Flimsy Alert! ~ "Starry Eyed Over Bonnie's Grand Illusion"

Woohoo!  I finished my quilt top Tuesday night, but a snowstorm kept me from getting photos until now. 

I was so excited to participate in Bonnie Hunter's mystery this winter after watching 5 others roll by without me! With so much on my backlist, I did limit myself strictly to stash-only, and it happened that I had all the colors in her scheme.

So I happily followed along, knowing that I would do most of the work AFTER the holidays instead of with the clue-reveal pace. And now I have my top finished!

You can see that I changed things up. I did all the patches according to Bonnie's plan, but the values of the greens I went with for the checkerboards weren't so great with her assembly.

Bonnie's Grand Illusion quilt, and many peoples' who have finished her design as it is, just shimmers - I totally see the "Illusion" part of the name. It's like a mirage. And I really like that.

But my yellow was not perky enough to stand against the strong emerald/Christmas greens I used. Instead of shimmering, when I laid a large section of Bonnie's design out on the floor, it laughed maniacally at me - like Heath Ledger doing the Joker! Seriously. So I set aside the green checker blocks, which will look AWESOME in either a March green-and-white quilt or put together with white and red for a Christmas quilt. That's for some other time, though.

So I dusted off my EQ program and worked up a design to use all my other Grand Illusion pieces. I decided I wanted to pull green back in somehow since it's an integral part of the first Bonnie mystery I've done. I went through my stash again and found better greens. But I didn't have the heart to work that whole Clue 3 again, nor do I have a good variety of that kind of green to make the scrappy look up that the rest of my quilt has. That's OK. I rather like the idea that popped into my head to morph this into a derivation of the mystery.

This is 93" x 93" and used all my non-Clue3 patches. The star construction is rearranged as well as the overall design, because I sewed the first couple together WRONG, and then decided to just keep them that way. 

I chose my quilt's name to reflect the fun of watching literally thousands of people around the world eagerly anticipate each clue, passing time excitedly chatting with each other, wondering what and when and how. . . sharing ideas on different ways to attack each clue. It was great fun, and we were all starry-eyed together for several weeks. And I'm thrilled with how a bunch of scraps and left-over yardage and orphaned fabrics in my stash all came together so wonderfully in this quilt top!

Thank you, Bonnie!!

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Linking up at:

Bonnie's Grand Illusion Link-Up

Can I get a Whoop! Whoop!

Link-a-Finish Friday

TGIFF is at From Bolt to Beauty this week
 (main site here)

BOMs Away - Garden Friends, Grand Illusion, & a Visitor

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.

For Third-Sunday I pulled out "Garden Friends" and pieced the last two of the central blocks. I also fused all their applique pieces on:

 And I just pressed the last seam for the center of my Grand Illusion! Give me a couple of days to get all the borders on, and I'll share what I've done with that.

But I had a really great visitor for a good half of the day. This young fellow is the sweetest cat in the world! Clearly not a stray, we took him in while the kids canvassed the neighborhood to see where he was missing from. He's so sweet, though, I think every single person in the family would have been happy to adopt him if necessary. And as you can see, he fit right in with my quilting space, happily laying on various projects and lounging on the desk to watch me work. He even climbed onto my belly when I kicked my feet up to pick out a wayward seam and snoozed for a while. Too bad his human was joyful that he was found!

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Have you worked on any of your BOMs lately?

BOMs Away - Ruffled Roses & Grand Illusion

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.

Woohoo!!!!  

Today Navarre helped me lay out all the piano key swag blocks that I've made over the months for the final piecing of Ruffled Roses.

He was quite helpful!

And after a lot of time working up the floater borders and tiptoeing on eggshells with the iron (felt like it, anyway, working with those pressed-open piano keys!), 

the final round IS ON!

Now all that's left to do is hand stitching the last of the "berries" onto the floater border. And I've already got those made.  :D

Oh - and during the week I finished all the pieces for Grand Illusion. Here's the whole set of 2's:

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Have you worked on your BOMs lately?

BOMs Away - Kelly's Strolling & Grand Illusion

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 got a little quilting in on Kelly's "Strolling the Block" for this week's BOM work. I just did the maroon stop border and 3 of the sashings. This is the first time I've done any orange peel work, and it shows. They'll get better - that's why I started in a weird place.  :)

Also, during the week I put in a little time on my Grand Illusion mystery. I got all the pinks attached for Clue 2, then was sick of those for the week, so I sewed all the Clue 3 green strips into pairings with the blacks and whites. Hopefully next week I'll get all the black triangles attached and the units finished for Clue 2.

And just for some eye candy. :D  Isabeau has been following me all around the past couple of days, even curling up in the second sink while I wash my face. She's just so adorable with her ultra-long winter coat!

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Have you started back into your normal routines yet now that we're a few days into the new year? Have you done any work on your BOMs?

BOMs Away - Birthdays and Lights and Mysteries!

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.

Hey! I hope you're enjoying your holiday time. I actually touched my quilting "stuff" today for the first time since the 23rd. Not for super long, but I did get some things done. 

I did not work on my 4th-Sunday BOM, Wind in the Whiskers, because that requires a big fabric pull-out for several hours, and the table I do that at was needed for this today:

Birthday fun! I had a blast indulging Kyle's Pokemon penchant with a fabulous Pikachu cake made by one of my Taekwondo friends. 

So my normal BOM got ditched for birthday fun.

