Finish Along - Quarter 1 Goal post

I really value the link-ups in BlogLand that help me keep on track with finishing my quilts, and the 2015 quarterly Finish-Along is hosted by Adrianne over at "On the Windy Side."  I'll be linking up over there when she opens it.

What I'd really like to accomplish for sure is to finish 4 quilts per quarter. This should not be a problem, as I have more tops than that hanging in my Flimsies Closet (something like 30!!) waiting for quilting! I hope for every other one of those to be from my original monster UFO list. My plan of attack is to focus most of the day's quilt work during Monday-Thursday on whatever occupies the Priority Finish spot. If I need sanity breaks from intense free-motion work, I'll work on piecing other UFOs or gifts as needed. Fridays and the occasional Saturday will be allowed for whatever floats my boat, including the washing and start-up of something from my crazy NETY storage each month. Sundays will still follow my BOM rotation. This is the most productive method for me that keeps finishes rolling through and fends off boredom since almost every project is large and/or complicated.

So here's my First Quarter planning log for finishes:

Quilt These Up For Sure:

1. Fireflies in the Meadow

2. Sea Breeze 1  **UFO
(start with my least favorite of this set while I learn the technique)

3. Lori & Aliyah

4. Mermaid Fantasy for Heather   **UFO

Forward Lineup for Later Attention:

5.Sea Breeze 2   **UFO

6. Whooo's Your Mama

7. Quiet Rebellion on the Pond   **UFO

8. Modernology

9. BBQ with the Squadron   **UFO

10. Rainbow Jane

BOMs Away - Birthdays and Lights and Mysteries!

Welcome to the 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 the post.

Hey! I hope you're enjoying your holiday time. I actually touched my quilting "stuff" today for the first time since the 23rd. Not for super long, but I did get some things done. 

I did not work on my 4th-Sunday BOM, Wind in the Whiskers, because that requires a big fabric pull-out for several hours, and the table I do that at was needed for this today:

Birthday fun! I had a blast indulging Kyle's Pokemon penchant with a fabulous Pikachu cake made by one of my Taekwondo friends. 

So my normal BOM got ditched for birthday fun.

But I did manage to put together this week's Clue 5 work for the Bonnie Hunter Grand Illusion Mystery. I even did 1/3 of the work for last week's Clue 4, and paired up all those pink and blue HSTs with the yellow squares. 

(Linking this up at Bonnie's Mystery Monday Link-up)

By the way - Paul at the "Outnumbered Quilter" blog is putting together a really cool interactive map for Bonnie showing where people are working on the mystery. Looks like this so far. It's zoomable just like Mapquest stuff - very fun.

 If you're working on this mystery, you should add a tack in your city! You can include your name or go anonymous. Either way, just put your city/state(province), not your personal address. Here's the link for that and you click on the "Additions" tab in the upper left area to add a tack: 

"Locations of Quilters Doing GIMQ"

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And that work is all I did for the day, because then we went on a little road trip for some family time doing this:

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How are things at your place? Have you snuck in some sanity time to put a block together, or maybe start assembling a BOM top that you've worked on all year? Or perhaps it's just too crazy a time to do sewing and you're enjoying the holiday and your family?  :D

Christmas Family Fun

We've been enjoying some serious down time with each other for our Christmas holiday. No quilting work has happened at all since the 23rd. Most everybody went to the Christmas Eve candlelight service at the Air Force Academy chapel (Heather had to work, and I was too head-cold sick to go).

That night I set my alarm for 2:30, but when I came downstairs, I found that Devon and Kyle had beat us to the Santa Clausing!  

They had draped several of our Christmas blankets and quilts on the sofas with snowball garlands, and even on the coffee table. . . 

And the onsies hung all around the room!! lol!! I don't know where they found onesies with feet that were tall enough for this family!

The stockings were already too stuffed to fit in the bits we'd picked up to add in! (Those two were having such fun planning their Christmas spending that I let them take the cash I would have used so they could also do the shopping for stocking goodies.)

