BOMs Away & Belt Boards

Welcome to the Link-Up for BOMs Away Mondays!

 

We'd love to see the BOM you're working on lately.bo

This week's link-up is at the bottom of the post.

 

Hey, how are you all?  If you're in California, I sure hope your property is OK. I don't miss the earthquakes of my teen years, that's for sure.

 

I pulled out Heart & Home again this week. Got all my sashing strips made, and did the bits of hand stitching that wanted doing before it was bulkier to hold:

 

 

Hearts floating from a chimney, rails on a rooftop. . .

 

But the buttons for the yo-yo tree and the panes of several windows were left for post-quilting finish work.

 

 

 

I would have made further progress in my assembly during the short sewing time I had today, were it not for this boo-boo:

 

(This picture has the best color representation of the fabrics.)

  

Got it ripped out and resewn, and now that project is at this point:

 

 

 

 

Before I insert this week's link-up for BOM work sharing, I wanted to journal this bit of family activity:

 

 

 August 2nd was belt-testing day again at the dojang. Everyone in the family now studies Taekwondo, and all but Marissa tested this cycle. Marissa didn't participate, because she'd just returned from her summer in Florida. Like: Literally! We pulled into the driveway from the airport with barely enough time to grab the uniforms and run to the school.

 

We've been doing up a fun scrap-boarding "thing" of our own to mark our journey through the belt ranks toward Black Belt. At each belt test, the last item is to break your 1" board doing the prescribed strike or kick of the cycle. (I hear there are multiple boards at higher levels.) You leave with your board pieces. 

 

Well, Devon and I somehow came up with the idea months ago to paint something meaningful on our initial boards, intending to hang the subsequent smaller sides on the bottom as we go. We finally got the last board sprayed a couple of days ago, and hook-n-eyes screwed in, ribbons tied, so that they could be hung as a group.

 

 

 

 

Devon painted a beautiful bonsai, because studying Taekwondo restored a sense of inner peace for her after a very difficult couple of years.

 

 

 

I researched Korean art and culture to find a way to symbolize that I study Taekwondo to battle for good health. Seriously, my main purpose of doing this sport is to keep my feet on my body despite severe circulation and peripheral neuropathy issues. In Korean classical art, a cat and butterfly together signify vitality and longevity. I can't remember how to pronounce the two words I painted in - seung something, but that's what they mean. 

 

 

 

Marissa chose a golden deer because it's a mythical creature in Korean culture that caught her fancy.

 

 

 

Heather went with a koi to represent perseverance in the face of adversity (they swim upstream) and academic success (she had just graduated from college). She fights a couple health issues of her own and has scoliosis that gets painful.

 

 

 

Scott wanted to do a dragon.  In fact, he went and bought wood-burning tools so he could do this the way he wanted after getting Heather to draw one out on paper for him. Well, I can relate to that as far as quilting tools go, so I just smiled.  :)   He was rather tickled that he broke his board into 3 pieces. The turtles represent the foundation of this new study for him.

 

 

 

This positioning should last us another year before we'll need to raise the nails for the rest of the belt levels. We'll be adding green, purple, blue, brown, brown-senior, red, red-senior, bodan 1, bodan 2, black belt eligible, and then our blacks. That's the full intention, and we'll see how much time it takes to get there!

 

 

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 So, with that out of the way - have you been able to work on your BOMs recently?