BOMs Away - Octopus Garden 1

Welcome to the link-up for BOMs Away Mondays!

Do you ever start Block-of-the-Months and then not finish them? 

Or maybe you just like doing a lot of them?

This is where you can share what you're doing on a BOM or anything you work on at given intervals. 

Show us what you accomplished in the past week or so!

(Linky at the bottom.)

Hi there - I got the applique for Block 1 of Octopus Garden finished today. Cutting those letters out of the ultrasuede lite was a little tricky, but there they are, and they look just fine. :)

And while I hope my other U.S. blog friends are enjoying the long weekend, let's all remember why we have it, and perhaps think about how we can lighten the load of families who have lost a parent/spouse in military service. I know we have several agencies in our area that help them, such as the Angels of America's Fallen program (which sponsors kids all over the country).

Back to quilting - have you done any BOM work lately? We'd love to see your progress.

An InLinkz Link-up

Hands-2-Help 2017 #2 - "Kitty Titty Power"

"Kitty Titty Power" 

made by Lynette Caulkins and Marissa Anderson

I am reblogging this quilt, which I finished in Oct 2015 and have kept on tap for the next friend who had to face breast cancer. I've decided that since none of them has had this trial come up in their life by this point, I'm going to send this to the Happy Chemo project for Hands-2-Help 2017, organized by Sarah at Confessions of a Fabric Addict. 

As I said when I made it, I know this quilt's name will be a bit rough for some folks.

But getting cancer IS rough. 

It sucks, and it happens all too often. Anyone my age or older has known someone personally who is/was battling one or another of those monsters - if we've not had it ourselves. I've gone through a bout of lymphoma, which killed my uncle and has challenged his son at least 3 times, and my mother died from a rare form of inflammatory breast cancer. Two of her sisters have had more common breast cancers. 

Rough words help dissipate the anger when you're in the fight, and if you can combine that roughness with humor, it's most effective! So I let the quilt's working name stick instead of polishing it into refined civility. This quilt's purpose is to provide bolstering support during an active battle with breast cancer, and the name is perfect in that context. 

The pink speaks for itself to identify it as a breast cancer quilt (I've always hated the commercialism of all those pink ribbons, but you have to admit the social power of the pink). The triangles evoke strength and dynamic energy. And those kitties are just so darned friendly.

I wanted the quilting to allow a more comforter-like feel for this one, instead of adding in some fancy fills. I also needed the quilting choice to soften the starkness I often felt when contemplating the top. I wondered if simple wavy lines would do the trick for this, and they really did!  

I used my walking foot and a wavy stitch on my machine for everything. (Don't forget to loosen the pressure of your presser foot when you are quilting instead of sewing - which is different from thread tension, even when using a walking foot). I just followed each seam, and then on the hollow triangles I put in some super-wide echos. On the solid triangles, I quilted point-to-point between the halfway marks of each side to break up that space in a congruent way.

For the back, I had pieced the off-cuts from the side triangles into a strip. Everyone who sees it thinks it spells something. LOL  I guess it does kind of look like an abstract "ZOOM":

If I received this quilt, I would take it to every chemo appointment. And then I would want to wash it a lot. So the binding got machine stitched, which is highly unusual for me in non-children's quilts. There was a lot going on, color-wise and dynamics-wise, in this quilt, so I went with the background pink for that instead of my original plan for a super-soft framing of gray Minky.

And this quilt's feline lover? - Isabeau adores it and settles down on it every time I get it out. Navarre only liked it when it was a flimsy for some reason. Go figure! Good thing I have a cat-free room now where I can let it super-dry before I box it up tomorrow.

"Minky Stripes" for Camp Hobe, Hands-2-Help 2017

Many of us have participated in this year's Hands-2-Help Charity Quilt Challenge that Sarah has coordinated over at Confessions of a Fabric Addict. 

I was happy to have a super soft and perky kit on hand that would be fantastic for the Camp Hobe drive - soft minky stripes in the right size to comfort a young person fighting cancer. 

This was my first strip minky quilt, and fortunately others ahead of me had shared the importance of using spray adhesive as you go along. I can't imagine doing this without it. I don't normally use the spray, as the propellant uses carcinogenic chemicals, and I have an autoimmune disorder, so I wouldn't have thought of it on my own. Also - those rounded corners are a must if you're going to bind it.  :)  The minky strip just flows so easily around them, rather than struggling with corner folds. Also, you only need a single layer rather than the doubled-over binding that I normally use.

