BOMs Away Monday - Beachwalk and Angelina Gallery

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 this post.

This week's focus is my McKenna Ryan "Beach Walk" project. Had hoped to get this last block fused together so I could assemble the quilt next month, but two wrenches got thrown in the mix. It's taken up almost all my quilty time this week to get ready for a quilting retreat I'm going to in a few days. I did manage to get all the pieces traced and ready for fabric placement. 

The other thing is that all the pieces in the bag on the right get cut out of Angelina rather than regular fabric, and I'm pretty darn sure the amount I have will not be enough. So I'll have to order some and do all the fusing when this project gets its March turn. But I have some eye candy for you!

You can do gorgeous things with the iridescent Angelina fibers, such as this goldfish scene by Lisa Quintana:

This waterfall scene by Sally Wright:

This turtle mini from Embellishment Village:

This adorable fishing scene by Carol Spalding:

And this amazing waterscape by Betty A: 

It comes in many colors, good for things beyond water, such as this dragonfly by Susan Vassallo:

This fairy by Tami Levin:

This amazing oriental collage by Judith Ferguson:

And check out this gorgeous church by Kay McLaren:

As you can imagine, this stuff looks far better in real life than what the camera can capture.

Pretty cool, huh?  And it's so very easy to work with - comes in many colors. There are far more applications than the 2-D items I've linked in this post. Great 3D play available with stamps and blocks, for example. It's even supposed to be washable for clothing applications. Haven't tried that, so I can't give you feedback.  You can find lots of How-To videos on YouTube like this one from Betty Blais:

(If that doesn't work, just go to YouTube and search for Angelina fibers.)

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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.  

Finish Friday - Wheelchair Quilt 2

The finish I have today is not the one I thought I'd have for this week, but it's nice because it clears away a UFO that's been sitting in the flimsy list since 2011.

This is a wheelchair quilt. The corners are gone so that they don't flap into the wheel/foot brace areas. See how nice that is for a wheelchair situation?

My old Florida guild makes these for a couple of centers. We'd get fabric packs at the meetings cobbled together from donations, and volunteers would take them home to sew them up. You could bring back the flimsy with the backing for someone else to finish, or just do the whole thing yourself. I liked doing the whole thing since they're small (and quick to quilt), and they provide a great opportunity to increase your FMQ skills. 

This time I worked on a motif that Wendy Sheppard shared at Ivory Spring. I want to use it on the blue bands in Run, Kitty, Run, which I need ASAP. But I needed to try it out first, and this floral flimsy was the perfect place to use it, with maximum hiding power (at least on the top). Love this quilting motif! It's so forgiving while still looking more sophisticated, in the feather family. And still looks terrific when I end up turning her feather plumes into floral plumes. 

I did have a few spots where I let in too much gap, so I just threw in a pebble where the over-puffiness was unsightly.  Worked perfectly. 

Thanks for that tutorial, Wendy.  :D

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TGIFF * Link A Finish Friday at Richard's * Whoop! Whoop! * UFO Sunday *

Little Quilt Monday

WIPs - Sooooo Close to Two Finishes in My Sewing Areas, and Baby Start-up

Making bits and pieces of progress around my conference presentation prep - enough for me to smile about, even though it takes all week to do what many of you can whip out in a half day.  :D

I got this super cool pin cushion from Elizabeth's giveaway at Pieceful Life. 

My husband is happy, I'm sure, that pins are no longer getting plopped onto the side table to occasionally fall on the carpet (and sofa. . . )!  In Florida, my hand-stitching was done on an old cloth sofa that I shamelessly used the arm for poking pins into. These sofas are also quite old and worn (came with the house - we upsized and have no funds for a while to replace them), but they're leather, so I had to act normal with the pins.  ;D

And that's where I sit each evening, stitching, as we watch our dinner-time TV show. Love that lamp. My great-uncle Rudy made that himself, and it looks great in this Colorado home with wood trim.

