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Sunday, November 27, 2011

BOMs Away Monday - 27 Nov 2011

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Welcome to my Link-Up for BOMs Away Mondays! 
(We'd love to see the BOM you're working on lately.)



I hope my U.S. friends had a nice Thanksgiving. We really enjoyed having the college girls home. Still coping with a mysterious disease that is likely to rob Marco-kitty of his eyeballs. It's not fun - the eyedrops/ointment regimen is comprehensive and stressful, and while cats are REMARKABLY ADEPT at getting around the house 100% blind, he's obviously in a lot of constant pain. He's probably just screaming in his little head, "Take them out already!"  :(

Did some more Baby Janes around things, and one Wild Rose Cottage block:


well, the colors are much nicer in life  :)











~*~*~*~

What interval project have you got going? Weeklies are welcome along with regular projects that you've broken into monthly units, and -of course- true BOMs.  Share your eye candy and show off your progress since the last time you linked up! There are some wonderful monthly and weekly projects going on out there. You guys amaze me.  :D


Thursday, November 24, 2011

Happy Thanksgiving!!

Thanksgiving 2011

(I want to keep my Thanksgiving diary from Facebook in a more permanent place)

Nov 1: Happy November!! I hate that so many people blow Thanksgiving off. It should be honored much more. Yes, the lie of the happy pilgrim and native deserves to be dropped, but it's a shame that we Americans don't make a better show of gratitude for what we have. Today I'm celebrating Bountiful Harvest - in particular for our family: gratitude for annual supplements that arrive just in time for tuition bills.





Nov 2: Big thanks for the inspiration of certain peeps that got me off my duff and into a healthier Me!




Nov 3: Sure am grateful for the companionship of our cats. Funny, loyal, snuggly - You just gotta love how they flag their tail when they're happy to see you, how they stretch their paw up just to touch you, and the pure ATTITUDE that abounds.  :D




Nov 4: It is fantastic that I can pursue a fully accredited Masters even though we live nowhere near a program. Thank goodness for the Internet and wonderful digitized archives. Make it a thankful November ;D




Nov 5: I am grateful for the wide range of vistas of the world and the human experience that my growing Newbery collection brings me that my own life doesn’t encounter.




Nov 6: I'm pretty sure my penchant for quilting comes from a combination of a love for puzzles and the legacy of my grandmother. I am so grateful for the tools that make quilting easier that were unavailable when Grandma was in her heyday - particularly for well-marked cutting mats and awesome rulers, rotary blades, curved safety pins, a walking foot, a floating stipple foot, and disappearing-ink markers. And let it be noted that I am very grateful for a hubby who can do the stitches when I get working too fast and the blade jumps the edge of the ruler~! heh  :)  (That won't happen again)




Nov 7: Diversity is awesome. My all-time favorite movie quote comes from Robin Hood – Prince of Thieves, when the little girls asks Morgan Freeman, “Why did God paint you?” and he replies “Because Allah loves wondrous variety.” I am so grateful that the world is not a huge boring pot of sameness.


  

Nov 8: Who remembers writing in Typewriter Days? The mountain of index cards, the painfully laborious research through indices and card catalogs, the agony of figuring out when to start the footnote section on a page. . .  BOY am I grateful for Word Processors! Today's young students have no idea how easy we have it now for putting papers together.  :D




Nov 9: Even though I truly hate how far away they are, I am thankful that the girls are able to be at the schools of their dreams.




Nov 10: I am grateful for the quilting world: fantastic fabrics, learning new techniques, finding friends and inspiration through the community both in life and online, as well as motivation to have a very productive year (although right now it's all at a snail's pace behind studies and writing).




Nov 11: I am extremely THANKFUL that Scott is not on deployment this year! Happy Veterans’ Day, honey!


   

Nov 12: Aren’t you grateful that we don’t bust our knuckles on a washboard every week? Sure is nice to have machines like “WaAally” and the dishwasher to make our housekeeping lives a lot easier.




Nov 13: As much fun as it is to make fun of the prolific use of these things, I am truly grateful for our cell phones. Communication with college kids is entirely revolutionized from my generation's days. No more worries about long-distance bills, so go ahead and text or call as often as your heart desires! (Well, maybe don't bug the kids *that* much.) :D 

P.S. ***PLEASE*** do not text and drive!!!!! Just don't do it. At all.




Nov 14: I am incredibly thankful for my vision, that I am able to drink in the wonder.




Nov 15: I am thankful for a variety of friends who each strike a different chord of affinity.

  


Nov 16: I am grateful for today's transportation abilities - that I can get to Jacksonville in half a workday instead of a whole week.


  

Nov 17:  Woohoo! Grateful for a Google search, online mapping systems, and the GPS – turns a few hours of kill time in a strange city into a fun quilt shop hop!  :D




Nov 18: Today I will be grateful for silver linings - both for the boon of their existence and the ability to focus on them.




Nov 19: Woohoo!! I am grateful for airplanes that bring my babies home!! Devon's off already for the holidays, about to make her way home, and Heather will join us Monday night. :D




Nov 20: Very thankful for the days we get to sleep in!




