Our Finger Lakes Trip Part 1

In case you don't know, the Finger Lakes are in New York.  

This area is extremely beautiful.  

There are lots of waterfalls, vineyards and quilt shops! 

 I can't even believe that my sweet husband planned all of the quilt stops on the way from Mi to NY, around the FL and on the way home. 

 He certainly is a keeper!!

We left Michigan on Monday at around 7am in the morning. 

 I was doing stuff on my phone or sleeping until we got several hours into our drive. 

 I think I started to pay attention when we were near the first quilt shop stop.  

I happened to look up and realized we were in Canefield OH.  

You may wonder why this is significant, right?  

Well, my Cheddar Jack partner lives in Canefield!!  

So I texted her and it was her day off and she was heading to the same quilt shop we were going to.  How great is that??  So we got to meet IRL.

  I took some photos but she did not want me to post them, so I will respect that. 

 The quilt shop was called Village Quilts.

The next stop was the cute little town of Emlenton, PA.

We stopped at Amazing Stitches.  

Very nice shop.  

I tried to find something to buy in each shop we stopped at.  

Some were easier than others but every single shop had a wonderful owner! 

 I did find some great things here. 

 I bought some Lil Red and some adorable Narwhal fabric here.

I didn't always remember to take both outside and inside shots but in this case I did

Next stop was Oil City.  Unfortunately the shop in this city was closed on Monday, major bummer.

Seems like we saw a ton of pumpkins for sale at roadside stands!

On to Ellicottville and their quilt shop.  

The town really reminded us of Aspen. 

 Quite an upscale downtown with many cute shops.  

This quilt shop was very small and did not have a very modern selection of fabric but

 the owner was very sweet and let us park in her lot.  

I did buy some Steam-A-Seam light here and some thread.

There is a fabulous outdoorsman type shop (sorry I don't remember the name) and this is said sweet hubby trying on a hat we were thinking of buying for our daughter (the fish biologist). 

 He loves to shop for supplies for her!  

Kindred spirits you know, LOL.

There was a local brewery and it was wonderful! 

 If you are ever in town you totally need to check it out.  

The food was excellent too.

These two beers were different but looked very similar.  YUM.

There was a lot of nice color traveling on our way.  I would say about 50% of the trees had turned.

Our next stop was Arcade NY where we found this adorable bridge.

Oh and what do you know?  Also this quilt shop, Creekside Fabrics.  

They had a lot of nice fabrics and even some of the more modern ones.  

I got some great Hallowedding fabrics here.

The inside was even better than the outside!  Very nice shop.  

This was looking at the bridge from another angle.  So pretty!

 Now this stop was totally one hubby wanted to stop at, Naples NY,  home of  Sutton Spoons.  

What are those you say? (yah, me too).  

Fishing spoons.

They don't have a website but you can find the story of the spoons here.

Hubby had to choose his spoons one at a time while the woman went to the back room.

She would only do one at a time!

See those silver "lures"?  

Those are called spoons (who knew?) 

 Well this older man makes them and apparently they are super rare.  

You can only buy them in this shop or over the phone, but they limit over the phone orders as people have been buying a lot and reselling them for 5 times the price on eBay.

  So if you call, you had better know what you want and they will only send you 2 

(or something like that, I have to confess I stopped listening at some point, please don't tell on me).  

They are really shiny and pretty and some have a sort of hexie type pattern pounded into them.  

Bonus that there was a quilt shop, Carriage House Quilts, in the same town just down the street.  

Unfortunately, the selection was sparse, but once again the ladies were very nice.

There was this little gem in the shop and

 if IT had been for sale it probably would have come home with me!

 There was an antique shop next to this and we bought a couple of Pyrex pieces.  

A Cinderella bowl and a pink casserole with lid. 

 Great finds!  

I bought a wee glass blue bird and hubby got a few more mason jars 

(he is seriously addicted)

Just a bit back from where we were was the Red Cat Cellars.  

Now those of you that know me know that my best friend, Jack, the orange tabby, 

passed away three years ago.  

I have a very large soft spot for red/orange cats so  "TO THE WINERY"! 

 We bought a case of wine and I got 2 bottles with the Red Cat on them. 

 I really wanted the Red Cat wine bottles as they had a Halloween cat on them,

 but that wine was WAY too sweet for me!

