BOMs Away - DOTS and DOTS and Caribbou

                 

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 week was fun - since my Neptune's Gift BOM is caught up to the next delivery, I started again on non-BOM work during the week, and the first attack was getting this UFO to flimsy status:

This is Marie Noah's "Caribou Crossing" pattern, and is the 5th of the six wall quilts Scott requested for his office. 

And my BOM work this weekend was to stitch down a huge pile of Temperature Dots for our 2021 quilt:

This stack brings up to Thanksgiving Day, and I'm not peering at teeny tiny blanket stitching edges any more today.  

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Did you work on a BOM type project this week? We'd love to see your progress!

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

Finish Report! ~ Scott's "Morning Stroll" ~

I get caught up with actual quilting work and forget to do my finish posts!  Last week I finished the second of the pair of row quilts for my husband to take to his office:

"Morning Stroll," designed by Marie Noah.
  42.5 x 14 inches, single layer Hobbs Heirloom 80/20 batting

I wanted the quilting of the sky to feel like morning waking up with the sun coming over the mountains, so dramatic rays and a few clouds for interest were the order of the day.

These quilts all have block patchwork integrated into the design, and this one gave me fits trying to figure out how to do the detail quilting I like to do in those areas. At first, I was planning to quilt it in the mountain/center/lake-and-ground layers. But it wasn't floating my boat very well. 

Then my mind went back to the moon motif detailing in the patchwork of the first Marie Noah row quilt I did for Scott (Night Watch), which inspired me to do something on the entire pieced area that echoed the idea of morning sunshine bursting onto the world. 

I'm giving all of these row quilts the same outer border motif with the oak-leaf inspired free-motion work, and like the moose quilt, I let the main characters (bear in this case), give me an idea for the mini border. So these guys got a continuous line of fish for breakfast!

I forgot to snap a shot of the label. Most often, I make a text box in Word so I can print something out on prepped fabric. Sometimes I'll put in a coordinating picture, and I did that with this one. You can see that I note the contribution of other people on my labels, in this case the design being somebody else's. My early quilts' labels included the name of the quilter if I sent them out for longarming. It's important to do this.

I really love these designs. When Scott came home the day he took it in and put it up, he told me he had a 90yo woman in the office who thoroughly enjoyed the 4 Marie Noah row quilts and the 4 other mini quilts of my own designs that he has up in the rooms there. She asked if she could see the others in the room she wasn't in, and asked him to make sure to tell me how much she loved them. She noticed little details on her own, like those fish in the mini border. That was neat to hear.  :)   

I'm linking up at:

Tish's UFO party

TGIFF at TBA this week

Finish Report! ~ Scott's "Moose Lake" ~

Here is the first of two row quilt finishes I will have this week!

This is a Marie Noah design and kit that I purchased from Northern Threads in 2018 at Scott's request. It finished at 40.5 x 14 inches, and I used a single layer of Hobbs 80/20 batting. 

I had this loaded in tandem with a sibling row quilt, and it took a surprisingly long time to quilt them up.  Not because of Covid "stuff," but because these mark the first time I've done the stitching-down of the fusible as the quilting itself, rather than stitching down the applique pieces at the domestic machine first. It works fine at a slow speed, basically as slow as the domestic machine on half-speed mode. I didn't have problems with sticky needle or pieces popping up. 

If you know me, you know I'm a thread enthusiast, spurning the invisible threads in particular on applique. I don't like the way the needle holes show up so much more with that. Instead, I use several colors in weights ranging from 40 to 100, depending on the effect I want, and this quilt has everything from Glide 40wt to Aurifil spools to Superior Microquilters. It takes me much shorter time now to do the side squiggling for tension adjustments than it did three years ago. Tension play was a huge ordeal at first, but now it's a half-minute task that doesn't faze me.

These row quilts give me the hardest time figuring out just how to quilt them, for some reason. Moose Lake wasn't too hard - throw some CC's on the patchwork at the bottom. . .

Do some pin-striping and oak-leaf inspired free-motion play for the outer border to simulate a carved wooden frame. . .

But what to do for the sky? It happened that our weather here on that day was a classic heavy-air mountain day, where everything feels pregnant with the possibility of snow, but the cloud cover is moving along and probably going to pass you up. So I thought I'd try to quilt that feeling.  

I put in clouds, then wind swirls up high, pushing them along, and then "heaviness lines" below. Those served the dual purpose of making the mountains and trees pop out nicely. While I was at it with that pale blue Microquilter thread, I put in snow-cap "floofs" on the mountaintops.

So now what to do with the mountains? I had envisioned something fancy with the log cabin piecework in them, but whenever I drew something on my overlay acrylic sheet, I hated it. It turned out that all they wanted was to be ditch-stitched. I did throw in some close-placed straight lines along the edges where background mountain peaks needed to recede behind the foreground peaks instead of just being one field of piecing. That worked very nicely! 

The stony bases were too big to be left open, as they puffed out too much to be background portions of the whole picture, so I wandered lightly, basically dividing the fabric's colorations. 