I actually chuckled at the Kleenex left out for Second-Santa.

They had even cleaned the kitchen all up!

Scott and I added the last bits to the pile, and Navarre couldn't figure out if he thought it was the coolest thing ever to have a mini mountain in front of his tree, or if it ticked him off to have the front dive-in entrance blocked by it.  lol!!

Those onesies were a blast on Christmas morning, and each of the stockings had a furry snowball for a family snowball fight thus attired! This is the funnest bunch of "kids".  :D

Mr. Bear Cheeks - 

Navarre managed to last through the entire unwrapping event, albeit with a mighty glazed look on his face by the end of it - he gets overloaded with input sometimes when things are running out of the ordinary.  

But Isabeau preferred staying up above all the chaos to enjoy the scene.

These are some of my favorite images from the day:

Heather vamping that onesie up:

Kyle watching Pokemon while working on a tiny sculpture - 

Devon has always been my all-or-nothing baby - 

And it's fun to watch the two of them having fun together -

Marissa was adorable diving into her speakers jackpot

And those GINORMOUS Peppermint Patties -

How sweet can you get?

My Quilt Parlor was once again transformed into an actual dining room.

Gotta love Pinterest finds!

And I definitely LOVE my family. What a treat to have everybody living here right now!

I hope you're all having a great holiday time, whether it's quiet and relaxing, full of family fun, or bringing you travel adventures~!  I am back to more game-playing - that table hasn't been put back up on its risers just yet.  ;D

Graduated! ~ Grand Illusion ~ Fiesta Mexico

Welcome to the 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 the post.

Did you see that I graduated?  heh! Most of our family went over to Nebraska for the ceremony so I could wear that fancy hood I earned. Plus, it was a perfect excuse to go visit Scott's folks for a few nights, who live 45 minutes away from the university.

Three other cohorts attended the ceremony. The other 15 lived too far away.

Dr. Biggs is always resplendent in his mustache! He was a good thesis advisor. I didn't even think about bringing my Phi Alpha Theta cords! Silly me. . . 

My family had fun putting up their "Lopers" - the university's mascot is the antelope.

You saw mine a couple days ago. Might as well flash it again.  ;D

The only bummer is that Heather and Kyle weren't on the trip because of work obligations. 

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We got back last night, and I was too tired to do the Garden Friends BOM work that would have been slated for this week.

I did look at the Clue 4 of Bonnie Hunter's 2014 Mystery Quilt this morning, and cut those pieces out. I sewed the HST's via my favorite method for scads at a time (although I cut the papers into smaller sections to maximize scrappiness).

I only put together 1 of each orientation for this week's patches,

And now Clue 4 is stacked on top of Clue 3 and Clue 2. Real work on those is waiting for my FMQ work on my 2 Christmas quilts to get finished. (They're safe like this for a couple more weeks, because they live in a part of the house where no pets go and there are no young kids who would be tempted to check things out!)

Clue 1 was finished the first week, and their tray actually serves to mask something that has to stay hidden.

(Linking this up at Bonnie's Mystery Monday Link-up)

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Been doing last bits of decorating with family, and now I plan to enjoy the rest of my Sunday with some slow stitching while we all watch the second Hobbit DVD in prep to go see the final release in the theater in a couple of days. 

I'll be working on my Fiesta Mexico block. I pushed the stemwork along a bit more on the car ride home yesterday and back-basted some pieces of color on. 

I love how it transforms from this messy stage to a clean, gorgeous stage when the applique is done! This far edge is finished until I trim up the block after all the other stitching is in place.

(Linking this up at Slow Sunday Stitching and Hexie Weekend) 

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How are things at your place? With Christmas getting closer, have you done any BOM work lately? Maybe you've snuck in some sanity time to put a block together, or maybe you've started assembling one you've worked on all year? Or maybe it's just too crazy a time to do sewing and you're enjoying the holiday and your family?  :D