Another Flimsy Alert!

I'm so excited to finally - finally! - be able to post for TGIFF and Whoop Whoop!

The dust has settled, our Florida home is entering a contract today, and we're happily ensconced in a really pretty apartment complex while we finish one last homes-viewing round before starting our own purchase procedure for a Colorado home, hopefully putting an offer in this evening (exciting!).

I'm in love with the way Colorado Springs nestles against the mountains
with Pike's Peak in the background. That snowcap is gone right now,
having been first muddied and then melted during the nasty fires.

Last Friday I finished my Glacier Star quilt top, but couldn't post for TGIFF because we didn't get photos until Saturday. What a fantastic shot we got, though! Garden of the Gods is a spectacular place to go, and was a very popular place to shoot a quilt. (I wrote about that two posts ago.)  This is a Judy Niemeyer pattern, and I used a fabric kit from Quilting by the Bay in Panama City, FL.

If that isn't fun enough, this morning I got the corners mitered and put in the last stitch on my Coral Encounter. I'm in love.  :)

Didn't we luck out with our Google-based apartment search?
That's a square quilt - wind just wouldn't cooperate!

This quilt is made with the Judy Niemeyer Drunkard's Path paper piecing pattern, but I put the colors together myself to reflect the impression it gave me of a patch of brain coral underwater. It turned out gorgeous, and I plan to have a lot of fun with the quilting once we're into a house and I have real sewing space again.  (not to mention my batting, which is all in a box deeeeeep inside storage)

BOMs Away - Glacier Star visits Garden of the Gods

Welcome to my Link-Up for BOMs Away Mondays!

(We'd love to see the BOM you're working on lately.)

Woohoo!  "Glacier Star" is OFF the BOM list! I got this strikingly gorgeous Judy Niemeyer quilt top finished up, and since it's the first flimsy completed here in Colorado, we thought it deserved a really terrific photo-op celebration. Especially since yesterday started out so gorgeous! 

Off we trekked to Garden of the Gods. Let me tell you, this is one of the most beautiful little pockets of geographic amazingness, and it's so accessible - and perfectly FREE! 

The really fun part was the reception the quilt got. I'd talked myself into just doing my thing and not minding one bit if anyone thought it was weird for somebody to be holding up a quilt in a public park (gorgeous Saturday weather = lots of folks out there). I needn't have worried - far from getting odd looks, we actually got at least six requests from random park-goers to please wait long enough for them to get a shot, too!  lol!!

First full-family shot we've been able to get for a long time:

Scott saves Marissa from being crushed!

Sisters have a new clubhouse?

Heather, Devon, and Mariss with the Three Graces and Cathedral Spires formations in the background.

I think this was the Tower of Babel formation behind me and Marissa, but I might be turned around:

 My silly ape man! 

In the midst of all these gorgeous red formations, you have a striking white mount:

The Kissing Camels are a favorite with everyone:

And, look! We found Manfred (from the Ice Age movies):

I'm thrilled with the quilt, bolstered by its public reception, and antsy to get more of my BOMs and UFOs out of the storage unit. Scott says he knows right where those boxes are, too - 18 feet back from the front, behind floor-to-ceiling packed-in obstacles.  :P    Forget that!  I'll just have to be happy with the couple of projects that made it here to the apartment for the next 2 or 3 months!


I'll never run out of Dear Jane work while we're waiting to get a house. A whole slew of Babies finished up this week. Scott loves the F-16 impression they make:

But these two snuck in early this morning for a "Santa" impression, having missed yesterday's "flight" photo op:

That's 10 altogether! A whole month's worth. I'm so excited to have half the catching-up finished now.  We'll see if I can get the other 30 finished before the August fabric shipment!

~*~*~*~

Have you made progress on any of your BOMs or interval projects? Link up here to show it off! :D    

BOMs Away - Subwoofer Thunder

Welcome to my Link-Up for BOMs Away Mondays!

(We'd love to see the BOM you're working on lately.)

When you move to the mountainside after you've been a Flatlander for decades, thunder is a real treat! Colorado Springs gets the most awesome sub-woofer effect off those mountains.  :D  

(And when there's plenty of rain, like today, you can just enjoy
the show instead of worrying about fresh outbreaks of fire.)

Look!! I got some non-Dear jane BOM work done this week! All my arc pieces (24) are set in now. The amazing thing is that I didn't get a single tuck on any of the curves. Judy's glue-stick method really helped. 

But I did also work hard on catching up my Baby Janes. 5 finished for a total of 80, bringing me through the March fabric set arrival. I've sewn together 1601 pieces so far for this quilt!

Koko decided to run Quality Control - 

hmm. . . "There's a wobble in this one!"  