Most of the rest of the quilting was simply stitching down and defining the applique pieces, with some water lines in the lake portion. 

But that rust mini border puffed out unattractively for a wall hanging, and I didn't know what the heck to do there. So I just "wrote" in some stylized M's  - for "Moose," you know! (I did chalk in some 1" guidelines, then freehanded the M's between those all around.)

They turned out great! It just looks like another wooden-frame motif.

Wash and block, bind and throw on a label. . .

. . . and this guy's ready to join the two sibling row quilts that are already at Scott's office.  :)  

The second of these fun row quilts just needs me to stitch the label on after it finishes drying, so I'll be posting that one tomorrow.  

I'm linking up at:

Tish's UFO party

TGIFF at Storied Quilts this week

BOMs Away - Moose Lake Mini

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.)

Well, it's a start - 

I worked on the background for the next Mini-of-the-Month in the set Scott chose:

This is for "Moose Lake," designed by Marie Noah.

As soon as this is pieced, I'll be working on the quilting for "Morning Stroll."

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If you have some BOM work to share - this is your turn!  :)

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 - "Raven's Throne" Finish :)

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.)

Gosh! I didn't mean to ditch you guys last week. We were out of state, visiting in-laws, and I was too wrapped up in all that to put up a post. 

I hope you have had a nice start to this new year!

I finally put the label on this end-of-the-year finish. It is the second of the minis for Scott that I'd intended for mini-of-the-month projects.

"Raven's Throne," designed by Marie Noah:

This is 14.5 x 41.5 inches. I used a single layer of Quilter's Dream batting, free-motion quilted at my domestic machine with Aurifl 50-wt threads.

We live on the eastern edge of the Rocky Mountains. Have you ever seen that super-cool ray-of-light effect that shoots out at an angle across the mountain top as the sun is going down behind them? (I imagine it works the other way around, as the sun is rising, from the other side of the mountains, too.) 

And the way the cooler breezes come streaming over and down the mountains each evening. . . 

 I tried to capture those concepts in the quilting.

A glowing ray shooting out, with sunset colors around the sun - yellow, orange, pink, purple threads as the rounds move out from the ball of the sun.

And swoopy breezes starting on that back side and rolling over and out, eastward to where the ravens are soaring and playing on them. . .

I wanted to evoke an artwork frame in the border, with dual-needle lines and then a sort of leafy-carving central portion.

Note for myself for the next one, so I know which way I "spun" it around the quilt:

Add a label, and it's ready for Scott to put it up at his office. The man doesn't like hanging sticks in the quilts at his office. He insists on pinning them into the wall there. They're small and light enough that they don't pull destructively on the pin points, so I shrug my shoulders and make sure we have little rust-proof pins available.  heh!!

Let's see if I can figure out the video feature, as this is an odd size for blog photo.

Next Scott-mini up has the cutest mother-cub feature.  :)

~*~*~*~

If you have some BOM work to share - this is your turn!  :)

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 - Christmas and Valentines

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.)

It's been a strange year of unsurety, ignored fears, and inner struggles that knocked me way off my normal tracks. I haven't been doing much quilting work the past several months, which is usually a large part of the core of my personal identity. I've missed that creativy and productivity, even at the same time that I've been unable to fully re-engage. 

The good news is the weird thing on my elbow isn't another bout of dermal lymphoma, but the dermatologist still didn't like it, so off it went, and for the next few weeks I have an angry elbow that hollers any time I let it rest on a table/counter, or want to lie on my back to sleep. Hah! Hopefully it'll settle down soon!

 

This week has been a step toward recreating a balance I like better than what's been happening lately. I pinned up the "Raven's Throne" flimsy to get this quilted up for Scott for Christmas. My machine has something off in it, but it will work well if I go about 1/3 my normal free-motion speed. 

So it's slower going than normal, but I should be able to finish this during Mon and Tue workdays so he doesn't see it happening. :)

Also, this morning, I got a start on block 6 of the Forever My Valentine BOM:

I got some heart cut-outs from this one that I can play with later on, or use on the back of the quilt.

I hope you are having a nice Holiday time. Ours is extremely quiet, but we are happy, so all is good.

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I know you have some BOM work to share - so let's 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 - Scott's Wildlife Mini #3, Marissa's Dahlia, and the concept of ours

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 was a good BOM week for me. I made the base for the third of Scott's Wildlife mini quilts that he requested. This will get trees, grass, little birds, and a mother bear with her cub after I do the background quilting. (Which has to wait until my machine gets serviced.)

I paper pieced several of the unit sets for Marissa's Dinner Plate Dahlia:

And I made my final decision on which coloration I wanted to use for the king-sized Dahlia for Scott and my bed. 

I played around in Quiltster a lot to come up with this one. The first three Dinner Plate Dahlia tops you've seen me working on were colorways that were already designed by different sponsoring shops. This one is colored to go perfectly with our room. I'll be pulling from stash and store purchases, which isn't as daunting now that I've put together two tops already and am working on the third. I'm getting pretty intimately acquainted with how things mesh together and a good idea of how the colors get affected by the others. Still, hopefully it'll come out the way I envision it!!

