BOMs Away - Label Time

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 love having good labels on my quilts, but I'm not so great at making them promptly. . . 

So I spent this week's BOM time catching four of them up, since I need to take Ruffled Roses over to Scott's mom tomorrow.

I like having a lot of information on my labels - quilt's name, date(s) and places(s) of working on it, name of designer if I didn't make it up myself, the person it's intended for, etc. I also really love to applique elements from the front on it, and/or doing backing or framing with scraps from the quilt's construction.

Sure, a thief could rip off the label, but they'd find that I also perma-ink my name and construction dates right onto the quilt underneath it. Plus, I document my quilts a lot, so I can always prove ownership (or fraud, if someone entered my quilt in a show as their own).

One of the labels did double duty as a patch over a couple of rips. I love the way it turned out, looking like it's in a school of fish with the quilted fish showing on the back.

This quilt was finished a good 18 months ago, must be, but I'm that lazy with label making if it's not being gifted right away. I'm super happy those rips happened on one of our family's quilts, and not a customer quilt. 

I had just bought a new power protection box for my longarm, and this quilt was on the frame when I first used it. The first time I turned it on, then turned on my longarm, the machine FREAKED out and super-blitzed a bunch of spastic stitching, which ended up breaking the needle and punching through the quilt. (Now I know I have to let the box power up a good 6-8 seconds before turning the machine on.) 

The back got the worst of it, by far. This label solves the issue of covering the messy darning stitches. On the front, I'm about to sit down and broidery perse a little 1" fishy from one of the prints used in the quilt top over the single hole on that side.

. . . And there it is - cutely mended in a way that fits right in.  :)

:)

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Did you get any BOM work finished lately?

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

TGIFF LinkUp - Finish Report - Daisies in the snow!!

Hello!  Welcome to this week's Thank Goodness It's Finished Friday hosting!

This is where you can link up your finishes that you're excited/relieved/proud about! Show us your finished quilt, or complicated quilt top, or even a full set of intricate blocks that took you forever to do!

We appreciate your including a link to this event in the post that you're sharing, and when you link up, don't forget to use the URL for your particular post page or image, not the general URL for your blog/album/IG account.  :)

**If you would like to host TGIFF at your blog, see this page for the sign-up link. (You do not need a thumbnail link-up subscription, as the blog managers can provide that for you.)


Binding was stitched yesterday for my second 2019 UFO finish: "Gems in the Daisies"

(I am linking up on Tish's UFO Busting post)

This is a fun 60x60 quilt top that I pieced in 2013, after buying all the fabrics to make the sample I'd seen in our Florida local quilt shop in 2010. I remember being enchanted by the jewel tones, that daisy print border, and the "gems" in the pineapple block piecing.

Wait! Are we really mid-spring?!

It wasn't on my Top 12 UFO list for this year, but it was the quilt that Uncle Don chose when I asked him to choose one of my tops that he'd like to have. I'm finding this to be a very effective motivator to finishing the 40-something quilt tops in my closet - just choose a relative/friend and ask them which one they would like!

Quilter's Dream 70/30 batting after one washing.

I tried out Quilter's Dream 70/30 batting for this one. Pros: full body for a thin batting, which shows the quilting a little better than a single layer of 80/20. Cons: less softness than 80/20 or cotton, doesn't crinkly quite as much if that's what you want, not as lofty as a single layer of wool, lots of poly content. It's not really 70/30. It's actually 60/40. So it was quite staticky in our dry climate, and this quilt will not breathe as well as cotton, wool, or even 80/20 quilts. I don't think I'll use it again in a functional quilt, but it would be great for a single-layer batting wall quilt or table topper.

I'm not sure why it was so difficult for me to choose a quilting scheme for this one, but I found something that played up the daisies theme and brought some good organic curviness into the very angular piecing. 

Rulers continue to become easier for me to handle. I was able to branch the curliques off the curved framing directly from the ruler mid-arc, so that I didnt' have to double-trace the main arc line to put in the curliques on a second pass. 

Some daisies in the yellow "gems", and some figure-8 fill work in the quilted arcs - first time I've been happy with it - 

And ribbon-candy stop-border work - 

Some metallic thread play in the blue and purple "gems", which sparkles *far* more in real life - 

A little bit of lacing arches at the printed "trim" in the borders- 

And some freehand e2e daisies along the flower border - 

I had some great purple batik in my stash to use for the border yesterday. Fortunately, it was all attached about 10 minutes before we lost power. I sure missed my Netflix movie session while stitching the back side down, but the storm raging around us provided a fair bit of distraction. Sometimes good, sometimes nervous-making (like when something big hit the roof, and when we heard a huge thud outside). White-out conditions made it hard to see much of anything past about 20 feet around the windows, and by 6pm, you couldn't see outside, anyway, because of the caking on the house:

So, wow!! Yeah!! Yesterday was a **day** here! I mean, can you believe all that snow we got in the photo op above?

We got more than snow. We got a full-on "snowicane." (Or, technically, Bomb Cyclone.) This passed right over us yesterday, with winds over 90mph. That snow was perfectly horizontal, and the drifts it created in our area are serious.

