BOMs Away - & - Hands2Help for Little Lambs Foundation for Kids

This week's link is below

Today is the link-up for our Hands2Help quilts. I'd signed up in March to participate with this annual coordinated community service project, choosing the Little Lambs Foundation for Kids this year.

I've made 3 sweet little quiltlets, each in a cute fabric and meant to feature superb tactile comfort in a highly portable size. This fits the bill perfectly for the organization's use, which is to go into a backpack with supplies and comfort items for kids having to go into foster care.

One lap quilt (~ 28" square) with sweet kitties and a glorious-feeling dove gray minkee backing/self binding edge, and two comfort clutchies (~ 19 x 22 inches) with Peter Rabbit flannel backed by a cerise quilting cotton and bound with the slick satin edge that kids love to handle and pet. They are washed and ready to go to the post office tomorrow.

Without intending to line two of my quilting focii up so perfectly, the block of the month work that I have ready to share this week coordinates perfectly, coming from my "From the Heart" BOM kit. Accordingly, here is this week's BOMs Away post:

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.)

 Block 2 has been hand appliqued, with bunnies that match the buns on the two flannel clutchy quilts I made, and all the love "From the Heart" that those three quilts are being sent with. I hope somehow the kids can sense that.

How is BOM work going at your place?

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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.

Hands-2-Help 2017 #2 - "Kitty Titty Power"

"Kitty Titty Power" 

made by Lynette Caulkins and Marissa Anderson

I am reblogging this quilt, which I finished in Oct 2015 and have kept on tap for the next friend who had to face breast cancer. I've decided that since none of them has had this trial come up in their life by this point, I'm going to send this to the Happy Chemo project for Hands-2-Help 2017, organized by Sarah at Confessions of a Fabric Addict. 

As I said when I made it, I know this quilt's name will be a bit rough for some folks.

But getting cancer IS rough. 

It sucks, and it happens all too often. Anyone my age or older has known someone personally who is/was battling one or another of those monsters - if we've not had it ourselves. I've gone through a bout of lymphoma, which killed my uncle and has challenged his son at least 3 times, and my mother died from a rare form of inflammatory breast cancer. Two of her sisters have had more common breast cancers. 

Rough words help dissipate the anger when you're in the fight, and if you can combine that roughness with humor, it's most effective! So I let the quilt's working name stick instead of polishing it into refined civility. This quilt's purpose is to provide bolstering support during an active battle with breast cancer, and the name is perfect in that context. 

The pink speaks for itself to identify it as a breast cancer quilt (I've always hated the commercialism of all those pink ribbons, but you have to admit the social power of the pink). The triangles evoke strength and dynamic energy. And those kitties are just so darned friendly.

I wanted the quilting to allow a more comforter-like feel for this one, instead of adding in some fancy fills. I also needed the quilting choice to soften the starkness I often felt when contemplating the top. I wondered if simple wavy lines would do the trick for this, and they really did!  

I used my walking foot and a wavy stitch on my machine for everything. (Don't forget to loosen the pressure of your presser foot when you are quilting instead of sewing - which is different from thread tension, even when using a walking foot). I just followed each seam, and then on the hollow triangles I put in some super-wide echos. On the solid triangles, I quilted point-to-point between the halfway marks of each side to break up that space in a congruent way.

For the back, I had pieced the off-cuts from the side triangles into a strip. Everyone who sees it thinks it spells something. LOL  I guess it does kind of look like an abstract "ZOOM":

If I received this quilt, I would take it to every chemo appointment. And then I would want to wash it a lot. So the binding got machine stitched, which is highly unusual for me in non-children's quilts. There was a lot going on, color-wise and dynamics-wise, in this quilt, so I went with the background pink for that instead of my original plan for a super-soft framing of gray Minky.

And this quilt's feline lover? - Isabeau adores it and settles down on it every time I get it out. Navarre only liked it when it was a flimsy for some reason. Go figure! Good thing I have a cat-free room now where I can let it super-dry before I box it up tomorrow.

"Minky Stripes" for Camp Hobe, Hands-2-Help 2017

Many of us have participated in this year's Hands-2-Help Charity Quilt Challenge that Sarah has coordinated over at Confessions of a Fabric Addict. 

I was happy to have a super soft and perky kit on hand that would be fantastic for the Camp Hobe drive - soft minky stripes in the right size to comfort a young person fighting cancer. 

