WIP - NewFO January Report

How are you doing on your January goals? Did you get a UFO finished? Don't forget to link it up at this post of Carrie's if you did.  ;D

My top WIP at this moment is also one of my January NewFO's. 

This is a fun project - I've wanted to do something truly scrappy for quite a while, but haven't had the right opportunity as I'm most focused on UFOs and NETYs. A quilt for Christi fit the ticket perfectly.  Just about every piece on this quilt came out of my big scrap bin. I just needed to cut into a fat quarter for a little more white. I'm extremely happy with how well it turned out. Spent an hour rearranging blocks so that no two of the same whites or blues lay against each other.

The crazy pop of the Hello Kitty fabric is intentional. Christi is crazy for all things Hello Kitty or Marilyn Monroe, so when I saw this fat quarter, it was mine (well, hers).  ;D  That's the only thing about this quilt that's not straight from stash.

And Christi HATES the cold, so even though she lives in north Florida, she's getting a luscious minky backing.

Speaking of NewFOs, January was a prolific month! In addition to Run, Kitty, Run!, I started (and finished and shipped) Patrick's Houndstooth Blues.

And I've got some little Valentines secrets in progress. Nothing much, really - just fun cuteness for my hubby and girls to cheer their work spaces. 

So January saw SEVEN NewFO's born, one of which is already gifted, 5 of which will be finished and gifted on Friday, and the last will be finished before February ends, hopefully. The quilting on it is a tad ambitious. I have Christi completely stymied as to why I needed her to fax me an image of the bottom of her favorite running shoes. . . 

Oh! And hopefully Scott won't mind spray-adhesing batting onto these foam pieces for me this weekend. Want to get some design boards up!

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Linking up at

Barbara's NEWfo January Wrap-up

Lee's WIP

Quiltsy WIP

Esther's WOW

End-of-Month Report - Jan 2013

It's a good start for a year of finishes and UFO slaying! 

Thanks to Carrie,   

Shanna and Melissa, 

and Lynne for the excellent motivation this year!!  

For January I'd pulled 3 UFOs to try and finish, and I had a gift I needed to make post-haste that wouldn't be filled by any of my UFOs.

So how'd it go?

1. While Heather was still home for the holidays, we finished her Synergistic Windmills, a wonderful queen-sized geometric study. This is a UFO that was started summer of 2010 and lurched forward bit by bit during college breaks.  

2. I succeeded in FINALLY finishing twin-sized Marissa's Moment of Caprice, also started in 2010.

(3. Hawaiian Etude) - well, I got it moved forward significantly but it lacks maybe 2 more hours of hand quilting. 

Hey! Two out of three UFOs is not bad at all, considering the enormous amount of work Caprice demanded and the fact that I had to whip together this puppy out of my stash:

4. Patrick's Hounds' Blues - A real hit, to be blogged on Friday.  :)

So, 3 finishes this month! I'm sure that pace will slow down when the easier finishes are squared away. I only have so many projects that just need binding.  ;D

How did you do on your finishes in January?  Jump on in and join one of the parties I linked above. Nothing like Blogosphere camaraderie to motivate us!

BOMs Away - Jan 28 - Sea Breeze all fused

Welcome to my Link-Up for BOMs Away Mondays!

We'd love to see the BOM you're working on lately.
This week's link-up is at the bottom of this post.

Well, my Old Man ate so slowly this week that I was able to get both of the remaining blocks constructed for Sea Breeze. 

 Koo Koo Puff:

And The Snooty Sisters: 

This is a different McKenna Ryan project than the one you saw last week. And there's going to be so much fabric left over, whatever way I decide to finish this set, that I'm having a grand time mulling over a new project to use them for.

Koko is our oldest cat at 15 years, and the past year he has trouble keeping weight on. So I have to feed him an enticing mash of kibble and elders' canned food at least 4 times a day. 

Clara has the opposite problem. She was far too fat for too long (as in the kidlet across the street said "Wow! Your cat is ROUND!" - and she thinks she's always starving, so she tries to steal Koko's food. She watches him minutely and longingly, and the second he bobs the tip of his tail the certain way he does when he's taking his last bite, she tries to scurry in on his plate. 

