A Good Amount of Work on one UFO

 Hi!

This is one of those once-in-a-great-while posts about my non-BOM work.  :)

I was excited yesterday to assess how much work I accomplished through July on a UFO kit that I'd listed for attention this year.

July's draw from my piecing UFOs list was my "Fanciful Flight" kit - a Jacqueline De Jong quilt. If you're familiar with her works, you know they are bright and gorgeous, and very demanding (though every bit worth the effort)!

My kit was untouched beyond having the fabrics prewashed and ironed. I hoped to make the 36 rainbow flying geese arcs before I ran out of month.

I did get all those arcs all finished - not a short task at all, since they have very different color arrangements among them:

But even more happened!

All the remaining paper pieced components are finished! 

8 pieces each for the 9 small black stars; 8 each for the 4 large white stars; 36 melon pieces. You can judge their sizes next to the pattern there - which is printed on standard 8.5 x 11 inch paper.

I also cut out all the filler pieces, border strips, cornerstones, and binding strips.

And now it's all safely boxed together until its next turn for attention. I hope to hit it again before 2021 is finished, but I have the monthly UFO projects that will arise, and my belabored Down the Rabbit Hole (drawn early this year and still not a flimsy) gets first dibs at any monthly left-over times that may arise. So if I can't assemble this by New Year's, it'll go onto my 2022 UFO list. A whole month of 3-4 hours every week day is as much attention as my spirits can handle on a given project before the MOJO starts slipping away. 

So, I rotate to another, which for August will be my "And to All a Good Night" (Sue Garman) project. Another one with tons of work awaiting. Like July, this one only has a pile of prewashed fabrics awaiting the rotary cutter. I want to get all the blocks made for the king-size alteration I've made of the pattern, and finish the hand applique of the top pictorial panel.

This is for our bed, in a blue room that gets a snow-flecked Christmas tree with blue accents. So I'll be incorporating blue and gray Christmas fabrics instead of focusing on the greens and tans. Hopefully it'll come out the way my mind's eye sees it!

Linking to Wendy's Peacock Party

BOMs Away Monday - Birds and Sage & Sea Glass

  

Welcome to the Link-up for BOMs Away Mondays!

Where we share what we're doing on a BOM type project
so they don't stall out in UFO-land!
(Linky at the bottom)

This weekend was a Sage & Sea Glass time - I made the 36 scrappy 9-patches that were the Bag 4 sewing:

I also got 4 more thread colors stitched down on the temperature birds - the overall fused pile now consists of 3/4 of the total.

So. Many. Birds!   (732, actually! - leap year in there)

~*~*~*~

Have you worked on any BOM type projects recently? We'd love to see your progress!

Kate over at Katie Mae Quilts has joined me in hosting this meet-up, and linking up from either end puts you on the party at both sides 

You are invited to the Inlinkz link party!

Click here to enter

BOMs Away - Lotsa Goodness

 

Welcome to the Link-up for BOMs Away Mondays!

Where we share what we're doing on a BOM type project
so they don't stall out in UFO-land!
(Linky at the bottom)

Boy, I was able to square away a lot of BOM work this weekend!

First, here's my finished Sonata Star for the center of my Harmony BOM quilt:

I still need to trim the outer edges, but Scott was using my cutting table today.

Then, I got the month 5 sewing finished for the Neptune BOM:

(top portion made and attached to the 16 wedges)

I got two months of Temperature dots turned and glued onto their backgrounds:

(Marissa's wedding last month supplanted this work, so I had double this time)

And finally, I stitched down quite a few bird bodies for Heather & Pat's quilt, getting through the first four thread colors on the bricks I've fused so far. 

I've fused half of the bricks needed for the quilt. I left the wings for after I've stitched the bodies, so that I don't need to secure my starts and stops. I personally hate "invisible" thread for applique work, so to me the effect I get with different threads is worth the change-over - especially in a situation like this.  

Plus, we went to the movie theater again this weekend!