This was my first strip minky quilt, and fortunately others ahead of me had shared the importance of using spray adhesive as you go along. I can't imagine doing this without it. I don't normally use the spray, as the propellant uses carcinogenic chemicals, and I have an autoimmune disorder, so I wouldn't have thought of it on my own. Also - those rounded corners are a must if you're going to bind it.  :)  The minky strip just flows so easily around them, rather than struggling with corner folds. Also, you only need a single layer rather than the doubled-over binding that I normally use.

I just LOVE all the different textures that minky comes in! Don't you?

Thanks for organizing this event, Sarah! 

And all you sponsors are AWESOME! 

It's been washed and completely dried, so I'm off to the post office now. :D

BOMs Away Monday, and H2H 2017 - Minky String Quilt for Camp Hobe

Welcome to the link-up for BOMs Away Monday!

Do you ever start Block-of-the-Months and then not finish them? 

Or maybe you just like doing a lot of them?

This is where you can share what you're doing on a BOM or anything you work on at given intervals. 

Show us what you accomplished in the past week or so!

(Linky at the bottom.)

Knowing full well that I'm not going to work on BOM stuff on Easter Sunday, and probably won't take the time away from family fun to make a post, I'm combining this week's linky with my progress report for my H2H community service quilt:

This is the minky row quilt I chose from my deep storage of untouched kits to make for Camp Hobe. Kids and cancer - who needs a super-soft, bright-and-cheery, can't-stop-petting-it quilt more than they do? 

It's 45 x 60, and all it needs is its binding. This was my first minky row quilt. Notes to self for when I make the animal minky for Scott:

• Yep. Good thing I "listened" and got some spray basting glue to adhere the stripes down as they're sewn on, because there's no way this would work nicely without it. Coordinate the next one with a medicine day since I can't leave this strategy out.
• While the center-out construction strategy makes for faster prep time between sewing sessions, I would prefer to start at the top and work down.
• I'd like to control the rows a little more - chalk a line when adding them.
• My walking foot doesn't play nice with Minky - the treads snag on it like it does on silk.
• So, use this foot with 4.0 stitch length, foot pressure reduced to 1.0, ball-90 needle on the Sapphire.

P.S. I would also like to make a minky quilt like this one day (photo links to source):

Saw it at: Sewciety

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How about you? Did you do any BOM work this week? I didn't. I was busy chilling out this Easter Saturday morning and enjoying a cute visit from our friendly neighborhood Easter bunny.

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.

:)

Finish Report - a UFO and some community service

I'm happy that I was able to get another UFO finished this month - "The Clampetts" from the Sea Breeze collection of minis:

This one worked up so nice! And here it was one of the ones I didn't really like. I didn't catch a shot that shows the trapunto work's dimension very well. The clams came out perfectly with it, and the seahorse, clown fish, and star fish all got a little trapunto as well. These minis will look so great on the art bars when I get them stretched. Three more to finish quilting, is all!

Note to myself: On these I had not gutted out the fusible before applying it to the fabrics and the quilt top, so even the large background areas have stiffness. See how the 40-wt thread just rides on top of it (that green across the bottom)? For future pieces, only use the Supreme or YLI invisible thread or 50-wt or thinner Aurifil or rayons/silks.

This is one of my Q3 Finish Along pieces (My goal post link)

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My other share for this post:  

The day before yesterday I finished this community service flimsy:

I had intended to donate it to the Cinderella House that shelters women and girls that were rescued from human trafficking. But then Pat walked through and said, "Oh! I really like that one!" So did my hubby. Now I'm wondering: if it speaks that much to men, is it completely right for that charity - It must be the pin-stripe shirting in it even though it's pink (combined with the very geometric layout)?  When it's quilted, I think I'll just take it to the firehouse, instead, and see if they can use it for traumatic response comfort for somebody. But first I'm going to have some FMQ fun with it.

I had the HARDEST time getting a shot of the flimsy on its own. Navarre immediately claimed it as his when I draped it over the sofa. 

Even checking out the back:

You can probably guess that I got a ton of shots of him on it before deciding to go do a task or two and come back. But then he was just napping on it, funny boy!

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Linking up at:

Fabric Tuesday

Free Motion Mavericks

Can I get a Whoop! Whoop!

Link-a-Finish Friday

TGIFF, which is at Quokka Quilts this week

 (main site here)

Q3 Finish Along

BOMs Away - Rebellion (er - Avoidance) & Copyright Receipt

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 did not want to fuss with the tracing and tracing and tracing and cutting-cutting-cutting, then meticulous placement on fabric of dozens to hundreds of tiny pieces that "Wind in the Whiskers" requires right now. So I threw my BOM schedule out the window this time.