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Now your turn: How are your BOMs doing lately?

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 - Another Variety Show

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.)

Check it out - it's only the first week of the month, and I already worked on my OMG. That's a rare happening! I finished the piecing of the second mini-of-the-month that Scott asked for last year.

This is "Raven's Throne," designed by Marie Noah, and I got it in a kit from Northern Threads.

I don't like the stiffness of laser-cut fusible kits, but you can't beat the ease, eh?

I also finished the hand work on Block 6 for From the Heart (designed by Arlene Stamper and Melissa Harris). There are only two applique blocks remaining. Yay!

And I got all of Devon's Dinner Plate Dahlia Technique-of-the-Month cut out (a Judy Niemeyer pattern). It takes almost 11 hours. (The cutting, not the quilt-making.)

I was able to do all this BOM work this past week, because I've have a low-to-moderate grade migraine for 7 days running. I can't do any work at my longarm, as the machine sound and vibration ramps up the migraine in just a couple of moments. Sometimes I can get away with a few moments at the domestic machine, but not many. I'm really hoping this brat goes away very, very soon!!!

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Hopefully, you don't have any migraine issues! Did you do any BOM work this week?

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

What's Stitchin - It's a Geese and Mermaids kind of week

Mornings are up in the air with the geese. 

(Scott's March row quilt and a flannel kit that's been in my storage f o r e v e r)

And afternoons are down in the water with the mermaids and fish of Laurel Burch's fantasy, "Ocean Songs."  (March challenge, UFO #8)

Fun times!

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Linking up at: 

WIP Link-Up at Brook's
UFO Busting Party at Tish's

TGIFF is Here Today! Let's celebrate some finishes!

Greetings from Colorado, USA. Welcome to this week's TGIFF link-up!

Have you finished something lately that you'd like to share? 
Link up at the bottom of this post, and be sure to visit some of the other links 
to find great eye candy and help your fellow bloggers celebrate. :D

I am sharing "Night Watch"  - an item from my Q1 FinishAlong list

After soaking and blocking it to dry, it finished at 14-5/8 x 40-3/4 inches

My husband has a few minis that I've given him over the years for his office, but this past year the man has been angling for more quilts to take in. He even came to me asking where a particular quilt was, saying he had meant to steal it but couldn't find it. When I said it was too large, he replied, "Oh, I'll find a way to put it up!" That told me just how seriously he wanted more quilts. So I thought I'd let him choose something he particularly liked.

The row quilts designed by Marie Noah at Northern Threads really caught his eye, and he requested six of them. He even gave me a list of the order he would like them in, and I committed to making one each month for him. 

used a double needle on the curves in the yellow parts

As you can see, I wanted to do some fancy quilting on the block portion, and do some background quilting that spans the width behind all those trees.  - - - The prospect of all those start/stops between the forward elements was not happiness. So I fused and quilted in layers, as shared in this past post. 

For the most part, that approach worked really well, and I'll definitely use it on the other 5 kits. I just wish I'd remembered that I had wanted to pre-position and chalk trace the wolf so I could leave the quilting out of his main area. You can see the background lines indented inside his form. Scott probably won't even notice - it shows more in these photos than it does in real life.

Fusing and quilting in layers does make for a messier-than-normal back, so if you're doing this on a quilt that won't be stuck up on a wall, I'd use a backing fabric that will camoflage the quilting instead of highlighting it like this leftever "stuff" from wedding sewing two years ago. I have no idea what its fiber content it, but it worked, and I have enough for all six quilts. Good way to use it up and cut costs here.

I did a wee bit of trapunto on "Night Watch." The main batting is a scrap of Hobbs Heirloom 80/20 cotton/poly. I backed the moon and the center circle quilted into the feature block with an added layer of thin poly batting. I didn't pre-stitch those down, as I'd recently seen another blogger share that she just uses glue sticks to hold the pieces where they need to be. This technique worked great on my simple shapes and saved time.

I love the extra loft this gave the center of the block. I was going for a fractured-moon effect radiating outward when I did this part of the quilt. The outer yellow arcs do not have trapunto. That's just the effect of the open versus micro-meandered portions. And this was the first time I've free-motion quilted with a double needle, which I used to make the circle and arc in the yellow parts.

I really enjoyed making this little quilt. I actually did all of its work at my domestic machine, and I used Aurifil 50wt thread on everything.

I had three reasons: First, the longarm frame is commandeered by challenge UFOs, OMG projects, and the ocassional customer quilt. Second, I don't have confidence in my skills at the level of ultra-fine control needed to stitch down the meticulously cut edges of fused pieces. Third, I welcome the opportunity to keep my free-motion quilting skills at the domestice machine. Longarm work is NOTHING like domestic works - they are separate skills outside of the artistry, and I don't want to lose the one because I've picked up the other.

(I am linking this at Muv's Free Motion Mavericks, because my FMQ skills are important to me,
and the 2018 Finish-A-Long Q1 Reports at Sandra's.)

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Now it's your turn!!