Nov 21: This may seem trivial, but I seriously am grateful for good chocolate. Not that overly-sugary stuff in Hershey bars - but good, rich, dark, creamy chocolate in quality truffles, mousses, cakes, and pies. And a little Dove dark square is not bad after dinner for hardly any calories - plus you get a wee bit of an antioxidant boost. ;D




Nov 23: I am thankful for the freedom, for the release, for the peacefulness and self-assurance in my life.




Thanksgiving Day: What I am *most* thankful for is my family and the fun we have together!!


Tuesday, November 22, 2011

WIP Thanksgiving week - What are you taking your time with?

Kristen over at So Happy has started a nice weekly linky for handwork, and I'd like to use it as a motivator on my projects, so I'm joining in on her Take Your Time Tuesday link-up in addition to my normal WIP attention. It's perfect for this week since almost all the work I've got done has been limited to show time with Scott after dinner.

I used to really shy away from hand applique, but its clean, polished lines seduced me into entering that world this year, and the time I work on that is when we're enjoying a moment together in the evenings on the sofa.

I keep my applique station in a tote - the pieces that are ready for stitching, a baggie with the silk threads I use right now and an upholstery thread, the container of dainty applique needles, my "applique glasses" that have zones for close-work and for TV viewing, and some good, sharp scissors. 

The tote's easy to grab if I know I'm likely to be waiting anywhere, like the kitty ophthalmologist in a town 5 hours away. . .  

There is one big applique block that lives in my tote, but when I started working on a Dear Jane, I found that an awful lot of those Baby Janes find their way to the tote as well. 


The large block is the centerpiece for my Ruffled Roses BOM. I am in love with the back-basting method and know that I will use it for almost all my applique. There are times when the ol' freezer paper method works better, but that's happening few and far between. 

For this particular block, I decided to keep all the vining motifs in one piece and laid a whole green fabric over the background to baste down instead of fiddling with narrow bias strips for that step. 

I'm not worried about all the cut-away portions being wasted because a lot of the many leaves that get added come from the same green. I'll also use this green in my next applique quilt, so it's all good in the end.


Here's the quilt this central block is for:


Once I finish that block, I'll load my tote with the My Tweets applique BOM, which I've been itching ALL YEAR to start.  :)

And Baby Janes float their way through - this one is partially stitched, waiting for me to applique the next round of back-basted pieces. (The really funny thing is that the fabric that came in this month's pack for this block is the same as the fabric I'm using up above!)  

This one was finished up last night during a CSI episode.





A big Thank You to Lee for hosting WIP Wednesdays, and Esther for WOW.  :D

Sunday, November 20, 2011

BOMs Away Monday - 21 Nov 2011

https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEib6FEw-InTZOIaLrsh7raXFspj2e1T12kCO8l-1fE90gdy6n4l1MW2uvunLaRnasRzTevZmJGQUxFSneppP1tAy6D3038PFUnZoe3kZkA6pv4O9beBUFKk-l_8VIx2zK7QOjm3Pv7Ki7I/s1600/BOM+Button.jpg

Welcome to my Link-Up for BOMs Away Mondays! 
(We'd love to see the BOM you're working on lately.)


Well, it's been a really rough run for us this week. The only BOM work I got done happened because I'd already made all the inside 9-patches for the alternate blocks for this project. I did get them all assembled into their block form, with a few extra 9-patch minis for use on the back or something.





~*~*~*~

What interval project have you got going? Weeklies are welcome along with regular projects that you've broken into monthly units, and -of course- true BOMs.  Share your eye candy and show off your progress since the last time you linked up! There are some wonderful monthly and weekly projects going on out there. You guys amaze me.  :D



Monday, November 14, 2011

BOMs Away Monday - 14 Nov 2011 (and an HST tip)

I'm feeling happy!  AQS awarded me the Blog of the Week. Never thought my humble little place would tickle their fancy.  :)



https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEib6FEw-InTZOIaLrsh7raXFspj2e1T12kCO8l-1fE90gdy6n4l1MW2uvunLaRnasRzTevZmJGQUxFSneppP1tAy6D3038PFUnZoe3kZkA6pv4O9beBUFKk-l_8VIx2zK7QOjm3Pv7Ki7I/s1600/BOM+Button.jpg

Welcome to my Link-Up for BOMs Away Mondays! 
(We'd love to see the BOM you're working on lately.)


Whew! Got two monthlies totally caught up. :D


Baby Janes: 








And the Flying Needles guild BOMs:

November


September
August



Notice all those tiny HSTs in the September block?  No way was I going to make those any other way but by using free print-out sheets that make the task so much faster and accurate.  (Just make sure your printer is printing at 100%, and not "fit to page" or whatever your software calls that mode.)

Pin paper to right-sides-together fabrics, sew on dotted lines.

Cut on solid lines. Sit down in front of a nice show and pull the papers off.  :)  

You get perfect HSTs every time.  :D



P.S.  Be sure to check out the unique GIVEAWAY that BOMs Away Regular, Marlene of Kissed Quilts is having until Sunday midnight (the 13th) Pacific time. She's designed several quilts for challenges the last few months. You just might enjoy being her follower, too. My favorite is her "1892 Rondure":



~*~*~*~

What interval project have you got going? Weeklies are welcome along with regular projects that you've broken into monthly units, and -of course- true BOMs.  Share your eye candy and show off your progress since the last time you linked up! There are some wonderful monthly and weekly projects going on out there. You guys amaze me.  :D