 This is getting really long so I am going to stop right here.  

I will continue the trip tomorrow.  

Next up is the arrival at the inn we were staying at and Watkin's Glen so stay turned.

~XOP~

WIPS With Friends

So I have soooo much to say but not much time this morning. 

 I want to tell you all about my trip to the Finger Lakes in NY 

but that is going to have to wait for a few days.  Today is for WIPs With Friends day, YAY!

I have to say that I am making a snail's amount of progress on the Hallowedding things 

(including the quilt).  

I have made some progress on other parts of the Hallowedding prep.

We are using wine in mini bottles as wedding favors.  

My friend, Robin, designed the labels for the bottles.  

That meant I had to soak the labels off of 100 bottles of wine, sigh. 

 I re-labeled some of the bottles and

figured out that I hated the blue cap with the new, very chic, Hallowedding wine labels.

What to do, what to do?  I wanted them black.  Paint? Nooooo wax!!  How do I do that??  

How will people open the bottles? Google to the rescue.  

I found out that I needed 1/4" strapping tape 

to wrap around the cap prior to dipping the caps into wax. 

 I found and ordered the tape and the black wax pellets before I left for NY.  

You can see the tape around the tops in the picture above.

Last night I decided was the night to try my little craft project. 

 I did not want to ruin a pan so I bought a pot pie pan. 

 I poured some of the pellets into the pan and put in in a pot of water 

(like a homemade double boiler)

 and melted the wax.

This is what the pellets looked like before melting.

And here they are in the disposable pan all melted. 

 I used a wooden chopstick that I had to stir the pellets until they all melted.  

It was a little tricky as my wax pan was smaller than the water pan. 

 If I pushed too hard the wax pan could dip and water get into the wax.  

I used the chopstick to scoot it so the lip of the wax pan was over the water pan on the side closest to me and then stirred.  

Now came the fun part, dipping the caps! 

 I did just that.  

Inverted the bottle and pushed the top into the wax and turned it until the cap was covered 

(I had to pay attention to the direction so the tape tab got covered too).  

Then I tipped the bottle to let the excess drip off the tape, 

thus ensuring that the tape was covered in wax too.  

It only took a few seconds for the wax to set enough that it was not a drippy mess and I put the bottle upright on waxed paper (JIC).  

There was a little dripping down the bottle on some but 

I kinda thought that added to the effect I was going for. 

 I dipped 100 bottles last night and it took me a about 1 1/2 hours.  

I know you are dying to see what they looked like finished right?

I thought they turned out so great!!  Here is an entire case all finished.

Lest you think I have forgotten the Hallowedding quilt, I have not. 

 I did finish another block.  

I wanted to take the original art work of Michele Warner, who did the costumed Raven for the wedding invitation and make it into one of the blocks for the quilt. 

 It was not quite as easy as you might have imagined (or maybe I am not as talented as all that).

Here is what I came up with. 

 I enlarged the bird and then traced his body using my light box, onto fusible.

I then fused him onto my background 

(I chose spider webs because on the upper left of the invite there is a big ole spider web.)  

Then I drew some tail spines with a Frixion pen and went to town stitching feathers. 

 I also stitched his crown using thread and fm scribbling,

The eyes of the feathers were a little trickier. 

 I wanted a clean look so I appliqued these onto the feathers and then 

stitched around each of the three fabrics using free motion stitching.  

I wish this showed up a little better but I scribble stitched the raven incorporating blue threads to give that typical blue black sheen you see in these birds.  

First I just free motion stitched the eye but you couldn't really see it so I appliqued a piece of gray fabric and they stitched to fill it in a little.  

At least this way you can tell he *has* an eye!  

The crown is free motion stitched as well.  

Straight stitch and then a circular scribble to fill in the circles on top.

The bad part is that the feathers really, REALLY scrunched the fabric up. 

Also, very tempting to iron but then all your drawn lines would disappear, cuz Frixion pen.

 When I did the names I found this to happen so used interfacing, 

but it really did not help as much as I had hoped.

  I think maybe heavier interfacing may have been a better idea, but live and learn.  

After all that hard work, I was determined to make this work. 

So I pressed the he** out of it using steam and spray starch, LOL. 