I'm looking at this page thinking, "How the heck did I get so much done??"

I'll take it!

Particularly since I'm feeling bogged down with the work on my longarm and piecing priority projects. They're each SO INTENSE and never-ending, it was very nice to put them to rest Friday evening and look at completely different things all weekend.

~*~*~*~

Have you worked on any BOM type projects recently? We'd love to see your progress!

Kate over at Katie Mae Quilts has joined me in hosting this meet-up, and linking up from either end puts you on the party at both sides 

You are invited to the Inlinkz link party!

Click here to enter

~ Flimsy Alert! ~ Chubby Chicks - July OMG

 Here is my July OMG, all finished up.  :) 

"Chubby Chicks" is 60 x 60 inches, and is a Black Mountain Needleworks pattern. This is blanket-stitched fused applique.

This was a kit that I bought who-knows-when - it was in my conglomeration of NETYs (Not Even Touched Yet) that I organized after we moved here summer of 2012. In June 2013, I pulled it out to prewash its fabrics, and our oldest daughter and I got the chick bodies fused down. 

In May this year, EIGHT YEARS LATER, I stitched the bodies, added and stitched the beaks, and stitched in the feet. Now it is a super cute flimsy, hanging in my longarm closet. 

Not sure when its turn will come up, but the binding is made and tidily tucked into my drawer for those. 

I really love having bindings ready to go when I've quilted a top up! Plus, it's nice to release any leftovers "into the wild" of my stash, instead of needing to store them separately somewhere. Maybe 1 in 9 or 10 quilt tops don't have the binding in here - either I didn't already have fabric for that, or I won't know what kind of binding I'll want to do until it's quilted. In 5 years of doing this, there's only been 1 binding I changed my mind about, and that has already been repurposed onto another quilt, so it's all great!

I'll be linking this to the July reporting party at the end of the month:

One Monthly Goal: July

BOMs Away Monday - Harmony and Temperature Birds

Welcome to the Link-up for BOMs Away Mondays!

Where we share what we're doing on a BOM type project
so they don't stall out in UFO-land!
(Linky at the bottom)

Oh, boy!  Don't you love it when you get to a point in a BOM where you're assembling components into large portions of the quilt?!

Lots of good work on Harmony this weekend. I got very close to finishing the Month 7 Sonata work.

Put the diamonds together:

And got a good portion of the assembly with half of the set-ins sewn:

I'm saving the pressing of the set-ins until I have all 8 in place, to avoid distortion on the bias edges. 

I would have finished the entire star, but I decided going to a movie - Actually going to the theater for a new release! (Black Widow) - was too good to pass up. And then we Zoomed with Devon & Cory for an hour or so, which was really nice. They've had fun getting a nursery all put together for our first grandbaby. Exciting times.  :)

Yesterday I hit the bird bricks for Heather & Pat's temperature quilt that I'm hoping to use for an anniversary present in December. I got 1/4 of the way through fusing down the bird bodies on those. 

These are clipped by rows, and it's funny that we only see a few of the blues. There are several lavenders, purples, teals, and greens in there, too, but the leading bricks for each row (Dec 16th - March something) are all only from the blue spectrum.

Haven't started stitching any yet. It'll likely be my Saturday project for the next couple of months. The left birds mark the lows of each day here in Monument for the first year of their marriage, and the right birds marks the lows of each day in Aurora. They lived an hour apart for the first two years of her med school days, so this quilt speaks of their newlywed story.

~*~*~*~

Have you worked on any BOM type projects recently? We'd love to see your progress!

Kate over at Katie Mae Quilts has joined me in hosting this meet-up, and linking up from either end puts you on the party at both sides 

You are invited to the Inlinkz link party!

Click here to enter

BOMs Away - Harmony

Welcome to the Link-up for BOMs Away Mondays!

Where we share what we're doing on a BOM type project
so they don't stall out in UFO-land!
(Linky at the bottom)

Happy 4th of July to all y'all in the U.S. 

