BOMs Away - A side trip into the jungle for a ~ FINISH ~ report!

         

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 didn't do any BOM work this week. (again)   I wanted to finish up the baby photo op quilt that Devon asked me to make. 

She wanted a jungle theme to match her nursery, and green instead of white background. It so happened that I had the perfect fabric in my stash for that.  

It was super gratifying to find every single thing I needed for this in my stash and "scrap" bins. I even pulled those balloon colors from my Temperature Quilt stack!

Since this is not a quilt for normal kiddo use, I took the opportunity to use the bit of high-puff poly batting that has been lurking forever in my batting cupboard. I hate poly in quilts - it makes me sweat like crazy, even when it's thin and the temperature's very cold. Plus, it's not good to use it in baby/children's quilts, as it melts onto their skin in fire situations (and Dad is a firefighter!).  But this quilt is only going to be laid on once a month for a photo op.

I did use pin-basting quite a lot to control that high puff!

I was quite amazed that I didn't have a (big enough) green on hand that I liked for the backing. I mean, I have a huge bin of green yardage in my stash! The only one that was the right shade was strongly Christmas, so that was a no-go. I do have four large bins of fabric given to me last month by a person who knew she would not be quilting anymore. It includes five pieces of cotton chenille fabrics, and one of those was a pine green that played superbly with this. So I thought, what the heck? Let's see what happens if we use this.

It quilted just fine. I wondered if it would give me tensioning fits, but it didn't! I was able to whip along at my regular "scribble" speed to put all that leafy/curls fill. 

The chenille did make the machine's high-speed operation sound subtlely different - more thrumming-ish. Surprisingly, my husband even noticed that when he passed my workroom one time! 

It also makes the finished quilt, with that medium-dense fill and poly batting, feel like a bath mat! So I wouldn't use something like this on a quilt meant for bed use or snuggling. Although. . . it's nice and heavy feeling, and would work very nicely as a weighted quilt for a sensory person who likes those! (I would use cotton batting, though, so it flows better.)

I just cut single-fold binding strips from the backing overage, same as I would with minky on the binding. Cutting it 1-3/8 inch wide worked perfectly, and it wasn't hard to stitch the back side down. 

I made the changeable numbers by fusing black fabric onto black 80/20 batting. 

I printed out a font I liked in the size I wanted, glue-sticked the numbers onto the top of the fabric, and cut out around them (then popped off the paper). Worked like a charm. The intention is that the batting will grip the fabric in the sign so the numbers don't shift around for the photo, like a felt board. Of course, when Baby's moving around a lot later on, that could be tricky to capture. heh!  

Now we just need a baby! Any day now - perhaps even any hour!!!

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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 - a Wedding and a Block

 

  

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.)

Look what happened this weekend!

We're so thrilled with our newest family member, Cory. 

His vows to our daughter totally made me cry. 

And that's why BOMs Away is late this week.

I did finish the applique stitching for the first Month 4 block of Water Reflections:

So that's *something* quilty to share today. Heh!

I'll try to get their wedding quilt written up for Friday this week.

~*~*~

How about you? Has any BOM type work been happening there?

Sure would love to see!

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

BOM's Away - Wedding Birds

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.

So, here we are: Finally posting the link-up again! As my friends know, I've been out with important family events, and my quilting (as well as hosting for much of the time) had to be dropped for a good 3 or 4 weeks. 

Two weeks ago, Devon and I flew down to San Diego to attend Kyle's Family Day and Graduation from the U.S. Marine Corps Recruit Depot. More pictures to come later, but this is my favorite shot:

We flew back home Friday night, and then had their wedding last Sunday here at the house - another favorite shot from that day that I hadn't posted yet:

This past week I've had to do some activities, such as returning the 80 borrowed chairs. I needed to put those up in their storage loft myself since the staff of the facility was crazy-busy preparing for the annual U.S. Open Taekwondo Hanmadang which they were hosting this past Thursday - Saturday. I put in a token participation at said Hanmadang - I dearly love breaking the boards for some reason, so I'd signed up for the creative board breaking event. It's a fun one where you tell people how to hold boards for you, and you move around using whatever strikes or kicks you want to break them. This year we were limited to 6. I'd intended to only do 2 since I haven't been to class for 3 weeks, nor practiced ANY routines for the event. One of the instructors talked me into throwing in 4 more simple moves, so I did. I also improvised with a simplification of a suggestion one master gave to a blackbelt I know for his routine next year (a MAJOR simplification - hah!) And all of that paid off so that I somehow squeaked into the gold for my division! 

Otherwise, I did a LOT of sleeping and started back in with a little bit of FMQ work on Kyle's Marines quilt and some hand stitching on their wedding quilt. You haven't seen anything of that wedding quilt yet. It's not finished. Not by a long shot. I'd wanted to have the top completed for the wedding, but Devon really wanted to be surprised on the day. Badly enough, that she preferred to get the surprise with the top not yet completed than to allow me to finish that part by working on it when she wasn't away at work or school.