Instead, lots of good work happened with this! Which pulls an old, old kit off the NETY list. It's a flimsy now. :D

and with this community service top as the leader-ender! It's a flimsy now, too.  :)

(More on those later in the week)

And then I wanted SOMETHING to be done on at least one of the BOMs in my rotation, so I scanned in my Scott sketches and printed them out in reverse so I can trace them all. Hopefully by week's end I will have all that done and fabrics chosen from the scrap bin explosion. Then I get that cleaned up and put away until the next 3rd-Sunday. That mess on the floor next to the pool table is driving me insane, and it's the whole reason I didn't want to work on the fusible chores of today's scheduled BOM in the first place. Time to suck it up and work my way through that mental block. (It's very difficult to find the right colors, and hard to make it look like it does in my head, so I give in easily to the lure of other things to work on.)

Oh! And look what came in the mail this weekend! My notification of the copyright on my thesis! From last December. lol!!!  (Gotta love that turn-around time.)

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How about you? - Have you worked on any BOMs lately? 

BOMs Away - Seeing Stars

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.

Well, I had a fantastic BOM-sewing day since a pretty bad flare-up of my Achilles upstaged any ideas of going out and about hiking.

Got both the Month 5 and the Month 6 blocks sewn for "Star Crazy" - 6 blocks and another 48 HSTs for the border work.

As I was pressing the very last seam on the very last block, I saw that I had sewn in one of the little white blocks wrong-side-out. I allllmost just left it, thinking nobody'd ever see it, really. But I would always know it was there, and for some reason it was important to me to fix it. Four years ago I threw the ideal of perfection out the window to escape its crippling effect and actually achieve finishes. But I made myself the deal that I would always do my reasonable best. Since this quilt is not on a deadline, it felt wrong to me to knowingly leave a piece sewn in wrong just to avoid pulling out a few short seams. If it was already basted and ready to go for quilting, I'd call it reasonable, but it's still only in block-building mode. Didn't even take 10 minutes to fix it - glad I didn't squelch out on myself.  :)

And for some leader-ender action, I started this month's community service sewing, which is to assemble this block set into a flimsy. I got maybe half of the sashing work finished. (Wonder how long this is going to live on that part of the floor. . . )

AND - check it out! The "Be Attitudes" BOM top of Kelly's that I finished this past week and wrote up for Friday's TGIFF? - - - Blocking it made that border lay down perfectly flat! At least for a little while. It'll always have to be blocked when it's washed, and no telling how long it'll stay nice with use, but at least it's all spiffy for the gifting, and that makes me very happy. In the future, I'll always just remove the offending borders, trim them down to correct length, and sew them back on, because waves like that really bother me. Plus, the feather quilting would look so much prettier if it wasn't sucking in so much extra top fabric.  :)  

::MEASURE YOUR BORDERS WHEN YOU PUT THEM ON!!::

Cath is starting a new Design Board link-up, so I'll join her, as well.  :)  

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How about you? - Have you worked on any BOMs lately?

BOMs Away - The Memorial Day Edition

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.

Hi! Since it's Memorial Weekend, I devoted today's sewing to working on blocks for Kevin's Quilts of Valor block drive. Whipped up 15 blocks that will be arranged something like this with enough others that he's received to round out a full quilt.

The rest of the day was spent doing community service time as a family. We volunteered at the Black Forest Slash and Mulch Yard. It was a beautiful day above us.

Looking back toward our home, though, you can see the black band of clouds in the lower distance. Apparently we missed a nasty hail storm!

It's a superb concept, the yard. For $2.00 you can dump as much tree and shrub debris as you can bring in on a truck and trailer. Every week it's run through a GIGANTIC mulcher that's a little larger than a semi tractor-trailer combo. (It was at another location today, so I couldn't snap a shot of it.)  For free you can carry away as much mulch as you want to load. Or you can pay $5.00 on a Saturday to have a front loader place a load in your truck for you.

Everything is run by volunteers. Pat and Heather manned the gate with me. . . 

And Scott and Devon preferred helping folks off-load. These shots were all snapped during a lull - usually many trucks and trailers are lined up to unload.

Just as we were trying to figure what we wanted to do for dinner, a wild turkey started walking around the yard!  

Too funny.  :)    Looks like dinner to me!

(We had sloppy joes.)

It likes the top of the debris pile. There are two lines about 50 yards long each and maybe 15 feet deep. After each shift, front-loaders shove the freshly-dumped debris back and up so that it's about 12 feet tall. 

Pretty cool place, eh?  Super useful, too, for those of us who live in woodsy areas that need to be kept mitigated for fire hazards.

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Have you done any BOM work lately?