August! ~

My One Monthly Goal for August is to finish the puff stitches for the silk binding on this very cool autumn lap quilt, and do a label for it. 

It's been sitting at this point for several months, so let's get it wrapped up and into use for September!  :)

The Rest of the Story:

The August UFO drawn by APQ is #10. 

My piecing #10 is my Sue Garman "And to All a Good Night" project.  

Great timing! I'm close to being finished with the top applique panel. 

I've pulled fabrics from my stash for the scrappy piecing of the main field in the quilt. I'm king-sizing the pattern to fit our bed. Hopefully it'll emerge the way my mind's eye sees it. Our room is blue and we put up a snow-flocked tree with blue accents in the bow window, so I wanted to incorporate blues and grays with a Christmas feel, but keep the green and red stars.

My longarming #10 is my Allietare from the Bonnie Hunter mystery of winter 2015-16. I finished the flimsy in a timely manner, but it's sat forever in my longarming closet. 

I do have to finish a lot of remaining work on this GINORMOUS king-sized Dinner Plate Dahlia (also for our bed) before I load Allietare. . . which gives me time to scare up a backing for that cheddar and turquoise beauty!

And that is more than enough work for one month! Let's see how much I accomplish.  :)

Today's BOMs Away is on the previous post at BOMs Away Monday - Neptune's Gift and More Birds

LINKING UP at Elm Street Quilts for the August OMG goal

Flimsy Alert~! Finished my Allietare top!

I'm so excited to have my mystery quilt top finished! Here's my "Allietare"!

I really love how the different fabrics for each color make it sparkle!

I was committed to using my stash and scrap collection. I had hardly anything at all left in the neutrals category, but I did have tons of golds/mustards, so I substituted those into the neutrals spot. That left left a need for something in the golds spot. I had liked the look of the teal in the original button for the mystery, so I decided to go with that. To counter the darker "neutral" color, I lightened the gray constant fabric to a silver. It's actually a completely metallic silver, too, which is neat. This color scheme meant I only needed a few fat quarters of blacks and teals.

It's always a gamble, though, whether your color changes will work in a mystery!  I'm glad these did. As a couple of folks noted, it looks more Spanish this way than Italian, but that's just fine! 

This colorway almost didn't get to emerge. When I had all my blocks made and laid them out - well . . . the effect wasn't floating my boat. I think my brain had developed a certain expectation that was very different from what emerged. 

So I let it marinate overnight after sharing it on Facebook. The little bit of time away, combined with my 18yo liking it a lot, as well as plenty of online folks, changed my perspective, and I decided not to break it into two separate quilts made from the A and the B blocks. I noticed that it felt a little smooshed and busy to my mind's eye with the aqua popping out so prominently amongst other strong colors, and wondered if all it needed was some floating/framing of more golds/mustards to give it the space it needed to breathe.

And wow! Didn't that just do the very trick?!  Laying out my black fabric for the border area and trying reds and aquas in the setting triangle spaces definitely confirmed that this color combo wanted breathing space. I had barely enough left of my golds to pull it off. I also had just enough of my teals left to give the edge a kiss of the aqua effect. I'll buy some more teal yardage for the binding, but it will be quite a while before this can get quilted. I sure wish I could see it completely finished NOW.  :D  

That outer diamond border is a work-up I developed using a bunch of the bonus HSTs I harvested when I made the flying-geese-type units. Whenever I do those in a non-multiples method, I always stitch a double seam so that when I cut the corner off, I get an extra HST to add to my shoebox of those. One day I'll get to play with them, and that's going to be a lot of fun to see what emerges!

In the meantime, I trimmed those babies down so that the finished size is TINY - a mere 1/2 inch! They are tiny, but as long as you trim them with excruciating preciseness, it's not hard to get them to sew up very nicely without losing your points. 

It's also nice if, when you add your setting triangles to each 4-patch, you pay attention and attach them the right way. I put every single one on the 220 units THE WRONG WAY AROUND. 

