Sea Horse Quilt Top

The give away is a go from the last post!!
I will draw a name tomorrow and post the winner and loot.
So stay tuned!

I just have a quick minute but wanted to show you our Watercolor Seahorse quilt.  

The pattern is by Summercrafter.  The quilt went together pretty easily.  

We used the seahorse fabric from the line called Salt Water by Natalie Lymer.  

The color scheme is based off the colors of Moda's Coral Queen of the Sea by Stacy Hsu.

I made the pink one.  If you look closely you can see the bunnies and the cat in here.

Judith made the green one.  I love her Love You This Much bunnies!

Robin made the teal one (and used some precious older Tula fabrics!)

I found the PERFECT backing!

It is a minky by Sarah Jane of Michael Miller.

We have decided how we want it to be quilted but I am not going to share more until this gets gifted.

Gotta leave some mystery!

Enjoy your day!

~XOP~

WIPs With Friends (and a Giveaway)

Let's see if we can get 10 people to link up this week!  

If we get 10 people then I will have a giveaway.  

You will get an extra entry if you get a friend to link up and leave me a comment saying so.

On to what I have been working on.  How is this always an endless list??  

First up I got my June Bee blocks made.  

This was an easy block and I really like how it looks.  

Our priest is being transferred (they only get to stay for 6 years) and

 I thought this might be a nice one to make a throw quilt for him. 

 I think I would make the + in blue though.  The squares are 5" and it went together so quickly. 

 I wonder if I can find a low volume charm pack?? 

 Might speed things up eh? 

 I will put that on my "to do" list!

Progress continues on my Folksy Fish quilt.  This is my version of a Catfish!

This is my fishy number 8.  

 It was night time but I thought you might like to see the 8 fish I have made so far.

 I am making some improv style water to fill in the spaces.  

This is not the final layout.  

I need some advice.  

I have one more fish to make and he will be swimming in the opposite direction. 

 I am thinking about making him a different color.  

Navy? 

 Orange?  

Or maybe the same teal but with an orange stripe?   

The quilt is for a baby boy, so no pink or purples. 

 I am leaning toward the navy, with maybe a hint of orange in it.  

Thoughts?

Lastly I received the final sea horse yesterday at work.

  I decided that the rest of my week is SO busy 

that if it was going to be finished it would have to be now.

 I finished the top last night, but the backing and batting.  

It is ready to make it's way to the quilter!!  It was dark so I hope to get some photos later.  

Check out that minky backing!!

I am linking up with Sew Fresh Quilts.

If you have something you are working on please link up!

If we can get 10 people (or more) to link up I will have a giveaway.

If you get a friend to link up and tell me you sent them you will get an extra entry too.

Use the little blue linky button!

Link closes on Thursday at 9am.

~XOP~

An InLinkz Link-up

The Front Garden

I can NOT believe how busy my weekend ended up being. Who plans these things?  

The upcoming week is no better.  WAY too many social engagements.  

On Saturday I got up and did some major clean up.  

The house was a disaster as hubby has been very ill. 

 So he makes food for himself and just leaves everything, which I get, but it was killing me.  

Saturday is typically the day I do work around the house/yard so I can sew on Sunday. 

 I decided that afternoon would be the day I tackled the front garden.  

No more putting it off.  UGH. 

 It will be so nice once I get it done but it was a crap tom of work and 

I am about half way or less done!!!

You probably remember the bushes getting pulled out on Mother's Day.  

Well, since my husband decided that we needed to change the shape of the front garden, 

that meant a lot more garden. 

 Which meant all that Hell grass needed to be taken out! 

 For anyone that doesn't know, Hell grass is this thick grass that is very invasive. 

 For the yard this is great.  

No weeds grow through it, for the garden?  Not so much! 

 My husband though he would just spray it with Roundup and it would die. 

 Not the Hell grass.  

Oh it *looks* like it is dead but don't buy it!  

It also is the first to turn brown in the fall and last to green up in the spring.  

So I put on my gardening boots and started digging it up with a shovel.  

I just threw it on the lawn. 

 Here is my pile of Hell grass.  

I had to load it up in the wagon and dump it in the back yard.  That stuff is heavy!

So here you can see the 2 blueberry bushes are planted, the Peony bush is planted, the third blueberry bush was transplanted and I moved a rose bush. 