 It was a little wonky but I was able to trim it . 

 I was smart enough to make the length long enough to get the final length I needed 

but I goofed up on the width.  

I will have to see where this fits in the quilt and adjust from there with "coping strips".  

I only needed 1/2" more to make the whole thing 12.5" x 12.5"

 so may end up cutting it down to 9.5" x 12.5".  

Whew that is a lot! 

 I will link up with Let's Bee Social but I want you to link up here and 

tell us all what YOU have been working on too!  

You should know the drill by now.  

Click on the blue "inlinkz" button to add your link.  

If you are only on Instagram use the #wipswithfriends.

~XOP~

Now it's your turn to link up your finishes here. 

 Remember that if you do post in the link up here

 you should post a link back to this post on your own blog too.

So now it's your turn to share what you are working on.  

Please use the linky to link up and share that you linked up to WIPs With Friends on your blog too.  If using Instagram please use the hashtag

#wipswithfriends.  

We can't wait to see what you are working on!

Use the blue Inllinkz button to link up and spread the word by linking back to this post!

An InLinkz Link-up

Cheddar Jack Block Pattern Release

The day you have all been waiting for (or at least some of you). 

 I am posting Cheddar Jack and the step out photos of how to make the block. 

 I hope you love him as much as I do.  If you use him please link back to this page and give credit.
This pattern is for personal use only.
Copyright to myself and Kim Hamilton.

If you make something using the block please use the #CheddarJackCat

If this comes out too small (I can't get Blogger to let me resize with out bleeding into my borders) here is a link that should take you to the pattern too, 

 CLICK HERE.

CHEDDAR JACK

(Edited to change the width and length headers)

I hope this is clear!  I am now going to show you how to assemble your block.  

The thick black lines in the photo above show how to assemble the units also.  

This is very photo heavy!  

Cut out all your pieces and lay them out.

I make all my HSTs first.  

Draw a line down the center on one side of each pair and sew 1/4" on either side of that line.

Cut your HST apart on the drawn line.

Press your HST units.  

I found that I ended up repressing a few in order to nest the seams during assembly but don't worry about that, it's easy enough to do when you get there.

Trim all the HST units to 1.5" square.  

You will have some extra units that we will not use in this block.

Here are my units all trimmed and ready for assembling the block

I like to lay out each section of the block.  

This is the head section.  

**Please note that I changed the pattern so the 2 gray pieces on the right top 

and middle are now one unit.**

This is the body section.  

**Please note that I changed the pattern again (after I made this) 

and the bottom gray 2 pieces are now one piece.**

This is the tail section. Hurrah no changes!

Here is the entire block laid out prior to my sewing him together.

For the head section, sew your HST pairs together and sew unit L to Unit F.  

I pressed the seams open for the rest of the entire block to reduce the bulk.

Sew your HST to each other to form the head, then sew unit E to the head

Sew the head unit to the front leg unit.

The head section is now finished!

For the middle section sew G to the HST bow section.  

Sew I to M and then to the other I unit in the center of the body. 

 Sew the top to unit to the striped body and then to F to form the center portion of the block.

Sew the middle to section to the head section then sew D to this.

It will look like this.

For the tail section, sew your HST tip of the tail units together, 

sew this to C to form the top of the tail. 

 For the center of the tail, sew your HST units to each other and then to C.  

Sew these two sections together to form the upper part of the tail section.  

For the bottom sew the remaining HST to E then sew this unit to K.  

Now sew the top and bottom halves together to form the back end of Jack.

Sew the back end of Jack to the body you have already sewn to complete the cat.

It should look like this.

Sew unit B to the bottom of the block.

Sew unit A to the side.  You have completed your Cheddar Jack block!!!  He is so cute!!

Kim and I want to thank you all for your patience while she drafted the pattern 

and while I did the step outs for photos.  

She based cheddar Jack off of an antique block and we wanted to make sure you all knew it was in the public domain, which is why we decided to share this for free. 

 Please link back to this page and give credit though if you do use our directions for assembly!  

Enjoy our free pattern.

If you are on Instagram pop over to visit Kim @Canfieldlady and thank her

I actually got to meet her, in real life, this past week.

I am linking up to Finish It Up Friday as we finally finished this pattern!

If you have any questions please let me know.

~XOP~