The center is a traditional Double Wedding Ring, in a 4x5 configuration. That's surrounded by a wide blue border, which has wedding ribbons appliqued on. It also has pairs of swallows (in a gray that's not really that stark). Those birds are highly important to the couple for their symbolism of versatility in the face of difficult times, faithfulness, and always returning home. There will be 12 pairs altogether - 8 united pairs are on either side of the ribbon hearts centered on each quilt side, and 4 pairs are flying independently in each corner. That's representative of the times they'll be apart from each other during his military career. 

That's my only real quilt work this week - no Block of the Month work yet. I thought I'd still share this tidbit with you for today's link-up.

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How about you guys? Did you get any work done on your BOMs? I'm looking forward to cruising back through the link-ups in weeks when I didn't have time to do that. I really like seeing how you're coming along - it inspires me to keep plugging away on mine.  :D

BOMs Away Monday - Bridal Showe

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.

 I am so grateful for Blog-World quilting friends!  :D  Thank you so much to the couple of you who sent me notes this week to check in on me. I apologize for missing the link-up last week.

I have Lupus, so my energy can get zapped pretty seriously during stressful or happily-chaotic times, and right now is certainly one of those. Also, I haven't been able to touch a single quilting "thing" for a full two weeks now, due to pressing wedding matters. Today is going to have a wee bit of recovery time in that regard with some hand work on the wedding quilt, and whole lot of time in bed to stave off a full-blown Lupus flare.

The weekly link-up is down below, but first, here are a couple of bridal shower pics for some visual interest. ;D

Saturday we had a shower for Devon. Once folks started arriving, I didn't have time to take pics (glad young friend, Erika, did for me! Can't wait to get those)!

It was cool to have a slideshow of pics of Devon & Kyle playing on the big-screen TV during the party. People loved it, and I'm glad young folks could figure out how to do that, because I sure couldn't! lol

These Tuxedo Oreos and Engagement Ring Donuts were a hit.

And we have a lot of full-family friends, so this is the direction we wanted to take with the party games, rather than a bachelorette-style approach. (Although our oldest daughter's boyfriend asked if I was going to have strippers, and I said, "Oh, yes! That would be Scott [my husband], you, and Joe - stripping the peeling paint off the deck outside while we're having the party. . . "   hah~!)  The best game was a rendition of Pin-the-Veil-on-the-Bride, and was as much fun for the older crowd to watch as it was for the younger people to play!  

I used a dress from a shower decorations pack that's about 14 inches tall for the base. Then I printed Devon's face, some shoes and earrings, a bouquet, etc., and made a little veil from party cellophane and a bit of lace. Laminated the pieces and looped tape onto the backs for the girls to stick up there. If you need more pieces, print out some arms, legs, more jewelery, hair decorations, etc.  Come to think of it - what a fun game for little girls' birthday party, even. . . Build The Birthday-Girl. . . 

So, anyway - back to our quilters' world interests. . . 

Did any of you get some BOM work done in the last couple of weeks?  

BOMs Away - and What a Bombshell! :)

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, my goodness! Have I got some news - and this is about the only place I can share it yet.

Remember this favorite shot of mine from Hanmadang last month?  Well, these two are officially engaged now! 

 

 

They're quite young, but they're both keepers, so I'm thinking they've got as good a shot at it as many others who are five years older. I know that I, for one, am thrilled with the thought of this young man joining our family. They've got a good plan in place, and since they're not rushing for a wedding in two months, we've got time to put together a really nice deal for perfect timing to include his father, who's on long-term remote assignment in Korea (Air Force).  And time to make a wedding quilt!!! 

 

Speaking of quilting, this is for Kate, who's antsy to see my double wedding ring. It's not BOM work, but it's my never-ending 25th anniversary quilt for Scott and I.

 

 

 

 

I expect there's still about 65 more hours of detail quilting to be done. Somehow, I am *going* to have this finished for our bed in late August!

 

 

 

 

And here's the BOM work I did today. The buttons I ordered last week for the rest of Kelly's quilt haven't arrived yet, so I bumped "Ruffled Roses" up a week. 
Four baskets and three more swag units:

 

 

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What BOM work have you squared away lately?  :D
 

Finish Report! ~~ Devon's Earth Monkeys

I *love* how this turned out!  

Finished stitching the binding on I-80 last Friday, just west of North Platte, as we drove to St. Louis to move Heather back for her senior year of college. That corn smelled SO TERRIFIC! I was fairly tempted to sneak some, but I didn't want to rob some unknown farmer. So we were good.  ;D

This is Devon's quilt top - her first, and very possibly her only. . . Oh, look! I have a photo of her on the computer from about that time, probably a year or so later.

And here she is last summer. She's gone short and dark-haired since then for fun - here's her current Facebook profile pic. I love this woman - she makes me smile!

So. . . back to her quilt. Didn't she do a delightful job of color placement? The pattern had stars that were all the same, but she wanted all 3 colors and decided herself how to do that. She was . . . 13?14 at the time. 

