BOMs Away - Goodbye to Dad, and Fiesta Mexico

 

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)

Scott's father was buried yesterday, with a very small graveside ceremony. I am too sick, still, to be able to travel, but Scott was able to go. Dad got a full Air Force Veteran's burial, even though only 6 family members were present. The honor detail carried his casket to the site, gave him a 21 Volley Salute, and presented his flag to the eldest son. I wish I could have seen it all. I know Dad loved having that. He served for over 20 years. Scott's got the memory stick with him that has pictures of Dad on it, so I'll come back and add a couple when he's back home.

Scott and his dad, August 2017 - their house was smack in the middle of the fullest observation zone for the 2017 solar eclipse.

Last week was one more week of hand-work only, and I finished Block 7 of my Fiesta Mexico project. This one is 14 inches. All of my hand applique is needle-turned, using the back-basting method:

For 3 days I've been able to do 20 minutes of piecing work at my machine after lunch. That's pretty much the limit of my energy, but hopefully when the weekend comes I'll be able to get some piecing finished for something from another BOM! I love the burst of progress on Fiesta Mexico and Octopuses Garden, but I'm ready to look at one of the others in the rotation!

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Have you been able to do any BOM type work lately? We'd love to see it.  :)

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 - Fiesta Mexico

 

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)

Hi! Still fighting Covid, so I'm getting plenty of TV time and hand stitching done.

Block 5 for my Fiesta Mexico is finished. I think it must be a corn motif. 
It's about 13" square.

Want a reminder of what this quilt looks like?
It's a Karen Kay Buckley pattern.

So far, I have these blocks appliqued:

And now I'm happily into a cute turtles block for Octopuses Garden. These long-term hand projects make me lose my mojo if I try making myself stick with only the one, so I alternate them. Works nicely at keeping the interest fresh.

If I don't have a Covid "dip" day tomorrow, I will actually try some long arming for 30 minutes after lunch. I put my partially quilted Halloween UFO quilt on the frame at the beginning of October, but rapid-advance cancer, a funeral, and Covid stole the entire month from longarming time, so it sits there untouched. I don't want to take it off again until it's finished, so I'm going to start putting in tiny bits of time each day until it is. Hopefully I'll get some of my energy back in time to do enough work to finish that quilt and finish the piecing and quilting of Marissa's graduation quilt on time for that mile marker in December.  :)

~*~*~*~

Have you been able to do any BOM type work lately? We'd love to see it.  :)

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 - Bunny Fiestas in Mexico by the Beehives are a little Nuts!

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 I got all the pieces for the standing bunnies prepped. Tbere are a lot more pieces in this photo than it appears to have!! Hours and hours here, folks. Have I said how much I hate this particular process? But I do greatly prefer a turned edge on my machine applique, so I suck it up and do it.

Next month I'll focus on getting the other components prepped so I can work out the placement on the extra-wide rabbit borders I'm doing for my "Down the Rabbit Hole." I think I'm just going to add birds, maybe a couple clouds, along with the flowers to fill in the extra space my king-sizing the project created with this round.

But I have other bits of BOM progress to report, too. At my hand sewing "station," I finished the fourth outer corner for "Fiesta Mexico" block 6! That sucker is a good square yard, so lots of applique work just for that one block. I didn't feel like trimming the triangles down and sewing them together yet, so it's all well-supported on the wall until the other blocks are appliqued.

And that left me able to whip up the first block for the new "From the Heart" BOM that I signed up for this year. Just in time, as the second one arrived a couple of days ago.

With that out of the stitching tote, I got out my scrap bins and pulled fabrics for the 4 "Classic Nutcrackers" that I had traced out onto their background a few weeks ago. I didn't have to turn to the stash "proper" very often.  :)

I actually got a wee bit of stitching done on the first one. These will be fun. They'll rotate with Fiesta Mexico and Octopus Garden for my long-term hand work. 