But I did manage to put together this week's Clue 5 work for the Bonnie Hunter Grand Illusion Mystery. I even did 1/3 of the work for last week's Clue 4, and paired up all those pink and blue HSTs with the yellow squares. 

(Linking this up at Bonnie's Mystery Monday Link-up)

By the way - Paul at the "Outnumbered Quilter" blog is putting together a really cool interactive map for Bonnie showing where people are working on the mystery. Looks like this so far. It's zoomable just like Mapquest stuff - very fun.

 If you're working on this mystery, you should add a tack in your city! You can include your name or go anonymous. Either way, just put your city/state(province), not your personal address. Here's the link for that and you click on the "Additions" tab in the upper left area to add a tack: 

"Locations of Quilters Doing GIMQ"

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And that work is all I did for the day, because then we went on a little road trip for some family time doing this:

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How are things at your place? Have you snuck in some sanity time to put a block together, or maybe start assembling a BOM top that you've worked on all year? Or perhaps it's just too crazy a time to do sewing and you're enjoying the holiday and your family?  :D

Graduated! ~ Grand Illusion ~ Fiesta Mexico

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.

Did you see that I graduated?  heh! Most of our family went over to Nebraska for the ceremony so I could wear that fancy hood I earned. Plus, it was a perfect excuse to go visit Scott's folks for a few nights, who live 45 minutes away from the university.

Three other cohorts attended the ceremony. The other 15 lived too far away.

Dr. Biggs is always resplendent in his mustache! He was a good thesis advisor. I didn't even think about bringing my Phi Alpha Theta cords! Silly me. . . 

My family had fun putting up their "Lopers" - the university's mascot is the antelope.

You saw mine a couple days ago. Might as well flash it again.  ;D

The only bummer is that Heather and Kyle weren't on the trip because of work obligations. 

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We got back last night, and I was too tired to do the Garden Friends BOM work that would have been slated for this week.

I did look at the Clue 4 of Bonnie Hunter's 2014 Mystery Quilt this morning, and cut those pieces out. I sewed the HST's via my favorite method for scads at a time (although I cut the papers into smaller sections to maximize scrappiness).

I only put together 1 of each orientation for this week's patches,

And now Clue 4 is stacked on top of Clue 3 and Clue 2. Real work on those is waiting for my FMQ work on my 2 Christmas quilts to get finished. (They're safe like this for a couple more weeks, because they live in a part of the house where no pets go and there are no young kids who would be tempted to check things out!)

Clue 1 was finished the first week, and their tray actually serves to mask something that has to stay hidden.

(Linking this up at Bonnie's Mystery Monday Link-up)

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Been doing last bits of decorating with family, and now I plan to enjoy the rest of my Sunday with some slow stitching while we all watch the second Hobbit DVD in prep to go see the final release in the theater in a couple of days. 

I'll be working on my Fiesta Mexico block. I pushed the stemwork along a bit more on the car ride home yesterday and back-basted some pieces of color on. 

I love how it transforms from this messy stage to a clean, gorgeous stage when the applique is done! This far edge is finished until I trim up the block after all the other stitching is in place.

(Linking this up at Slow Sunday Stitching and Hexie Weekend) 

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How are things at your place? With Christmas getting closer, have you done any BOM work lately? Maybe you've snuck in some sanity time to put a block together, or maybe you've started assembling one you've worked on all year? Or maybe it's just too crazy a time to do sewing and you're enjoying the holiday and your family?  :D

BOMs Away - another border for Ruffled Roses! & Clue 3

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.

Woohoo!  Getting there with my Ruffled Roses!  :D 

It snowed all day long today, which made for a perfect lazy sewing day. I got the basket borders trimmed up (an exacting, time consuming job), and the math done for the blue floater border. Then I got all the baskets attached!

I need to make 8 more lavendar berries to put on the bottom branches of the cornerstone applique where they kiss the seams with the basket borders. 

I also put together the final trio of piano-key swag border blocks - which means next month I can start the Very Last Part.  :D

I'm glad I made the decision to take the time to do this quilt's applique by hand. It's really nice this way, and I don't regret the extra time it took one single bit.

  I just looked back, and I began work on this BOM as an on-again, off-again applique project in my travel tote back in the middle of 2011. It got an official one-Sunday-per-month slot on the BOM rotation January 13, 2013. So, apparently it took a year and a half to applique that center medallion when the only stitching time I really did on it was while waiting at appointments, etc. And it will have taken just over 2 years to piece it when the only sewing time has been however long I've worked with it on 2nd-Sundays, and applique work has happened a couple times a week during evening TV time with my Honey if I haven't had bindings, labels, or hanging sleeves to work up. It's never held the priority spot for attention, and yet, soon I will have an amazing quilt top at full flimsy status.  :D

(Linking this up at Slow Sunday Stitching and Hexie Weekend) 

. . .

And! I got all my strips cut out for Clue 3 of Bonnie Hunter's 2014 Mystery Quilt: Grand Illusion. (That one green just refuses to photograph in correct color. That really intrigues me!)

As per my intention leading into Christmas, I only sewed one set of strata and put together a unit so I make sure to do everything properly when this gets a priority piecing spot after Christmas.

Linking this up at Bonnie's Mystery Monday Link-up

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How are things at your place? With Christmas getting closer, have you done any BOM work lately? Maybe you've snuck in some sanity time to put a block together, or maybe you've started assembling one you've worked on all year? Or maybe it's just too crazy a time to do sewing and you're enjoying the holiday and your family?  :D