It took me 4 hours to take them all off without warping my units. Oh, well - it gave me some unplanned movie time. heh!! After that setback, putting together the skinny bricks to make the outer aqua border was a piece of cake! And fortunately my math was all on spot, so everything lies nice and flat despite the shift from on-point bias settings to the straight-grain settings on the gold floater boarder and the aqua outside border. By the way, I did baste all around the outside to protect the many seams along the edge from pulling apart at the edge. 

I really enjoyed this mystery, and look forward to next year's! Thank you, Bonnie! 

You really should see the great variety of finishes that are showing up. Bonnie has a linky where they are being shared - just click on this button:  

Also linking up at Whoop! Whoop!

I'll just leave you with this out-take from the photo op in our back yard. Gotta love a timely snowstorm for quilt pictures!

BOMs Away - a mess of a day

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.

Nope. I didn't get my Allietare finished. When I was working on the diamond borders, I found that I'd sewn all 220 triangles on THE WRONG WAY AROUND. (See how they're sideways instead of having the blue on the edge of the border when they're lined up?)

So Friday's sewing time was spent undoing all of those (four hours), and then Saturday I got most of them re-sewn and got one side mostly sewn together so I could make sure I was going to have enough units. 

Today I finished fixing all the triangle additions and made the few extra units that will be needed. That's all I accomplished, though. I had to undo and redo and undo and redo things right and left. Not sure what my problem was, but it was physical as much as mental. I finally just gave up and went back upstairs to read in bed for a couple of hours. On the way, though, the cats asked for their lunch, and I couldn't even do that right!!!  heh!  You should have seen the freakzoid look they gave me when I spilled everything all over the place. I just wanted to cry, so I told them to get over it and enjoy their buffet service. Yes, I really did just leave it all there for them to clean up for me!  Hope your day went more smoothly.  :D

Oh!!  But speaking of cats - we got a new family member! Well, sorta. Heather needed an apartment companion, so when she was down here the other day, I went to the rescue site to check out the current cats while she was at her preceptor's office. This fella here was THE SWEETEST CUDDLE PAL right off the bat with a most excellent purr motor! No behavioral problems - he was dumped on the street by people who were moving where they couldn't have a pet.

That snuggly personality is worth oodles of gold, and yet he was practically free because of his adulthood. 

So I scooped Lupin up and adopted him pronto after Heather saw the pics that I texted and said she'd trust my personality judgement.

And it was love at first sight on both sides when Heather got back to my place. She was thrilled at her new-found friend and happily took him back up to her place, where he has settled in very contentedly, despite the new, super-confusing experience of having claw shields glued on. I was right - he's a total teddy-bear of a cat, sleeping snuggled up under the covers with a human that he's happy to love whole-heartedly.

~*~*~

Have you worked on any BOMs or similar projects lately? 

An InLinkz Link-up

BOMs Away - Allietare Almost There

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.

So, I got all my Allietare center assembled, and I'm really happy with it. I wasn't sure about the color change-up at first when I laid the blocks all out, but Marissa liked it, and lots of folks on Facebook really liked it, too. After some overnight marinating, it really grew on me. I agree that it has a Spanish look now, but I'm still calling it Allietare.  :)

I didn't get a photo of the assembled and trimmed center before it got dark, but you get the idea here.

Bonnie's design calls for a stop border in the teal of my color way, followed by a solid border in black. I do have enough black left, but it really overpowers this colorway. The only color that has enough remaining for a border is the gold set. It looks a little sad, though, with just that, so I played around with my EQ program to come up with a way to use some of the little bonus HSTs from all those decapitated geese patches.

 So now I'll be making some 110 of these bitty units for a border treatment in the gold:

Yep. Those are tiny HSTs in the end! They are 1/2" finished. I think I've lost my mind. But I have all 330 that I need meticulously trimmed, and maybe half of the rest of the pieces cut out. 