Sorry, Koko - I'm not too worried about it.  ;D

~*~*~*~

Have you made progress on any of your BOMs or interval projects? Link up here to show it off! :D    

BOMs Away Monday 17 - Dear Jane: Can we get rid of the funk, already?!

Welcome to my Link-Up for BOMs Away Mondays! 

(We'd love to see the BOM you're working on lately.)

I've almost pulled out of my new-empty-nest funk. I haven't managed to get my entire routine up and running, so I'm still not accomplishing more than the week's schoolwork required studies (good thing to have those!) and some tiny smatterings of quilt work. In a couple of days I'll share my experience so far with prep work for Jacquie deJonge class that I have at the end of the month.



The only sewing that's happened is some BOM work and a couple of compassion blocks:


First, I finished 2 from my sidebar list for August to finish half of the list for the month - better than I expected to see.


On Glacier Star, I took the pile of these:

And made a bunch of these (Pretty!):

On Selvages, I did the next-to-the-last month design, two of these. Didn't care a whit that the points don't match up around the center - too blue to fix that, it's staying:

Then I finished the Baby Janes from the August allotment. Now, I broke my rule on this one and started a new project that wasn't "allowed" yet. 

I needed something brand new and fresh to work on to distract myself from my new empty nest.  

Dear Jane seemed like a great project for that -

something that I could be friends with for a couple years and work on in spurts here and there when I'm feeling particularly blue or lonely.

And to fit with the pick-me-up function, I'm doing her in bright rainbows on Bella white along with the Twiddletails crowd.






(Also fixed the mis-placed piece in this older one).










I made two compassion blocks this week. I just need to buy a fine-tip permanent marker to sign them before sending them out across the oceans to Australia. 

Hopefully they will help Amy and Anabelle feel a tiny bit better in the wake of their terrible loss.


Huh.  I got a lot more sewing done this week than I thought!  And that makes me smile.  

~*~*~*~

What interval project have you got going? Weeklies are welcome along with regular projects that you’ve broken into monthly units, and –of course- true BOMs.   Share your eye candy and show off your progress since the last time you linked up! There are some wonderful monthly and weekly projects going on out there. You guys amaze me. :D

BOMs AWAY Monday 11

Welcome to my Link-Up for BOMs Away Mondays! 

(We'd love to see the BOM you're working on lately.)

Take a bunch of paper pieces off 

to get a bunch of these

And make a bunch of these for your July work on Glacier Star.  ;D

~*~*~*~*~

What interval project have you got going? Weeklies are welcome along with regular projects that you’ve broken into monthly units, and –of course- true BOMs.   Share your eye candy and show off your progress since the last time you linked up! There are some wonderful monthly and weekly projects going on out there. You guys amaze me. :D

BOM's AWAY Monday #8

Welcome to my Link-Up for BOMs Away Mondays! 

(We'd love to see the BOM you're working on lately.)

Wow. June’s portion of Glacier Star (which is really a Technique of the Month, not a true BOM) sure was huge~!  But I prevailed! My insane list of BOMs is ALL CAUGHT UP TO DATE! First time since February.  :D

It's a good thing two of those will fall off the list soon - with going back to work on my master's in fall, I'll just fall behind again. 

24 arcs and 48 arches.  664 pieces. That means 48 glues followed by 616 folds-cuts-pins-stitches-pressings. (Thank goodness for cutting templates and blades that will cleave through 8 layers at once.) Too much work for one month of BOM time. I put these away Thursday night, not wanting to touch another monthly project for eight years!  Eh, but I'll be good to go on Tuesday with a simple one again.

When sewing this many paper pieces, I highly recommend working factory-style to cut down on the time involved. Don’t do all the prep work for each piece as you come to it. Instead, do each stage for all of them, then go to the next stage. For example, pop all the overhanging seam lines. Then do all the fold-and-cuts (leave them folded as you stack them). 

Then pin the next piece to all of them. Then go to the machine and chain stitch.  :D  It does make the process move more quickly and cuts back on mistakes. Just pay attention as you start each new stage to make sure you’re oriented correctly.  (No clue what I’m talking about? Here’s my old tutorial for paper foundation piecing: Paper Foundation Piecing Tute.)

I just love the transformation when you trim the edges off.

And now my BOM list on the side bar is all cleared of check marks, waiting for my footprints for July's work each week. . .  ::sigh::

~*~*~*~*~*~

So – what interval project have you got going? Weeklies are welcome along with regular projects that you’ve broken into monthly units, and –of course- true BOMs.   Share your eye candy and show off your progress since the last time you linked up! There are some wonderful monthly and weekly projects going on out there. You guys amaze me. :D