Which all means I have to babysit each time I put the food down so that Koko eats his fill. It's such a bother to run opposite diet styles for companion cats! If Clara's good and waits behind him, I put a wee bit of his leftovers in her bowl for a treat.  Which gets promptly vacuumed up at warp speed while he occupies her waiting station for a good face wash.

Working with fusible projects is perfect for those times. I just hang out at the high end of the bar near them and trace patterns or place pieces on fabric or cut them out. 

And sometimes I glance behind me when I notice she's finished, and get the sweetest "Thank you!" face.  :)    She's looking good these days, don't you think?

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 What have you guys done on BOMs or interval projects lately? 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.  

Finish Report! - Marissa's Moment of Caprice

Marissa’s Moment of Caprice

There once was a girl who was NOT a pastels and frilly kind of gal. She had more of a Gothic taste. But one day her mother needed to stop in a quilt shop. After some time, the girl wandered to her mother with a very feminine pastel charm pack in her hands and a very odd look on her face, saying, "Mom, I don't know why - I can't understand it, but I LOVE these. This is so weird!" So her mother replied: “Then we'd better buy them!” So they bought 2 packs and some yardage from the line, having no clue what they would be used for. The mother thought and thought and thought. And several months later she got an idea when she saw a nifty gadget for making yo-yo’s. The idea evolved and sewing ensued, interrupted by obligations of other quilts and by schooling, until one day it was a pretty pastel flimsy with a gorgeous pieced backing. This fledgling quilt waited once again while the mother gained some skills in free-motion quilting, the family moved across the country, storage mix-ups kept it locked behind many, many boxes. . . until at last, one winter, the mother finished the quilting on a pretty deviation for her daughter, chock full of a mother’s love for her wonderful young lady.

This is the tale of a long journey that started in 2010 and culminated today when I finished this label with the above story. (With the stats underneath)

What I love about this quilt:

It's *nothing* like Marissa's normal tastes, but it's special. It's almost entirely constructed from the Three Sisters "Aviary" line. From my stash I added white-on-white  for the pinwheels and a stronger green for the stems/leaves of the flowers and the center's flanges.

It's my very own design, made to spotlight the center on a twin-sized bed (which we no longer have). Post-wash size: 62 x 87 inches.  Pre-wash 65 x 93 inches. That's how much shrinkage you get between moderately heavy quilting and Hobbs Tuscany washable wool shrinkage. (washed on the delicate cycle with warm/cold water settings, dried at medium heat about 3/4 of the way, then laid out to finish drying)

The back - made from the rest of the pinwheels and what yardages we could still find for the line of fabric.

The pinwheel field with scrappy opalescent buttons.

How much the heart flowers pop. These were stitched on at the hospital when Scott had his stroke. (With a full recovery, thank goodness!)

The "eyelet" I sneaked in. I wasn't allowed to put any lace or eyelet on, so I quilted some in around each transition point.

The outer border quilting.

The messages quilted into each side. Like this one: "You make the world. . . a happier place."  You can also hunt out "Mom loves you always. . . and forever";  "Smile  . . . Sunshine"; and "Marissa is. . . Awesome".

That I did all the quilting myself - and that was a feat on a domestic!  I counted it up, and there are no less than 96 hours of quilting in this. Probably quite a bit more.

Challenges I overcame:

Getting the diagonals to match during the construction. I needed 8 panels, cut from two different orientations on the yardage, to meet around the center. I couldn't let go of getting the lines to match up properly at the seams, so I agonized over the math, almost forgetting the seam allowances, and got everything worked out somehow. If you look carefully, you can see the seam running straight down the center of this photo from the corner of the green flange.

In the center of each of the four sides, the diagonals meet in a V. That was a compromise since there wasn't enough yardage to cut the panels in a way to keep the diagonals running the same way on the entire field, as I'd originally wanted. But I really like it this way now.

Learning to Free-Motion Quilt. This round was particularly challenging to me, working with persnickety threads, 3-D flowers, and tons - TONS - of thread tales to knot and tuck.

