United Notions. 

 What on Earth would they be sending me?

Inside was a magazine.  

OK, nice but a magazine?  

There was a post-it note inside (I put it on the outside for you to see)

I opened the magazine up to the inside front cover (the post-it was on the right side)

 and this is what I saw...

A photo of ME in the Moda Bake Shop advertisement!!!

I am in some pretty awesome company too I might add!

I had no idea they were going to do this and it was so exciting!!  

How fun to be part of the Moda Bake Shop!!  

Thank you for including me in the ad, you made my week!!!

I hope you are having a good week too.

Weekend plans? 

  I may be working on a super special QAL with my daughter and some quilting friends 

so there's that.  

~XOP~

Swaps and Stash

Just a quick little post to show you my latest swap.  

She even sent more of the swimming sisters then we had agreed on, so sweet!  

And did you notice the card above it?  

Yep, it's a card!

  

Clever girl, she had it made at Shutterfly. 

 I know what I will be doing in the future!!  

I love learning about new things like this!!!

 If you have been reading my blog for any length of time you know about my obsession with the Mendo line above and the Sweet and Swell line from Moda. 

 I saw this destash on IG and could NOT help myself. 

 IG sure can be tough on the pocketbook 

(thanks Mary!)

I do have some photos to share with you that show the flooding in Grand Rapids from when I was there last Friday.  

It was quite something to see. 

 I will try to post those later today or tomorrow.

Off to go and finish my genotyping.  

Busy day here in the lab!

~XOP~

Spinning Stars Bee Blocks

For my Ima Bee block commitment for April we were asked to make 

Anna Mara Horner's Spinning Stars blocks.  

You can find the pattern here if you want to make some too.

  It is a beautiful block.  

A little fussy to make but beautiful when all finished. 

 This would be great using Munki Munki fabric. 

 I really don't like using paper templates

. I would like it if there were a plastic set of templates I could have just cut around! 

 It took way more time to cut out then to make.
Also since the block uses templates it would have been nice to know the size,
so you would know if your templates printed out the right size.
If you want to make one just email me and I will tell you those measurements.
There were a few little tricks to putting the block together too.

 I really love my blocks though, so pretty!

This was the first block I made and I like it a lot.  Notice the NYC subway print?  

I did experience a little bit of user error while making these, LOL. 

 I did not read the template for the C part very carefully and ended up re-cutting some of those.  

A beautiful block to file away for future use for sure! 

 They are HUGE blocks too. 

 18", but relatively east to put together and to get to match up too. 

 LMK if you give these a try, I would like to see your version.

~XOP~

A Little Trip

My hubby and I had to go up to Grand Rapids again on Friday to do some more cleaning. 

 We stopped at Kean's in Mason and I found some more fabric to go with my rooster tea towel. 

 I picked up a few more golds and that snappy magenta with the mustard dots! 

 I am thinking that it would make a splendid inner border around the tea towel

 before making the rest of the quilt.

Don't they look so yummy all stacked up here and ready to be desiigned with? 

 Oh well, it will have to wait until the wedding quilts are finished.

I also picked up this adorable mustached fabric too. 

 I think it is so cute!  

Not sure what I will do with it but something fun.

Have a wonderful Monday!

~XOP~

Destashing Some More Fabrics and Patterns

I am destashing some fabrics again. 

 If you are interested please send me and email and include where you live

 so I can figure out the shipping costs too.  

mamaspark@gmail,com

Here we go!

42 various pieces of Batiks. $15 plus shipping.
SOLD

The Joys of Christmas. Robert Kaufman. 3 yards available for destash $15 plus shipping.

I think there is a little over 4 yards here, so $20 plus shipping.

 Love Letters charm pack $7 plus shipping

Desert roll Quilt Blocks by Moda. 

 These are 5" strips but not sure how many are in the pack $5 plus shipping.

SOLD

I have all these vintage patterns also, $1 each plus shipping.

I did hear about a 5" I-Spy swap over here if you are interested in joining in. 

 It only takes 1 yard of quilt shop quality fabric and you get 56 different I-Spy blocks in return. 

 I signed up for a spot.  Maybe you should too?  

More to share later!!

~XOP~