How about you? Did you get any BOM work done recently?

~*~*~

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.

BOMs Away Monday - Down the Rabbit Hole

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.)

Seeing all the posts on Facebook from those who have finished their Down the Rabbit Hole tops has given me the kick in the pants I needed to get over my block on it and get this quilt going again. Also, this was a January goal to achieve.

And here it is! Twist border is cut out, assembled, and attached. I'm super happy and have high hopes of putting this one on my bed in April. Lots of work between here and there, so we'll see.

My problem last August was that I couldn't figure out what the heck color I wanted to use. Not being able to envision where I was going with colors on the next borders and how they would interplay with whatever I chose here froze me. Another factor was the fact that I want to augment this to a good king size, and didn't know where I would do that.

So I spent hours yesterday deciding where in the overall quilt I'll insert the necessary inches, and then laying out different color options to figure out what to do with this twist border. After discarding my first, second, third, and fourth choices, I landed on the pinks. 

Which was great! That meant I could use some of my backing fabric to fussy cut bunnies to include here and there. It's all about the bunnies, after all.  ;D


On the side, another BOM had progress recently. The next corner for the very complex Block 6 of Fiesta Mexico was finished during TV hand stitch time, so it's up on the wall with its companions. I'll have a pretty wall behind me while I'm quliting for another 12 - 18 months. Love it!

How about you? Did you get any BOM work done recently?

~*~*~

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.

BOMs Away - Octopus Garden & Fiesta Mexico

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.)

So, in 6 days I will be an official Badass.  ;D 

Black Belt testing gets closer and closer, classes get longer and more intense, and somehow my system is still just hanging in there. The bed rest stuff along with specific and strict dietary strategies seems to be working well enough to get me through it all. And that makes me happy. I really didn't know if I'd make it this far!

We had to go through our old pictures so they could put together a class video. It's been a fun memory walk.

 Here I am at my first belt test, breaking my very first board:

Board breaking quickly became a favorite event for me, even when I was on crutches.

This was at the US Open Hanmadang when I was a Brown Senior. Being recently injured and not knowing what I could do since I had to start from a crooked, off-balance crouch instead of a full-height downstroke, I broke only one board in the Downward Power Knife Hand event. I ended up getting first place (snicker), because no other women in the 45-50 age bracket for upper color belts registered to do it. You can break your hand if you do it incorrectly, and many folks our age don't want to take that risk. But hey, without that actual break I would have just been thanked for competing.  :)

And this was at our Master's Challenge later that year when I was a Red Belt.

Check out that capture of the wood starting to break! 

(Yes, I broke all 3 inches):

 

All that down time that my body requires for the six-week testing gauntlet for Black Belt is great for my quilting hand work projects, though!

These are all needle-turn applique, using the back-basting technique.

I finished Block 3 for my Octopus Garden quilt. So many *skinny* legs for the lobsters!

These are 12" blocks:

And then I finished the next stage of Block 6 for my Fiesta Mexico quilt.

This block is like a Round Robin quilt in its own right, and is currently 22 inches square. It has one more round of substantially appliqued white corners to be added on:

Both of these quilts also have embroidery on each piece, but I'm doing that later when all the blocks are appliqued and I can keep some good consistency on the stitching.

~*~*~ 

How about you? Have you done any BOM work recently? 

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.

BOMs Away - Blueberries and Sapphires, Olé!

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.)

Kevin is sneeeaky and sent us a bonus clue for his Sapphire Mystery!

Here's the link for his latest antic.  :)  

I want to keep up with this one, so I left "Garden Friends" in the armoir and cut more of the scrap pile up to make these patches:

And while I was doing those, the In-Betweener action yielded a sheet that I could cut into 9 more Blueberry Crumb Cake blocks!

Oh! And I finished the inside portion of Block 6 for "Fiesta Mexico" this week! This is going to be a giant block. This part is already something like 14 inches square. 

