Finish Report! King-sized Dinner Plate Dahlia

king-sized "Dinner Plate Dahlia" - a Judy Niemeyer design
116 x 108 inches

This is a Judy Niemeyer design. I extended the outer edges on the papers of the queen size pattern to make it the size we wanted for our king bed.

I started piecing this in September 2019 and finished the top in March 2020.

This is my own colorway, which I figured out on Quiltster's site. I ordered the Japanese florals and the sky blue border fabric, then supplemented those from my stash.

It went onto my longarm in late August 2021, and came off early March 2022. Quilting was slow-going because I was still limited by long-Covid effects, I had a hard time deciding what to quilt where, and - well - at 108 x 116 inches, it's a MONSTER. And, as I found, the very widest backing that I can get onto my frame.

I used 11 different threads on the top, and 3 bobbins. I do one thread at a time all the way through a quilt, change the thread, roll back the other way, repeat as necessary. That way I minimize tension adjustments. I've found that stabilizing the quilt with the ditch work and basting areas that are larger than a fist as I go along (I just use corsage pins for that) prevents any pleats from happening on the back as I roll back and forth through the rest of the process. 

The only collaboration on this is when Navarre "helped" me figure out a template for the long gray feather areas. 

And now, I'll just let the close-ups speak for themselves. This is all ruler and hand-guided. I do not have a computerized system.

And Isabeau has been convinced this is her personal quilt, ever since it went onto our bed March 3rd. 

  I am sharing at TGIFF

Flimsy Alert! ~ Tuscany Terrace

"Tuscany Terrace" by Marianne Elizabeth

Whew! There were days this month when I really thought I would *not* be getting this quilt top all sewn together before putting the project away again for who-knows-how-long - but here she is!

This was my April UFO on my piecing list for the American Patchwork & Quilting UFO Challenge. I populated my list with a combination of the current projects that were unfinished at the new year, a couple of UFOs that I really want to use on my bed, and then a bunch of old UFOs from my spreadsheet. 

Tuscany Terrace is one of the older ones - I bought the kit sometime between Jan 2010 and Oct 2011, and it sat in my NETY storage until I washed the fabrics and kitted it up in June 2013. 

Poor thing sat, all cut out, in a box ever since then, but it sure was fun to unpack that box to everything all cut out and labeled, with notes on the pattern regarding all my choices! 

It took many, MANY hours this month to piece it. I had a sweet visitor come near the front window to see what I was doing while I was pinning the last borders on yesterday. She was not sure at all what to think of Navarre watching her.  

But now it's a gigantic Flimsy, matching sham tops, and 12 yards of binding, all tidied away in my longarm room. 

I don't know if I'll get it quilted this year - my longarm queue is already on the long side, and I can't work much at all on it until this vertigo stuff gets better controlled. But she'll be so pretty as my Oct - Nov quilt when I do get her quilted!

BOMs Away Monday - The Road Home

        

It's time for BOMs Away Monday!

Sharimg what we're doing on a BOM type project
so they don't stall out in UFO-land!
(Join us in our BOMs Away Facebook group)

This week I worked on my Road Home BOM.

I skipped ahead to Month 7, which was to augment the center block into a medallion unit:

And that wasn't too much work, so I made the 128 HSTs for Month 2 and put together the "claw" units for the sixteen 4-part bear claw blocks that are in that set of work.  This quilt has a large amount of low-volume space on it, as you can see by the lighter half of these units.

Now next month will be manageable for one weekend.  :)

~*~*~*~

Did you work on a BOM type project this week? We'd love to see your progress!

You are welcome to join the new Facebook group that Kate, from Katie Mae Quilts, and I host. You will find the group at this link:

BOMs Away! - Quilters' block-of-the-month motivation

It is set up as a private group, meaning only members will see your posts there. We screen requests to join the group so that spammers won't get in and drive us all nuts. 

One great thing about this move is that we can post progress any time we want, and you won't be left hanging if we've gone on vacation and forgotten to set up an auto post with a linky party.

We hope to see you over there. I know I would not get a tenth the amount of BOM work done that I do without having this interaction to rely on. 

Another Flimsy Alert! ~ Ollie's Owl

 "Little Owl" by Bound Company

38 x 44 inches

This was the "Ooo! Shiny!" project for late-winter 2022, an adorable crib quilt for our grandson. It's intended for his first birthday in the fall, so I'll be quilting it after a couple large quilts move off my longarm queue - which is currently stalled while we find a way to get my MdDS under more control.