Having lived along the Florida coast for 20 years, I've been through 3 direct hurricane hits and 2 side-hits, so I knew a little of what to expect. It's not as super scary to hear the sounds the house makes when it happens during broad daylight instead of night time. But the cold temperature makes it more dangerous for the people who don't know to stay the heck in their houses. The power went out at brunch time, just as the heart of the storm hit, but I was completely amazed that they got it back on only 4 hours later. I was certain they wouldn't even start trying to fix it until the storm's backside would arrive, around 6-8pm. I'm sure all the people with electric-only heating in their homes were most appreciative! 

So many cars were stranded, that our region looks like a zombie movie set.

All the roads in the area were completely shut down, and we still can't get to Denver from here. I-25, 83, and 105 are all closed. Yesterday, a lot of people were stuck on the Interstate in cars with blown-out windows. 

None of our house's windows were broken, but we lost a beautiful double-trunk Ponderosa at the bottom of the property. This 4-5 story tree is down across the neighborhood road, and since it's only a tertiary road for the plows, county services won't start working on it for quite a while. At least the neighborhood has exit points from either direction.

This wind tracing image from yesterday is really cool. You can see why Interstates were completely shut down all across Colorado, Wyoming, South Dakota, Nebraska, Kansas. . . 

I kept thinking about the Children's Blizzard of 1888, when so many Plains school children died in the conditions. Thankfully, now we have much better weather forecasts and cell phones to call for help!

For most people, the work day was a total washout. For a quilter, it was a perfect storm day to snuggle under a quilt while stitching its binding.

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But how about you? Have you finished a quilt, or quilt top, or complicated set of blocks recently? We'd love to see your accomplishment!  

Link up a post or IG photo below and look around a bit to help your fellow quilters celebrate a finished quilt or stage!  :)

You are invited to the Inlinkz link party!

Click here to enter

BOMs Away Monday - Family Time

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.)

We just got home from a quick trip up to Nebraska for a family memorial for Scott's uncle.

I wish we'd taken more photos, but we were all more than a little distracted by the ice storm that made things very difficult for everybody, particularly the elder members of the family. Still, it was good to gather together. I met several of his cousins that I hadn't seen before and caught up with a few I hadn't seen for decades.

Scott's sister, niece, and grand-nieces were there with us and his parents

And I look forward, every time we go there, to reconnecting with his mother's cousin. Don is one of my heroes - he has always fought his daunting medical challenges with grace and determination, and has nothing but kindness to pour on everyone around him. 

And Scott's grand-nieces are always adorable to be around.

For at least a little quilting eye candy, it has been a week since I shifted the balance of my time to be 6 hours of quilting work to 2 hours of remodeling work per day. This is the current quilt on my frame, which is the top that my mother-in-law had chosen last year for me to quilt up for her (she got her pick out of my closet of 40-something tops).

This patter is "Ruffled Roses" by Sue Garman

And I had Don choose a top while we were visiting, so when the frame is clear I'll be loading this one to quilt up for him:

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How is your BOM work going right now?

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.

An InLinkz Link-up

NewFO Report for May - It's a Hoot - Daisy, Daisy - fabric for Mother's Day

I really have been getting bits of sewing in beyond the weekly BOM time. We've just been busy with gorgeous weather activities, college kids home again, visitors, and friends' children's graduations - so my blogging time has been shoved to the back burners. But I wanted to get my monthly NewFO report up, especially since that sewing has thoroughly enchanted me this month.  

First of all, when May 1 rolled around and I was supposed to put April's away in the stage it was at, I just couldn't. I loved it too much and kept feeling the pull to finish it to flimsy stage. And Barbara was a superb enabler.  ;D

So - my Momo "It's a Hoot" layer cake and yardage became this gorgeous quilt top using  Amber Johnson of A Little Bit Biased's Mod Medallions pattern.  I already have some ideas of how I want to quilt it, but that stage is definitely tabled until I accomplish some priority finishes.

I really liked how this pattern worked with the layer cake. The medallions are just a wee bit smaller than the pre-cuts, so you have a little wiggle room to fussy-cut things like this one when they're not centered on the cake layer:

Once I finished that top, it was time to pull a new kit from storage for May's NewFO. (An easy diversion from the priority quilting finish to justify since my Sapphire was in shop for annual maintenance and the project helps with lowering the UFO/NETY load.)

This is another one that enchanted me too much to get to the blocks-made stage and then put away again, so "Daisy, Daisy" is also a complete flimsy. Both are carefully folded and in clip hangers, adding more beauty to my "Waiting-to-be-quilted" closet. I'm glad I pushed through with it, as it thoroughly charmed my husband, too.  :D

My brain has been spinning about next month's NewFO, which will create something from one of the three pieces of quilting fabrics that my 19yo gave me for Mother's Day.  I got 2 yards of blue with a nice large-scale butterfly/floral print, 2 yards of funny owls, and a yard of small-scale border print. When your daughter does that for you on a shopping-diet year, how can you not ignore the storage closet of untouched kits and do something brand new?   But I'm being good. I'm only going to pull from stash to coordinate in whatever design I come up with for the really fun Opal Owls piece. Come back in 2 or 3 weeks to see that flimsy.  ;D