So, there's more work to be done on this mystery quilt before I get back to my normally-scheduled BOMs, but I'm happy with my border design, and looking forward to finishing it this week!

~*~*~

Have you worked on any BOMs or similar projects lately? 

We'd love to see your progress or plans.

An InLinkz Link-up

BOMs Away - Allietare, a Kitty, and a Surprise

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'm far from being back on track with my usual work load, but I got a ton of work finished on my Allietare.

I finished Clues 2, 3, and 4, and got a bit started on Clue 5. I really love that I have something like 600 bonus little HSTs from all the dog-ears I double-seamed for the decapitated flying geese units. Those are going to be super fun to play with some time.

When Bonnie let the clues out, I got 1-3 cut with only one patch sewn from 2 and 3. Everything else fell by the wayside until after the holidays, our cruise, and being sick. But now I'm on track for having this quilt top all put together by month's end if not a week from now. That makes me happy.

I would have finished more of 5 today if somebody warm and furry and super sweet hadn't decided to suddenly start being a lap cat while I was pinning sub-patches together. We've been trying to convince him to be more cuddly for ages, so I had to watch a movie instead of returning immediately to my machine. 

And one more thing to share. Check it out! A couple of weeks ago, I was named Student of the Month at Taekwondo!  :D  That actually means a lot to me, because there are tons of people, and this was only the second month this has been given out. 

~*~*~

Have you worked on and BOMs or similar projects lately? We'd love to see your progress or plans.  :)

An InLinkz Link-up

BOMs Away - Allietare, Baekjool Bulgul, Heather's Belt Test

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.

Hello there!  I'm betting I'm not the only one swamped in Christmas prep that's knocking normal schedules completely off the planet.  :)  

Lots of quilting work has happened here the past several weeks that can't be shared. All that's happened for "BOM" work is this much of the Allietare Clue 3:

And that's ALL that will happen with that Mystery until the 28th or so, maybe even later than that!  Well, except it'll all get bagged up and put neatly on my desk so the pool table will be available for its original purpose. . .

In the meantime, this is what gets my attention, in a mad bid to have it all finished by Friday night:

Pretty gold thread work at the moment! I'm just about ready to break the machine back down into free-motion mode.

And after the center's FMQ work is done, I'll go back to the belt work. Super happy that the effect is spot on - the quilting work makes it actually look like little belts lined up together.  :D

Oh! And Heather got her red belt on Saturday up at the dojang near her school. It's so nice to live close enough to drive in for those occasions.  :)   Gotta say, I'm glad we don't have to do active sparring in our regular belt tests!

~*~*~*~

How is your holiday prep time going?!

An InLinkz Link-up

BOMs Away - Allietare & December

Yes! You're in the right place for BOMs Away Monday.

Are you getting excited for Christmas? I am.  :)

This week's BOM time was spent working on Allietare Clue 2 and on the first mini of a year-long gift. 

I cut all the pieces out for Clue 2 of Allietare, sewed one set of the units up, and tucked everything away with a note in a zippy until after the holidays. Looking forward to when it gets its sewing time!  Thank you again to Bonnie Hunter for this year's Mystery.

Go "HERE" for Bonnie's current listing of "Allietare!" mystery details and to find specifics of sizes and numbers of units. I'm linking my smidge of work on her Linky for this week, here: Allietare Part 2 Link-Up

As for the Gift BOM, right now I can only give you a peek:

I'm really happy with how it turned out.  :)

I was also really happy yesterday - It was Belt Test Day at the dojang, and we three got our red belts. I feel like it's our first step of really getting there. I love the hanboks that people wear sometimes for these occasions.

Master Lee really surprised me when he called me up to join Leadership. He always gives red roses to people, young and old, when they are given invitations. 

I love all the fantastic people we've met through Taekwondo. You can't find better folks.  :)

~*~*~*~

How about you? - Did you work on BOMs this past week or so? 

An InLinkz Link-up