Way back in the summer of 2009, I decided I wanted the girls to have something to show for their summer, so I had them each piece a quilt top. Being inexperienced in teaching new quilters, I didn't know enough to limit their choices to very simple designs. This one wasn't too far of a stretch for Dev in itself, but what I *did* realize - but lost the battle in - was that she was not going to have fun at all working with the silk jacquards she insisted on buying for her quilt. Between her natural complete lack of patience and the frustrating job of working with that silk on her first project, it wouldn't surprise me if Devon never puts a quilt together again.

But aren't those silks so radiant?!  Beautiful. They made the most gorgeous quilt. She's had to wait a log time for this to get quilted, but back in 2009/10, I couldn't have done this justice. Backs are so fun to look at:

There were some minor issues with puffiness in the center - an on-point design isn't the best choice for a first quilt - so I chose dense meanders on the black spinners and dense bamboo leaves for the tan backgrounds. We wanted the silk stars to have great dimension, so I went with wool batting and did more open quilting on those. Worked like a charm for both objectives. Stars have perfect faux-trapunto dimension, and all the puffy spots successfully compressed without warping. I'm impressed with the wool's feel under the density of quilting - it's not super stiff.  :)

If you remember, I had trouble figuring out what to do for quilting the border area. The quilt seemed to hold a subtle Asian trait, so I ended up surfing Japanese motifs. The fans inside the black stop border and the pampas clamshells outside turned out to be the perfect pairing, don't you think? 

These little flowers kept popping up in sashiko surf sessions, so I used them in the corners where there was more meandering than I cared for. Love them there. (Too bad the photo flipped upside down. . .)

The monkeys seriously amuse me. This guy below is just on top of the world now that the quilt is finished, washed, and blocked.  :D

And this fella cares not a whit that he's got to carry the whole world. . . 

And check out this fun duo!

Haha!  I just realized - she can have monkeys jumping on her bed. . . 

(I think I need some sleep)

I'll be linking up at some finish parties, so grab a banana and a drink and have a great break surfing through the celebrations.  :D

~*~*~*~

Linking up at

TGIFF hosted by Pippa this week

Can I get a Whoop! Whoop!

Link-a-Finish Friday

WIPs - 10 July - Earth Monkeys, Dragons, and a binding

Been a while since I did a WIP post - here are the current priorities:


FMQ station - 

Started in on Devon's Earth Monkeys quilt. This is the UFO of the month, and has been waiting to be quilted for a shamefully long time! When the girls got out of school in 2009, I didn't want them to blow away an entire summer with nothing to show for it. At 17, 15, and 11, they were old enough to make their first quilts. This was Devon's. Truthfully, though, until this year I wouldn't have been comfortable doing the quilting - either with the FMQ or with the issues of the silks in the spinners and the tad extra fullness of the on-point center sewn by a 15yo. So the wait is all good in the end!

That's my plan for the central part. It's meant to flatten down the fullness around the spinners so they'll each stand out. I'd considered trying out some trapunto on them, but I worried that the basting lines would mar the jacquard fabric. So I'm letting quilting density and wool batting do a sort of faux trapunto - hopefully that's what'll happen.  ;D The leaves around the spinners coordinate with the bamboo leaves in the silk weaves. Still have no idea what I'll do in the borders. Scratching my head some more on that.


Piecing Station - 

Heather's had full use of that machine for a good month. She's been working hard doing the stitching and threadpainting on her dragons, which she can only do on college breaks. Just one last dragon to do and she'll be ready to start the quilting process. This will be the second quilt top she's made, and the first to go beyond the piecing stage. It's also entirely designed and drawn out by her! She's going to trapunto each of the dragons. This whole project fascinates me. :D


Hand Work Station - 

Stitching down the binding on Run, Kitty, Run. Can't wait for this finish so I can send it to its person! This binding is taking much longer than usual both because it's harder to stitch on the minky, and - well, you can see for yourself. Lots of joins to invisibly stitch in addition to the corners. Why do I do such things to myself?? ha!

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Linking up at

Lee's WIP

Esther's WOW

TGIFF Flimsy Alert! - Quiet Rebellion on the Pond

One last UFO significantly advanced on its way to being completely shot down! 

"Quiet Rebellion on the Pond" is now a full-fledged flimsy.

All those geese tried mighty hard to fly away!

I know *exactly* how I want to quilt this, but I don't have the capacity at the moment. Hopefully I can get it on a longarmer's wait list soon.  :)

Considering we had to sell a home and then moved across the country, I'm feeling really great about how many large-quilt projects were brought to flimsy stage before my semester started up.

Tomorrow just after 11am, this flimsy's photo op site will be the northern boundary of my neighborhood!! 

And today, Scott and I have been married for 23 years!!!!! We didn't even realize it is our anniversary until we were halfway to the interstate to take Devon's stuff back up to school (90 minutes away). We high-5'd each other across the truck, figuring a new home was a most excellent anniversary gift!

So Devi is now happily ensconced in Buckingham Palace . . .  

er . . . Hall.

With this beauty right outside her building.

And doing exciting things already, like driving a ZAMBONI!  How cool is that?! (She's working at the university's ice rink this year.)

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Check out what the others are whooping it up about at Whoop! Whoop!, Richard and Tanya's place, and TGIFF.