I just LOVE all the different textures that minky comes in! Don't you?

Thanks for organizing this event, Sarah! 

And all you sponsors are AWESOME! 

It's been washed and completely dried, so I'm off to the post office now. :D

BOMs Away - Happy Distraction :)

Welcome to the link-up for BOMs Away Mondays!

Do you ever start Block-of-the-Month projects and then not finish them? 

Or do you just like doing a lot of them?

This is where you can share what you're doing on a BOM or anything you work on at given intervals. 

Show us what you accomplished in the past week or so!

(Linky at the bottom.)

Well, this is a slow month for BOM work! I've only accomplished work on my hand-work BOMs, with a fair bit of progress on Octopuses Garden block 1 and Fiesta Mexico block 3.

But most importantly, I got the room for the longarm cleared out, painted, and then. . . 

This!!

The new green is nowhere near this neon in real life :)

My Millie is all set up, ready for some attention soon! First I'll read through a bunch more stuff and watch the DVD I got from Myrna. I'll also take the initial class for owners. After NINE years of saving up, and that ginormous check, I'm not eager to mess something up because of ignorance. But I'm getting itchy to load up one of the 35 tops hanging in my closet and try out my first pantograph on it. :D

Getting it together was a family affair over a couple of days, but as Myrna and Laura assured me, we were perfectly capable of doing it ourselves, even with the few extras that I'd bought for it. Nice to save the set-up fee!

In the next weeks, I'll be painting the trim and closet doors white, replacing the bedroom door with a french door so I don't feel closed in (want to keep the cats out of there), and installing good overhead lighting. First, though, I'll finish up Lori's quilt on the domestic machine. 

And despite the fact that we don't live in Australia, we got at least 14 inches of snow three days ago! It was a perfect day for tea, and Navarre made this pic so awesome with his photobombing. . .  

May 18th

Colorado weather entertains me so much!

How has your work gone? Did you get something done on a BOM project?

BOMs Away - Fiesta Mexico

Welcome to the link-up for BOMs Away Mondays!

Do you ever start Block-of-the-Months and then not finish them? 

Or maybe you just like doing a lot of them?

This is where you can share what you're doing on a BOM or anything you work on at given intervals. 

Show us what you accomplished in the past week or so!

(Linky at the bottom.)

Hopefully I'll have this set up properly to auto-post for the link-up. I'll be out of town this weekend for my aunt's 80th birthday. I'm looking forward to giving her gift to her. I've got one of the quilt tops her daughter made shortly before she died that I quilted up for her. Also looking forward to seeing my sister, as well as a couple of cousins that I haven't seen for decades, and I'll sneak a night in at my dad's place, too. Should be super fun!

I finished block 2 of Fiesta Mexico today, so I do have that to share. It's not trimmed to size yet.

How about you? Have you done BOM work recently?

BOMs Away - Painting Right Now

Welcome to the link-up for BOMs Away Mondays!

Do you ever start Block-of-the-Months and then not finish them? 

Or maybe you just like doing a lot of them?

This is where you can share what you're doing on a BOM or anything you work on at given intervals. 

Show us what you accomplished in the past week or so!

(Linky at the bottom.)

Oh! Sorry to post a little late - I did not do any BOM work this weekend, because I was heavily engaged in transforming the extra bedroom into a longarm room. Most everything is now out of that room, the walls are prepped for a pretty color, and I got the ceiling painted. The room was fully encased in this weird, depressing, dark-feeling tannishgrayolivy color that came with the house, and 5 years later, it's about time that it got painted over!! Going with a cheerful light green under a pretty cream ceiling, and later on I'll paint the old, bashed-up oak trim into a nice semi-gloss white. Hopefully, I can finagle a new French door for the room by summer's end. I want to keep the room closed off from the cats, but I don't want to feel imprisoned when I'm working in there. I get SADD (seasonal affective depression disorder) very easily!

I do have a tiny bit of BOM interest to share. On normal evenings, I hand stitch on applique while Scott and I watch a show. I've been working on these two blocks from "Fiesta Mexico," and now I've started in on a fun block for the new project, "Octopuses Garden":

Having these 3 blocks on the go at once gives me a good range of work for the different stages of backbasting technique that I use, so that something can always marinate overnight, but I also always have something ready to stitch down. Lots of overlapping pieces on these, so sometimes I can only baste a couple on at a time. That bottom one looks super strange in progress, doesn't it??

~*~*~

Have you done any BOM work lately?