 I transplanted some cone flowers and Hosta and laid down some week barrier 

(which I need more of). 

 I still need to plant the vegetables in this garden and my Foxglove 

(which I would love to have more of too).  

I need to transplant another Peony from the back yard to the front but 

I need it to finish blooming first. 

 Then everything needs to be covered with woodchips. 

 Oh yes the green blob on the left still needs to be dug up, Hosta removed, and grass, t

hen some of that can be replanted.

While I was weighting the weed barrier down with rocks this 

giant-ass spider came creeping out of the stones.  

NOPE!  Just NOPE!

Have a nice day Fishing Spider, but I will work there when you are gone!! 

 She was probably about 3" with legs and everything.

After 4 hours of working in the sun, I was exhausted.  

I came in and took a shower.  

My face was beet red, hubby thought I was burned, but it is just what I do when I overheat!  

I then went to a Lularoe party at my friend, Jessy's house.  (she is also my hair stylist).  

Her younger sister was there.  

I have not seen her since she had her daughter, who will be 1 shortly. 

 It was really nice to see her and catch up.  

She spent almost as much time at our house as at hers growing up.  

She was my middle daughter's best friend for many years.  Really like another daughter to us.

You can see that my face was still pretty red!

Also, Hallie was being completely adorable.  I was sewing and she was adorabling.  

That's it for now.  

Come back on Wednesday to see all the sewing I worked on.  

I have to save something to show for WIPs With Friends right??

How was your weekend??

~XOP~

Some Finishes and some Farming

Last week my daughter asked me to make some pillowcases for her to give to a friend t

hat she is staying with while on vacation. 

 I always dread this because I always forget how to make them. 

 Every. Darned. Time!  

This time I went to my own tutorial (which you can find here) and 

followed the directions and was successful. 

 I think all the other times someone has been directing me so I really did not pay close attention.  When I had to make them on my own, I actually *learned* how to do it.  

Does that make any sense at all??  

My daughter and I went to a local quilt shop and she chose the fabrics.  

Not fabrics I would have chosen in a million years, but she loved them. 

 She drove me home and the next day I hammered out 4 pillowcases.

The space ones are actually 3D!  

The shop owner gave her a pair of 3D glasses.  When you put them on the space fabric becomes 3D.  That was pretty cool.

Then I got to thinking that I had bought some dragon fabric awhile back intending to make pillow cases for this same daughter. 

 Her birthday was on Wednesday so since she would not be home for it, I decided to make them and gift to her when she came by to pick up the cases for her friend.

I have to say that I LOVE how these turned out.  

The fabric reminded me of the movie How to Train Your Dragon.  

The little black one reminded me of the Night Fury from the movie, Toothless.  

I loved that movie and so did she.

Since finishing the other 2 baby quilts is temporarily on hold, I decided I needed to work on the fish.

I managed to get 2 more fish sewn along with a few "water" improv blocks too!  

It is coming right along. 

Making these fish has been a challenge but they are turning out really cool!

I think I have 3 more to go before I will call it a day and figure out how to put this all together.

We have been on farm duty this week and will be again next week while daughter and SIL are away.

That means taking care of all the birds, the cats, the mice, and the fish.  

She fed the snakes before they left and he will be home on the weekend to do that again.  

I don't like the snakes.  

They would probably die if I had to feed them.  

The pea hens are laying so I am collecting them and putting the eggs inside.  

A friend of hers borrowed her big incubator to see if he likes it enough to get his own, so she asked him to come get the pea eggs to put in the incubator.  

Each day I collect these I write which pen they came from and the date.  

Her purples had stopped laying, but I have collected 3 eggs from their pen this week!

I also collected all the chicken eggs each day.  

Aren't they so pretty?  Blue, green, pink and brown!!

The one I am holding is a purple pea hen egg, actually laid on her birthday. 

 She was pretty happy to hear that they are laying again.

The purple pen is on the right and the blue pen on the left.  

The boys like to try to fight through the wall.  

This reminded me of the Sharks vs Jets in West Side Story!  

The blue male was making his way over to the fence line on the left and 

both males had their "flock" on their sides.  

Humorous how they can mimic us!