Mal de Debarquement Syndrome is alternately amusing, maddening, and debilitating. It's never gone, just better or worse. I'm on week 7 of this challenge. "Ain't Nobody Got Time For That!" 

Illustration by Aykut Aydoğdu

Flimsy Alert! ~ Feathered Goose

 "Feathered Goose" - 60 x 60 inches

This is an oldie-but-goodie retired pattern from Judy Niemeyer. I'd purchased the kit sometime between Jan 2010 and Oct 2011, and it just sat in my storage room for a whole decade! So much gorgeousness just sitting there neglected.

So, in June 2020, I decided to wash the fabrics and cut everything out so I could use this as a stitch-off pile. I never saw it as a Work-In-Progress, so it didn't add to my list of things to do. It was simply a way to avoid having the hold the loose threads behind the presser foot every time I started a string of "real" work, and to one day have a cool bonus quilt top suddenly appear from nowhere!

Yesterday was that day!

My methodology for this: I'd prep as many paper piecing units as I could, then leave them in a stack to the left of my work area. When I finished sewing a chain of units of the priority project, I'd grab the top unit from my stitch-off pile and send it through. I'd leave that one on the threads behind my presser foot when I walked away with my real work, and the machine would be ready and waiting for the next chain of work without having to hold thread ends to start it up. 

Each time I clipped off my chain of work, there'd be one stich-off piece finished, and that went on the slowly growing stack to the right of my work area. When I ran out of prepped pieces, I'd carry the whole sewn stack to the iron, press those, prep them for their next addition, and restock my stitch-off pile. 

The last few weeks, that's been a pile of joining seams to sew up rather than paper piecing units, and now: Voila! A beautiful full-fledged Flimsy that was never scheduled to be worked on!  And one more UFO advanced to this stage. 

The whole operation worked so well, I just finished cutting out and organizing the Fire Island Hosta kit that I'd bought in 2015 - and has sat on my NETY list since then. (meaning: Not Even Touched Yet) This is a larger quilt, and it barely fits in my tote box for this purpose! 

I'm off to prep the first stack of stitch-off work from this don't-even-think-about-it UFO project, and then I'll get cracking on this week's Block of the Month focus.

(BOMs Away Monday is now on Facebook)

BOMs Away Easter weekend

       

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)

Hello!  I hope you had a nice Easter

Our friends had an Easter kid born this year! So very precious. 

It was a quiet holiday for Scott and I - alone this year, but we had a good day together and nice Portal and phone chats with family.

I did actually get some BOM work sewn on Saturday. It was time to open my Alaska Rainbow box! Month 1 was to sew four of Block 1, and that went lickety-split since they came cut out and ready to go.

And since I had more sewing time available, I put together Block 1 of the next BOM: The Road Home.

A few days ago I had finished Block 12 of Affairs of the Heart during TV time:

And that's all I have for you.  :) 

Although, very, very soon I'll have a Flimsy to share!

~*~*~*~

Did you work on a BOM type project this week? 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.

~*~*~*~

I have an announcement to make regarding BOMs Away Mondays. 

Subscription prices keep going up everywhere, including the one for having linky parties on your blog. After April, BOMs Away will no longer be held in this format. Instead, it is moving to a Facebook group! 

Kate and I will continue posting linky parties here each week for one more month, but you can also already access the new location:

BOMs Away! - Quilters' block-of-the-month motivation

The group is set up as a private group, meaning only members will see your posts there, and we will be screening requests to join the group so that spammers won't get in and drive us all nuts. One great thing about this move is that we can post progress any time we want, and you won't be left hanging if we've gone on vacation and forgot to set up an auto post with a linky party for you.

We hope to see you over there. I know I would not get a tenth the amount of BOM work done that I do without having this little "association" to post to. 

You are invited to the Inlinkz link party!

Click here to enter

BOMs Away - 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 month's Sage & Sea Glass work was to turn these 20 pieces . . . 

. . . into giant flying geese, using the piano key blocks from a prior month.

I'm a little surprised I only turned one the wrong way around (and had to build a new block to fix it).

But fix it, I did.

And then I had several hours of time available while Scott was working on something, so I started in on the next month's work.

