TGIFF Is Here This Week - What a Hoot, Marissa!

Hi! Welcome to this week's "Thank Goodness It's Finished Friday" link-up! Have you finished something lately that you'd like to share? Link up at the bottom of this post, and be sure to visit a few links to help your quilting peers celebrate their finishes.  :D

This is a super fun finish for our family. "What a Hoot, Marissa!" is the last in a series of three quilts made for our daughters as each of them graduated from high school!

This was my first original quilt design, and when I made the first one in 2010, it provided the basis for my blog's name as that was when I started recording my quilting endeavors here. The first two had one more row so they'd be a good length for the extra-long twin beds of college freshman dorms. This one fits Marissa's needs better in a regular length, and it's done to a 70 x 90 inch size. I *loved* the backing fabric I found for it!

Marissa chose her school colors for the checkerboards, and the owls were appliqued with satin stitching. I get the best result with this approach when I pin a layer of unprinted newsprint behind it to stabilize the fabric and keep puckers and ripples away. (I got a free "endroll" from a county newspaper a few years ago, which had yards and yards and yards of remnant.) It tears away so easily, it's no big deal at all to remove! I also clip away back layers to take away extra bulk and stiffness in the finished quilt.

Every so often, I get really picky about how I construct a quilt. On these, I adore the Celtic ribbon corners and didn't want the easier way of putting them together using HSTs as end-caps that would cut up the flow of the ribbons. So the fabric was cut in a way that uses a lot of Y seams and puzzle-piecing to put them together in a way that preserves the continuity of the ribbons. They look terrific in the finished product!

Another fun thing about these quilts is the button eyes that really liven the owls up. Yes, it takes a while to sew them all on. Not my favorite part, but definitely worth the effort.

The first two "What a Hoot" quilts were quilted by a guild co-member when we lived in Florida. This time around, I'm completely comfortable doing my own quilting, so this was completely finished by me. 

The inner field is quilted exactly the same as her sisters' had been done. But I didn't have the computerized system to easily measure out the Celtic style geometric design quilted in the wide border of the earlier versions, so I marked a spine all the way around and free-hand quilted feathers for that space.

Wow, am I happy with how those turned out!

Almost as happy as this remarkable young woman was to graduate.  :D  Love this huge grin of accomplishment!

Right now this fabulous quilt is hanging in our great room, where Marissa can bask in recognition all summer, and anyone who comes into the house can help us continue to celebrate. Soon she'll be starting her university studies, so I suppose we'll change it out. But for now, it makes me smile every day!

Oh yeah! And guess where half of the binding was stitched down? - In Hawaii! Specifically on a balcony on Waikiki, Oahu, and another balcony on Ka'anapali, Maui during sun breaks. Definitely worth lugging that heavy puppy in my carry-on from Colorado and back. . .   ;D

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Now it's your turn to toot your horn and let us help you celebrate a finish! Link up right here.  :) 

An InLinkz Link-up

BOMs Away Monday - Fireflies

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.

Hi there! I got the 8 Francie Fireflies sewn up for my Fancy Forest quilt.

That's all 48 creatures finished now~! Just the 8 Thistle blocks left to make.

I also got the trapunto layer sewn in and trimmed for the last of the McKenna Ryan Sea Breeze minis!

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How about you? Did you work on your BOMs or other interval projects?  :D

An InLinkz Link-up

BOMs Away - Out on a Lark

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.

Oh, gosh! Sorry, everyone - I forgot to put the post up last night after we came home!

I didn't do any BOM work at all this week. Pin-basting Scott's quilt and getting the quilting started on it occupied Mon-Fri, and then this weekend was a flurry of activities. 

Saturday was belt testing day for Taekwondo. 

Patrick is up to blue belt, and Scott and Marissa and I are now at the Bodan level. 

This is where we've learned all the basic stuff and have to start putting it together and perfecting it. We'll have 4 poomsaes (rather like Tai Chi work), 10 kyroogis (sparring patterns), numerous different board breaks (strikes and kicks), lots of self defense moves, and a good bit of history and philosophy to focus on until the next test cycle. I think we're still working with our escrima sticks in the Leadership weapons class, too. Our normal class workouts also ramp up another notch or two of intensity! That part is hard for me to adjust to with my Lupus issues.

Patrick and Heather and I spent Sunday at the Renaissance Faire in Larkspur, doing a lot of shopping for ideas and a few items for their wedding in December. 

Pat had fun trying on some Tudor clothing.

We also met some neat people. I bought a necklace and earrings from this artisan. 

While I was telling her what drew me to the necklace (which vaguely made me think of an owl), she told me the inspirational story of the color choices in the earrings, which was the particular color "feel" of an obscure middle-of-nowhere highway in New Mexico. I love that stretch of highway!!  She couldn't believe I knew where she was talking about. We completely hit it off.  :)

Speaking of owls, this tiny full-grown fella melted my heart. He's a rescue bird of prey who can't rehabilitate to the wild, so they let him visit the Fair.

It was a fun, very busy, weekend!

Oh, and just to record a bit of silliness since we enjoy going out on walks together and doing a little Pokemon Go - this happened! I currently "own" the gym at the Masonic Lodge down the street from our house. Marissa was with me when I battled for it, said she didn't feel like battling (she was texting some friends), and then silently stole it out from under me twice in the gap after I battled for it and was opening the page to set my Pokemon on the platform.  :D   heh! Sneaky girl!! - This game will be a funny memory for us in a few years.

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How about you? Did you work on your BOMs or other interval projects?  :D

An InLinkz Link-up

BOMs Away - Hedgehogs & a Flimsy!!

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.

Got a lot squared away this week! While finishing Scott's quilt top and making its backing, I used my BOM project as a leader ender. Finished up the final two owls that way:

And got a bit of a head start on the hedgehogs, as well, so I could finish them up today:

Everybody's hanging out on the design wall - just two sets left to make before that's ready to assemble! [Some day I'll actually work on that McKenna Ryan again. . . ]

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So, back to Scott's retirement quilt - Here's the finished flimsy! I'm grateful to Deana for her DOD Americana BOM that provided the basis for this. 

I love these panels - the birds tweeting away to Lee Greenwood's "God Bless the USA" couldn't be more perfect for an Air Force retiree, and the major deployments with the avatars wearing actual pieces of the uniforms worn during the years of those assignments.

And the back is finished as well - Fun Air Force fabric (Scott loves all the different jets in Air Force history, so he's keen on this print), leftover border fabrics for the stripes, and a print of the Air Force Seal. Now I just need to Frankenstitch the batting together so I can baste this baby up!

P.S. Anyone else out there having fun with the Pokemon Go app? My daughter put it on my phone. . . 

. . . Which led to a fun family date hiking all over the neighborhood for a couple of miles to capture as many as we could and visit the pokestops that are near us. Too funny!

Funnest free date we've had for a while.  :D

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How about you? Did you work on your BOMs or other interval projects?  :D

BOMs Away - Pinwheels and Owls

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.

Well, I only got 6 of the 8 owls finished for Fancy Forest. They're rather involved, so I ran out of time. The 2 that are left are probably my favorite color sets, too.

But I did get dozens and dozens of pinwheel stars sewn for the border on Scott's retirement quilt.

Also, I finished assembling the whole center (it's a customized DOD Americana Mystery top). I love all the bits of Scott's actual uniforms that are in it!

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How about you? Did you work on your BOMs or other interval projects?  :D