Time now for the next block of "Octopus's Garden" at my evening hand-stitch station. I really love the slow-stitching work of hand applique, but it's very nice to be able to switch projects at good resting points so I have something fresh to look at for a while. :)

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What's happening on your end? Have you done any BOM work recently?

BOMs Away - Star Crazy & 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.)

I had the best personal quilting retreat all this past week up in Estes Park.  :D

Gonna have to do that every year while Scott's getting his CMEs squared away.

Besides all the piecing I finished, I got this hand-applique block stitched up for Fiesta Mexico while sitting on the porch with this view:

And back at home today, I pushed through the piecing for month 9 of Star Crazy - nine of these compound star blocks:

Did you get any BOM quilting done?

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.

:)

BOMs Away - Fiesta Mexico 3 & Seaside Town makes an appearance

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.)

I spent a good bit of time today prepping the next applique blocks for my evening stitching bag, because I finished Block 3 for Fiesta Mexico this week. 

I did take a break from the prep work to whip together the four 16-patch blocks for month 1 of the Lynette Anderson "Seaside Town" BOM - a super fast job when the shop sends you all the pieces cut to size! Got the stitchery block for this month traced out, but I'm not sure I want to use DMC floss, which is abundant in my storage closet, or buy another type of thread for that. Something not so shiny, I'm thinking, since this project has a bit of a primitive feel to it.

How has your BOM work gone lately?  :)  

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??

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Have you done any BOM work lately?

Whoopin' It Up at a Mexican Fiesta Block Party & a NETY prep

Whoop! Whoop!

I can't tell you how thrilled I am that this applique block is finally finished!! 

I absolutely love the vibrant colors and complex quilting on Kay Buckley's Fiesta Mexico, and wanted very much to work on it as a very long-term hand applique project. So I scooped it up when it made its appearance on a Block of the Month program. 

This was in April 2014. I started this block that month, placing it in my tote for evening hand work when I watch a show with Scott after dinner. It progressed super slowly since it got bumped any time a quilt needed tail-tucking or hand stitching on bindings, labels, or hanging sleeves. 

When I came back to quilting in February (post-wedding months and Lupus attack), I changed my modus operandi a little bit. I no long make evening work get bumped by quilt-finishing unless I'm super driven on a particular finish. Now I just stick with the relaxing slow-stitching of hand applique, and just about three months later, this behemoth is all stitched up! 

It is 11 x 48 inches (finished), with tons of flowers and leaves and berries. I work in the back-basting needle-turn style, which is awesome for this project. For the berries, I use those Perfect Circle templates (*love* those).

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Also, I got another of my old NETYs washed, ironed, and kitted up. [Those are my Never-Even-Touched-Yet kits and sets that are in deep storage. The number of these is mind-boggling, and I aim to get one of them kitted each month so they eventually will get cleared out.]  

Santorini collection by Lila Tueller

This would have been purchased in February 2012. I remember that I walked past the quilt done up from this pattern kit, and really liked the fabrics, including the brown that was paired with the fat quarter pack. I'd taped a note on the bag, though, that I wanted to do it up in a different pattern. 

Still feeling that way about the pattern for these fabrics, I decided I really wanted to make a brick wall quilt with the prints, but then the brown from the kit just didn't float my boat anymore. 

Pulled a few pieces from my stash, and settled on the gray batik that's under the bricks I cut. (They were also really pretty with a white "mortar," but that didn't go with my theme vision.) That's now cut as well, and everything's tucked neatly in this super cool shoebox, waiting for an open Friday Play Day to whip that top together. And the brown can join my stash for another day.

Eventually, I'll use left-overs from the FQs and some water fabric from my stash to make a bricked well on a green floral background for the back. I intend to call the quilt "Secret Garden" when it grows up one day.

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Linking up at 
Jennifer's Wed Wait Loss WIPs
Sarah's Whoop Whoop Fridays