I got all the applique pieces traced, cut, and fused - so next month I can get right to work stitching those down.

Which means: The end of this BOM has come into sight. It's just there, on the horizon, waving at me. Hmm. Taunting me, actually! lol  (because there's still quite a bit of work remaining.

~*~*~*~

I have an announcement to make regarding BOMs Away Mondays. 

Subscription prices keep going up everywhere, including the one for having linky parties on your blog. After April, BOMs Away will no longer be held in this format. Instead, it is moving to a Facebook group! 

Kate and I will continue posting linky parties here each week for one more month, but you can also already access the new location:

BOMs Away! - Quilters' block-of-the-month motivation

The group is set up as a private group, meaning only members will see your posts there, and we will be screening requests to join the group so that spammers won't get in and drive us all nuts. One great thing about this move is that we can post progress any time we want, and you won't be left hanging if we've gone on vacation and forgot to set up an auto post with a linky party for you.

We hope to see you over there. I know I would not get a tenth the amount of BOM work done that I do without having this little "association" to post to. 

~*~*~*~

Did you work on a BOM type project this week? 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! ~ 2021 Temperature Quilt

My 2021 Temperature Quilt measures 57.5 x 60.5 inches

If you've had thoughts of doing a temperature quilt, there's a really terrific group for that on Facebook: Twiddletails Temperature Quilt Along. Don't let the name fool you - this is an open-play group where lots of people are doing their own thing. Tons of amazing ideas in there!

For mine, I used the 2" Perfect Circles templates to turn the edges under, glued them onto 3.5" squares, and then used a teeny tiny blanket stitch with my silk hand applique threads to stitch them down. I used paper off my newsprint end-roll as a stabilizer for that, so when each stack was stitched, I then got more TV time to pull the papers off, tie the ends, and snip out the background from under the dots.

I used the back-basting method to do turned-edge hand applique for all the words, and the 1.25 inch template to turn edges under from background cut-outs of all the lower temperatures. I had to cut fresh circles from my fabrics for everything above 71 degrees (our "hottest" night last year). We had a pretty mild summer last year - never over 95, so I didn't get to use the whisper pink or blinding white colors that I'd planned for 96-99 and 100+.  Our lowest low was -14. Nice huge range, but you can see by the fairly uniform background colors that our nights stay cool even when we get 95-degree days.  (They do that even when we get 104-degree days, but you can't see that in action for 2021.) 

And that is why we don't have the expense of an AC installation or maintenance up here in our little micro-climate! There really are only a couple of days during the summertime when you catch yourself thinking, "yeah, air conditioning would be nice right now."  But that only lasts a couple of hours before the ceiling fan and open windows clear out the heat again as the temperature nosedives into the evening.

But then the trade-off is the need to run humidifiers all winter, because the heater on top of an already-dry climate sucks the tiny bit of moisture we do have right out of the air so that we'll get 12% humidity in here without the humidifiers. So you fill their tanks, run them, clean them periodically, refill, repeat ad nauseum. I still like this climate so much better than the Florida climate we used to live in.  :)  

That makes another opening in my active BOM rotation, and I have the perfect colorful project to slip in: Alaska Rainbow!

This was my birthday purchase last August, and it's one of the extremely rare times that I've bought a pre-cut BOM kit. Check out its gorgeous box! I'll certainly be re-using this when the project is all sewn up!

I hope you are having a good week!

BOMs Away - 2021 Temperature Quilt

        

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)

I finally got the final set of temperature dots and the key panel all stitched down this weekend.

Now I can finish assembling the whole quilt top!

~*~*~*~

I have an announcement to make regarding BOMs Away Mondays. 

Subscription prices keep going up everywhere, including the one for having linky parties on your blog. After April, BOMs Away will no longer be held in this format. Instead, it is moving to a Facebook group! 

Kate and I will continue posting linky parties here each week for one more month, but you can also already access the new location:

BOMs Away! - Quilters' block-of-the-month motivation

The group is set up as a private group, meaning only members will see your posts there, and we will be screening requests to join the group so that spammers won't get in and drive us all nuts. One great thing about this move is that we can post progress any time we want, and you won't be left hanging if we've gone on vacation and forgot to set up an auto post with a linky party for you.

We hope to see you over there. I know I would not get a tenth the amount of BOM work done that I do without having this little "association" to post to. 

~*~*~*~

Did you work on a BOM type project this week? 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