One day I'm going to make this pattern that I've had for many years. . .
"Patriotic Rose," by Janet Miller

I was all excited about my BOM work this weekend, thinking I had all the components ready now to assemble the eight arms of the central star for my "Harmony" quilt: 

But, "Oh, bother!"

I sewed two of the sets together the wrong way around. Man! And all my points were so perfect! 

The eight-count set of 4-patches on the top and the 4-patch set on the left all have to have their final seams redone.

Oh, well. Time with Jack at the TV. Slow time with Jack, as all these seams are completely on the bias, and I don't want my pieces warped. . . 

Edit: 

There!  This is what they're supposed to be like - all fixed.  

~*~*~*~

Did your recent BOM work go smoother than mine?  :D

Kate over at Katie Mae Quilts has joined me in hosting this meet-up, 

and linking up from either end puts you on the party at both sides 

You are invited to the Inlinkz link party!

Click here to enter

July! ~

Let's see if I can remember the second half of this month's OMG tasking - to actually post and link my accomplishment.  ;D

First, the first step: Proclaiming my July project.

My One Monthly Goal for July is to get my Chubby Chicks UFO to finished flimsy status. 

I want its orange shoebox out of my storage, its binding made and filed in my bindings drawer, and the quilt top hanging in my longarm closet before this month is out. 

Right now, that UFO looks like this:

This was a kit that I bought who-knows-when - it was in my conglomeration of NETYs (Not Even Touched Yet) that I organized after we moved here summer of 2012. In June 2013, I pulled it out to prewash its fabrics, and our oldest daughter and I got the chick bodies fused down. 

In May this year, EIGHT YEARS LATER, I stitched the bodies, added and stitched the beaks, and stitched in the feet. That was my APQ challenge work. June brought a different focus for that program, and July yet another, so it's tempting to set Chubby Chicks aside again to clear its box off my work station.

I don't want that box sitting on my shelves for another eight years. It's not a priority quilt, so I won't give it any attention without putting it on OMG status. Let's get this baby all sewn up!

Linking this post up to OMG July

Finish Report! ~ Marissa's Home Quilt ~

 Yesterday I finished the binding for Marissa's wedding quilt:

Pattern is Kim Diehl's "Journey's End," fabrics are her "Katie's Cupboard" collection. 
65 x 65 inches, Hobbs Heirloom 80/20 batting

I love doing custom quilting. Usually, the fancier the better, as far as I'm concerned. Once in a while, though - Less is More. 

I'd intended to do some roofing and siding lines in the houses, and then some fill work in the background of the blocks. However, when I started doing that with one of them, it detracted from the quilt instead of enhancing it. The houses are very busy with the dozens of different prints and the piecework of the blocks in them. Putting more quilting in mushed things together rather than highlighting them. So . . . I stuck with "just" stitch-in-the-ditch on the blocks with one 1/8-inch echo around the windows. That simple work did a lot to bring out the features in the houses, so that the center of the quilt no longer melted into itself.

On the sashing, I simply ran lines straddling the thin stripes in the fabric print. Looks great!

In the border, I wanted the white bricks to stand out better than they did before the quilting. To highlight those, I threw in some continuous-curve quilting, then I ran some fun leaves-and-vine-curls free-motion style through the colored bricks, treating them as one field on either side of the white bricks.

I loved this teal print from the collection, so I'd bought enough to make the whole backing with it, and the binding frames the quilt with the same fabric as the sashing.

I'm very happy with how the quilting enhanced this top. It felt a little too busy for its own good beforehand, but the subtle-yet-effective strategies in quilting brought it up to its full potential. It's a great scrappy quilt with a wonderful old-timey heart-is-where-the-home-is feel.

Marissa surprised me by choosing this quilt top for her special quilt. I didn't expect the reproduction fabrics and highly traditional pattern to appeal to her taste, but the top really called to her. It makes me happy when a quilt I've made resonates with others.  :)  

I'm linking up at:

Tish's UFO party

TGIFF at Storied Quilts this week