She has set up a barn webcam to watch the chicks in the barn and t

he turkey (Jocelyn) sitting on a clutch of pea hen eggs.  

If you want to watch too, (you might see me or my husband in the barn) here is the link. 

 Mostly you will see the chicks running around but it is pretty quiet most of the time.

So that's what I have been up to.  I am going to link up with Crazy Mom Quilts.

Have an eggceptional weekend!  

~XOP~

WIPs With Friends; The Delayed Version (and giveaway)

I totally spaced that yesterday was Wednesday!  

What with the holiday and farm sitting I just completely forgot about it. 

 I am so sorry my friends.  

Additionally, someone dressed me down in a comment left on my last post and I want to address this.  I did not put the pattern designer for the amazing Watercolor Seahorse quilt in my initial post. 

 I was at work and rushed and just could not remember the name of the designer. 

 I have added it and included a link to her website where 

you can purchase your very own copy of her pattern.  

The design is by Summer Crafter and you can find the 

Watercolor Seahorses pattern in her shop right here.  

I am very sorry, I am usually very good about those things as I think they are important.  

I just wanted to get that out of the way and be up front. 

 I am only human and sometimes I just forget things.  

Now on to what I have been working on.  

Speaking of forgetting things, I almost forgot to make my bee blocks for this month!  

This pattern is called Magic 8 Ball and can be found here at Blossom Heart Quilts.  

I love how they turned out.  

These would make a great charity quilt too.  

The secondary pattern is amazing.

I got my Birdie Stitches quilt back a bit ago and decided that I needed to put the binding on.

I had it all made but needed to sew it on.

I got it all stitched on, but not hand sewn down just yet.

Pretty view as I stitched!

Darla Hall did an amazing job with the custom quilting on this!

It was fun to revisit each block as I stitched the binding down.  

My friend from IG loved my vintage sheet stripe binding and 

she has a quilt made using the same Dream On fabric.  

She thought it would be perfect for her quilt so I sent her the rest of what I had and 

I hope that will make her day!

Speaking of binding, the picnic quilt should be showing up soon.  

It will need binding too. 

 I love that the front is so much solid but the back is a light coral.

  For me that is a binding dilema.  

I didn't want the dark on the back or the light on the front.

Solution?  

Make a two sided binding of course!  

You can find the tutorial to make your own right here on my blog if you want to try it.  

It is not difficult and

it really makes a difference for quilts where one color is not going to work for both sides of the quilt.

This is how mine turned out.

All set and ready for when I receive the quilt back.

Now what have you been working on?  

Please link up using the blue linky tool.

If we can get 10 people to link up I will have a little giveaway!

~XOP~

An InLinkz Link-up

WIPs With Friends

I hope you are all enjoying the spring wherever you are!  

After the bush pulling extravaganza I have to say that I am ready to get back out in the yard and complete that front garden space.  

But first I have some projects to share with you all.  

First up is the Llama project.  

A collaborative baby quilt.  

My job was to make the pom poms 

(although I think they look like paper lanterns, so will refer to them as such).  

We were going for colorful lanterns.  I started and realized I needed the fabric for the spacers.

Once I got the spacer fabric I assembled them and put on the string.

  I think they will be great additions to the Llama quilt!

Next up is a Sea Horse quilt.  

The pattern is called Watercolor Seahorses.
Pattern by Summer Crafter and you can find it here. 

Again a collaborative quilt.  

My sea horse was to be the pink one.  

We based our fabrics from the Coral Queen of the Sea line by Moda.  

This was my fabric pull.

Aren't these fussy cuts so adorable?

I worked all day on Sunday to get my sea horse and all the waves finished for the quilt. 

 We all used the same fabric for the three sea horse eyes.

I think she is adorable!  

The other two colors of sea horses are the aqua and a green.  

I have the teal one and am just waiting for the green one so I can assemble the quilt top.  

 For the waves I used the wave fabric from the Coral Queen of the Sea line too.  

A wee bit tricky to get all the waves going in the same direction, 

but only a few triangles had to be sacrificed!

There are two rows of waves.  

And that, my friends, catches you up on what I have been doing. 

 I am linking up with Sew Fresh Quilts.

Now...what are you working on?  Please link up and share with us all!

~XOP~

An InLinkz Link-up