This station right now is processing my Amaretto Cottage! (Isn't Margaret's quilting LUSCIOUS??) Hmm, and I guess nobody could get this monster handstitched in just a half day and do a proper job. So I feel a bit better. 

My Hawaiian Etude is also SOOO CLOSE! It gets secondary priority at this station - being bumped every time there's a binding/label/hanging sleeve to work on. But the king quilt is just a little large for taking to appointments and wait-times when picking up Marissa at school, so the Hawaiian piece is still making progress. This is the first time I've attached a binding 100% by hand, and I'm almost finished putting it on the front.

My other stations in the "basement" got a good workout this past week to get Amaretto Cottage to the hand-stitching station.

The house is on a slope, so really there's only one small room around on the back side that's a true basement area. I love this sewing nook!!  I fight SADD, so that window bank is awesome when I'm sitting at my FMQ machine in the white desk (it's a Viking Sapphire). You see 1/3 of the window bank.

Having both desks there is extremely helpful when I'm quilting - especially if the back is corduroy or minky. The golden one is an old computer desk that had a hutch. Well, we haven't had a non-laptop for years, and the hutch was just overbearing. So when we moved here and I verified that the desk matched my sewing table's height, I placed them together. I'd intended to buy a white folding table to put behind my sewing table, but Scott came to the rescue by cutting down the supports of the hutch to make it match up. Perfect!

This side is my piecing station, which actually had nothing at all at it last week (a rare occurance, but I really wanted Amaretto Cottage to get full attention).

While we're here - a view of the rest of my sewing area. The ironing board is purposefully several steps from the machines. Sitting for long periods is really bad for anybody, and especially bad for us folks with Lupus and poor circulation. So I make myself have to get up and walk a bit each time pressing is needed. That door next to the iron? The storage room! And it's all mine! It's got fabulous shelves built in aisles, and not much of it is non-fabric related. Heavenly. 

Behind me is the pool table and some more of the basement. Yeah - We're not finished unpacking. I'd wanted to keep all boxes and mess in the garage, but Florida Girl soon found that the space is critical for vehicle storage in Colorado winters! One day this will all look pretty.

Back to sewing concerns. For Amaretto Cottage's 112" squareness, I had to dismantle my piecing station.

See why?! And that's all bunched up and tripled-over on itself!

There's no way I could have worked with all that getting piled behind the machine without the added space of the hutch extension. 

 

Meet Lionel Stitchy.  Love this guy. He's a little squished there, but the college girls gave him to me for my birthday, specifically to keep me company while I sewed. (Thus his name. Am I dating myself?  heh!)

So - now that Amaretto Cottage is upstairs for handwork, my machines are both back where they belong, and I'm getting ready for the next FMQ. Practicing a motif Wendy Sheppard shared at Ivory Spring. That's plexiglass with duct tape around it. Perfect for dry-erase practice and quilt design fussing. You just have to make sure not to get that ink on the quilts. Thus the tape. And when I applied the tape, I made sure the front is wider than the back so that I always put the same side against the fabric. Just to doubly ensure that no faint smudges get on the quilts.

The piecing station will soon get some attention after its break. These 10" squares are my first foray with the the 8-in-1 method for HSTs. Need a baby quilt for my youngest sister's first-born, due next month. Going to make the barn raising layout and practice some FMQ in the white diamond bands.

Found this fun "Owl and the Pussycat" fabric in my stash, along with some other blues to play with it. And man, that bolt of Kona Snow I got 18 months ago is still saving me with this stash-only restriction! I've got a nice hardcover copy of the book on order - it even matches the coloring/theme of this fabric - very cool! I hope to also make a book tote featuring this fabric to go with the quilt and book.

Thanks for letting me sneak in some journaling. I really love this new home. 

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Linking up at

Kate's "Share Your Space"

Lee's WIP

Applique Thursday

Esther's WOW