Two UFOs Shot Down!!

Yay!!!!  I've finished two UFO minis this week, and it's exciting for me beyond just finishing something that was put together in 2011.

I ain't skeered of no stinkin' McKenna Ryan quilts anymore! In fact, I'm rather puffed up with pleasure at the leap forward.

Koo Koo Puff

Her designs have lots of little fused pieces that are semi-insane to cut out and put together. In many places there are multiple layers which are quite thick with fabric and fusible. The thought of doing the actual stitching on these has frankly freaked me out, both in terms of the level of FMQ skill needed and the difficulty of working through all those finicky layers.

This month I made myself Get Over It and finally got to work on the ones I like least out of the mini collection for "Sea Breeze." This has a series of nine 17"-square scenes, and they will be stretch-mounted on canvas frames to be wall art.

The Snooty Sisters

"The Snooty Sisters" were up first. This mini was on my Q1 goal sheet for the 2015 Finish Along. 

I decided I wanted to further complicate this project by doing trapunto on the marine figures. No big deal: pull out scraps of my wool batting, pin it behind that portion of the quilt, and do the applique stitching for the trapunto layer. (I'm going to work up a tutorial for that with later companion minis.) Well, my Sapphire has a very sensitive tension system, and that fusible stuff really threw it for a loop. Literally.  Loops and nasty nests on the back like this one:

ALL OVER THE PLACE, no matter how I tried to compensate for it. I was bad. After taking out and redoing about 400 of them, I left all the ones you see here and just pulled everything tight to the back as well as I could and tied them securely.

It was all going to be hidden away, anyhow, and this was meant for my own studio, not any competition or commission. Still, I was pulling my hair out at the thought of 8 more of these, and was ready to chuck the whole set back into deep storage for another 4 years!

But then I saw a very timely conversation on Margaret Gunn's Facebook page where somebody offered the tip of applying a drop of Sewer's Aid directly to the machine needle periodically. BRILLIANT! Problem solved!!  Remarkably, when I did the trapunto/applique stitching on "Koo Koo Puff," not a single nest! And I was so excited on that one that I forgot to snap a picture and rushed right into the next step of relayering it with the full batting and its backing. So you don't get to see the beautiful sight of a perfectly clean backside with smooth, happy stitching along all the layering batt.

So, I got both of these quilted up. I kept things pretty simple (but with my own twists), because I like the look in the pattern pictures of them finished that way on the frames. 


I threw in some bubble doodles in silver hologram thread for the seahorses. It's super sparkly in real life:

No binding was necessary, or even desirable - I just finished the edges with zig-zag stitching because it's all going to be hidden away when I take the whole set over to be mounted. (7 more to finish, first.) For now, I've pinned them up by my ironing station.

I really love the effect achieved with the trapunto! Can you see the dimension the figures have? 

Especially this guy! He is COOL with all his poof! (What else could I do with a puffer, fish, I ask?) I went all out and gave him two trapunto layers, in fact. The first one lies under his face and one more "ring", and the other lies under his whole silhouette. It worked perfectly without creating a shelf in the exterior hand of the quilt:

It did cause the outer strips that have no quilting to ruffle up a bit, but those pull out flat very easily, so they won't show when it's mounted. If this much puff was put into a non-mounted project, those outer areas would need fairly dense fill-quilting to tame them.

It was cheaper to buy the 9 unassembled frames from an online art supply store than to get 2 ready-to-go frames from Michaels. Now, if I could just find what I did with the connecting hardware. . . 

So, the verdict is that even with stiffer fused figures, the technique works marvelously. I used washable Tuscany wool batting scraps for the first run, and Hobbs 80/20 cotton/poly for the full bottom layer.

That makes 2 of these UFOs finished for February, which I'll be reporting to Aunt Marti for her UFO Parade at 52 Quilts.

And I'll probably get 3 or 4 done up in March. After this set, I still have a full-sized Christmas flimsy and a beach flimsy of her designs that have been waiting for years, as well, to be finished. And if you follow me, you know I'm working on yet another in my BOMs lineup. But I'm not so freaked about them now.

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Linking up at:

Free Motion Mavericks

WIPs Be Gone

Fabric Tuesday

Can I get a Whoop! Whoop!

Link-a-Finish Friday

TGIFF, which is at Persimmon Dreams this week
 (main site here)

and

BOMs Away - Jan 28 - Sea Breeze all fused

Welcome to my 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 this post.

Well, my Old Man ate so slowly this week that I was able to get both of the remaining blocks constructed for Sea Breeze. 

 Koo Koo Puff:

And The Snooty Sisters: 

This is a different McKenna Ryan project than the one you saw last week. And there's going to be so much fabric left over, whatever way I decide to finish this set, that I'm having a grand time mulling over a new project to use them for.

Koko is our oldest cat at 15 years, and the past year he has trouble keeping weight on. So I have to feed him an enticing mash of kibble and elders' canned food at least 4 times a day. 

Clara has the opposite problem. She was far too fat for too long (as in the kidlet across the street said "Wow! Your cat is ROUND!" - and she thinks she's always starving, so she tries to steal Koko's food. She watches him minutely and longingly, and the second he bobs the tip of his tail the certain way he does when he's taking his last bite, she tries to scurry in on his plate. 

Which all means I have to babysit each time I put the food down so that Koko eats his fill. It's such a bother to run opposite diet styles for companion cats! If Clara's good and waits behind him, I put a wee bit of his leftovers in her bowl for a treat.  Which gets promptly vacuumed up at warp speed while he occupies her waiting station for a good face wash.

Working with fusible projects is perfect for those times. I just hang out at the high end of the bar near them and trace patterns or place pieces on fabric or cut them out. 

And sometimes I glance behind me when I notice she's finished, and get the sweetest "Thank you!" face.  :)    She's looking good these days, don't you think?

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 What have you guys done on BOMs or interval projects lately? 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.