Braving contrasting thread. I was worried that the blue and pink I chose for the bugs and petals contrasted too much on this pastel quilt. Once it crinkled up after washing, though, that factor was greatly reduced, so I'm really glad the threads stood out as much as they did.

Putting on scalloped binding, which was addressed earlier in this tutorial post.  (And check out how much the Tuscany washable wool batting crinkled up with the wash! You can see the contrast in the before-washing shot below. It's got a nice, soft feel now and doesn't smell sheep-y, if you're wondering about wool batting.)

Quilting the diagonal field. For some reason I was really freaked about quilting this, worried I was going to ruin the whole thing. I wasn't particularly happy with this element of the design to start with. I finally talked myself into understanding that an "unruined" quilt was no good at all so long as it was unfinished, and I finally got myself into gear for this last stretch. I fretted about a quilting motif that would blend with the rest of the quilt - and with all the crinkling combined with a print to begin with - you can see I didn't need to fret at all!  Those messages I quilted in on each side - you really have to search to find them. Major "where's Waldo?" effect going there. . .  And while I wish the quilt hadn't crinkled up quite so much, it did pull the feel of the diagonal field completely into harmony with the rest of the quilt. 

We still have smatterings of snow despite several days in the upper 50s. Love this view of the common-property meadow from the top of our back hill. . . 

. . . which is a great place for sledding!

It's all good.  :)

TGIFF * Link A Finish Friday at Richard's * Whoop! Whoop! * UFO Sundays

WIPs - 23 Jan - Total Changeover :D

Those scallops are all stitched! Which means a photo-op ASAP and new rotations at my sewing stations.  :D

Hand Stitching:  This party's winding to a close as the binding is about 1/3 down.

And OH MY GOSH!!!  I cannot WAIT for the UPS to bring me the next hand-stitching, which is the binding for this monster king-size quilt that Margaret just finished quilting for me (This will hyper-jump to her post about it):

Didn't she do a STUNNING job? I love so much how she took a very linear quilt and made it so incredibly organic. Can't wait for it's Finish Report!


FMQ:  Need something here to fill in the gap between gifts. (And something other than blue and white to look at!) Going to pin this Christmas lovely now so it doesn't get abducted by aliens. I think I'll go with some of the Tuscany Wool in my stash and see how it works with the corduroy pinwale backing. . . 

Piecing:  Run Kitty, Run! is finally ready for piecing. Y'all know how much longer it takes to cut out a quilt when you use scraps???  I don't cut my scraps all up Bonnie Hunter style because I don't know yet what each one will be used for. Don't get me wrong - I find her very inspirational and will make several of her designs when I get the UFOs under better control. But I have several projects I want to do in the future that need pieces that will not be assembly-line style needing uniformly sized strips. 

I think this new gift project is going to be super fun, with whimsical quilting plans, and I'm glad I had enough scraps for each color zone to get all the pieces. She needs this quilt ASAP for some heart-lifting, and I don't want to wait months and months until I'm allowed to buy more fabric.

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Linking up at

Lee's WIP

Quiltsy WIP

Esther's WOW

BOMs Away - 21 Jan - Beach Walk and Baubles from Nat

Welcome to my Link-Up for BOMs Away Mondays!

We'd love to see the BOM you're working on lately.
This week's link-up is at the bottom of this post.

Got "Whale Watch" for my McKenna Ryan "Beach Walk" quilt put together.  So cute.

And Scott put up a hook for me so I could hang these awesome knit baubles that Nat of Made in Home sent to me from England! Even though she had a brand-new beautiful baby boy! I was super impressed, beyond being impressed in the first place that she could knit these.

I just love having them hanging in the kitchen at the seating end of the bar. (Which is also my work space for fusible art blocks, heh!   

Hmm. . . wouldn't it look nice if I could put together a coordinating mini quilt to live under them? 

- - - - -

A note:

It seems that anything coming into the U.S. from Europe these days is taking an incredibly long time - 4 to 8 weeks - so hang in there if you're waiting for something. It may be delayed in customs and not lost.

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 What have you guys done on BOMs or interval projects lately? 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.