~ Flimsy Alert!! ~ Let's Build a Snowman!

 Woohoo!!

Yesterday I finished my January #7-piecing UFO, which has been boxed and stuffed at the back of the shelves since Dec 31, 2013.

49" x 59" - pattern by Possibilities.

(These super fun snowmen will get their eyes and mouths after the quilting is finished, with hotfix "coal" rhinestones.)

I purchased this kit some time before we moved across country mid-2012. I pulled it out of storage in Dec 2013, and was enormously disappointed.

Unlike all the other times I had bought kits from small shops online, this one was not a good situation. The fabrics were not at all those shown in the kit photograph, and they didn't go well together in the least. Some were completely missing. Others had nowhere near enough.

(Let me re-iterate that I have purchased - and still do so - many kits from small shops online, and the vast majority are absolutely fine. The few problems that have popped up are quickly fixed if you communicate with them - assuming you haven't left it in storage so long that they no longer have the kit's materials.)

My finished top is very like the kit photo. I ended up using only one of the panel backgrounds the shop sent in the kit, and perhaps 1/4 of the applique fabrics. The rest came from my stash and scrap bins. I managed to fuse all the rows by month's end, and then put it all in a box in disgust at the experience.

So it went into back-shelf storage that looks something like this, only with closed boxes. It even fell back behind, and it took me 3 hours to find it when I purposefully went looking for it on January 1st.  haha!

I didn't touch it until now. Since January 1, this has been my priority project several hours a day Monday - Friday.

All that blanket stitching took FOREVER, but turned out really nice. I joined the rows, went to the shop in the city to replace the terrible border fabrics they'd put in the kit, and got the narrow borders put on so that I could finish the blanket stitching of the parts that overlap the borders. We didn't see Bernie when we were at the shop. ;D

Aren't the memes flying around so hilarious?!

Yesterday I attached the final border and prepped the binding. LOVE IT!! now it all goes into my longarming closet, and may or may not make it onto the frame before next January.

I'm picking up another long-term UFO for attention at my domestic machine during the work-week, and continue to build the amount of time that I can work at my longarm each day. I'm up to 1:10 before my body is too fatigued. I continue to be amazed at how long Covid can substantially affect you. It's been 3 months and two weeks.

So, while I'm not sure I'll finish my pre-#7-quilting UFO before month's end, I continue to chip away at it each day after lunch. One bit at a time, I'll get to where I can pull Sew Spooky off and give it some binding. I had loaded it up the day before we went to Scott's mom's funeral (and got Covid), and I just couldn't bear to take it off once again. It's had so many false starts at getting its quilting done up.

BOMs Away Monday - 31 Dec 12 - Sneaking In One More NewFO. . .And a cool retreat is coming up!

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.

Yeesh - running a half-day late here - I was trying so hard to get this one all fused before posting this week's link-up, but I'm about ready to vomit fusible stuff and my iron and I aren't on speaking terms at the moment.  ;D

In the spirit of Christmas/New Year's vacation, I took a break from my side-bar line-up of BOMs, and pulled a fresh winter one off the Creepy Room list. (Which is now called Bobbit's Room - but that's a whole other story.) That makes this NewFO #2 for December!! Which is a lot of fun. :D   So I'm linking this up to Barbara's party, too. 

(This one below was NewFO #1, blogged here.)

But that's about all the fun there was to be had. NewFO-2 is a full-BOM kit I purchased post-Christmas either two or three years ago. It is horrible!!!  I will never order from this store again, and of course, since I waited so long to start it, it's far too late to see if they would make things good. Normally I have no problem - I've purchased kits from many stores around the country, and everything's been great. This one, though - without any comment at all, the color scheme was entirely changed from the picture, in something I don't like at all, and with absolute disregard for values against each other. Furthermore, there were several fabric pieces missing entirely, and others had nowhere near enough. 

So I had to pull out a trusty scrap bin and raid yardages in my stash for some backgrounds and at least half the pieces. . . creating THIS nasty explosion all over the pool table. 

Poor hubby's off work for the week and can't even shoot right now. Working in a frenzy on this to get it all cleared for him. This is the state it was at this morning.

Don't you just "love" all the tracing, tracing, and tracing involved in this method?  :P

I got all the checkerboard rows pieced, and almost got all the cutting and fusing finished today - Just have that bottom row to do, then I can clean off the table.

Once I get those mittens fused onto the cobalt row on the bottom, this sucker is going boxed up, back in Bobbit's Room until next Holiday Season. This kit just disgusted me so much. But those snowmen do make me smile.  :)

~*~*~ But, Oh! ~*~*~

I did have a real blast the night before last. My sister came down from Idaho, and we stayed up sewing until 2am, working on some long-term UFO aprons she wanted to make for her girls. That was fun.  :D  And the first time I've ever sewn past 9pm *without* having to frog anything at all. Should give myself a medal for that!



~*~*~ And Another: Oh!! ~*~*~

Have you seen that Emily has a quilter's cabin retreat organized for 
February 21-23?

I'm super excited that for once I can participate. This ones a BYOP (bring your own project), so it's perfect for me. I'm on a strict UFO plan for 2013, so there will be no retreat/convention/store class projects added into the mix. 

And daily trunk shows from Natalia Bonner from Piece and Quilt, Amber Johnson of A Little Bit Biased, and Kati Spencer- From the Blue Chair are a humongous bonus!

I'm really looking forward to staying in this cabin with several other quilters and getting some serious work finished on older projects!

If you are finding yourself tempted, head on over to Emily's post and see if you can snag a spot before they're gone. :D  Sure would love to see you there!

And Now, back to BOMs Away:

~*~*~*~*~ 

 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.