BOMs Away - Neptune's Gift, Stitch-Off, Dots, and a Buck

             

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)

Hello  :)

This week I picked up and finished the work for Month 7 on my Neptune's Gift block of the month:

These pieces are getting quite big! Now to catch up months 8 and 9, because 10 just arrived! That would be super if I can catch this up by the time 11 gets here.

While I was doing that, I prepped the next round of my Stitch-Off project, as I'd worked through the stack a while ago. These pieces are almost finished up! Just one more set of units, then this project will be ready for assembly.

(This is my Judy Niemeyer Feathered Goose quilt, from which I keep a stack of prepped units alongside my work area so I can grab one and put it through the machine after I've finished a round of work on my focus project. This lets me snip an entire set of chain piecing off the sewing machine, leaving the Stitch-Off piece on the thread. When I return with the next stage of chain piecing, I don't have to fiddle with holding the thread ends to start off fresh stitching - and over time it does save a significant amount of thread, for a bonus benefit.) 

I got the next batch of dots basted into turned-edge circles, and then glue-basted onto their background squares. This set brings me into October. Here are 4.5 weeks worth of temps, stacked by dot color:

Birds continue to get their finish-work attention during TV time. I have about 1/3 of them squared away now. No pic, though. 

But I do have a pic of this beautiful buck spending lunch time resting in our back yard a couple days ago. Isn't he gorgeous? He was here again last night with four sweet does. Guess they think he's gorgeous, too!  

~*~*~*~

Have you worked on any BOM type projects recently? 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

BOMs Away - Neptune's Gift, and a Large-Bird Easter

 

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)

I hope you had a nice Easter. It was deliciously warm here, something like 72 degrees and gorgeous. I got a little bit ahead of myself and couldn't resist going out for a walk through the meadows behind us. It took zero effort to convince Scott to come along. 

It's just over a half-mile to stroll along the first stretch, cross the little brooklet on the wood palettes somebody placed there forever ago, meander around the bend  to the connecting meadows, and then you can go up the little rise to sit on a bench and watch the cowbirds and magpies doing their meadow "thing". Walking the half-mile back, we saw a gigantic red-tailed hawk surveying all the pocket gopher trails. Asked him to please come catch lunch from our yard. . . ha!

This photo is from Syracuse University. Check out those TALONS!

I thought that since there's not much hilly-ness to deal with on that walk, and we were being leisurely, I'd be fine. But no, just about 6 months out from getting COVID, that much "exercise" trashed me pretty soundly for the rest of the day. Good thing we didn't have company expecting a fancy meal! I was good for nothing but crashing on the sofa until dragging into bed for the night.

But the fresh air and sunshine sure were nice!

Apparently the large birds in our area all thought so, too - we've never had a turkey in the yard!

Texting the "kids," they thought it was cool that we were visited by an Easter Turkey.

But Navarre looks like he could have lived the rest of his life without seeing one - His face!!  lolol

And then we were visited by this sweet Mallard couple. We've seen them off and on the past two years. He stands guard a few feet away from her while she eats her fill under our bird feeders, and when she's happy and lays down for a moment, he'll grab some food for himself . . . and then they fly back to the pond across the street. We don't see them super often, so it's sweet when we do. The Canada Geese that like the same pond never come to our yard.

Between it being Easter and trashing myself doing too much for the long-COVID, My entire sum of BOM work this week was to wash the fabrics from my Month 2 kit that arrived Thursday, and get the pieces cut out on Saturday for some future action. I didn't do a stitch of sewing this weekend.

 

~*~*~*~

I hope you had a pleasant Easter!  Did you happen to do any BOM work? 

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 - Sage and Sea Glass

 

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)

Hello - happy Monday.  :)    It seems that Colorado has decided Sundays are the days to slam our little area with blizzards and major snow, so that folks have to get up extra early on Monday to dig out enough to get to work. (Our street and cul-de-sac do not get plow service, and its steep slope gets impassable, so Scott and Neighbor Jeff hit it with the snowblowers.) Scott doesn't mind the exercise, and I think it's *gorgeous*, so it does make for a nice morning.

8 fresh inches this morning, and not supposed to stop until Wednesday.

This weekend, I did the Bag 2 sewing for Sage and Sea Glass. All 100 QST units are made!

Pressed with spun centers and everything.

I also stitched all the green dots from my Temperature pile of prepped applique. But I didn't tie their ends off or pop them off the stabilizer papers or trim out the centers of the background. Once I finish the two bindings and labels that I'm stitching down, I'll finish these up. 

And, boy, do I need a different color to look at! Blues and greens are definitely my favorites, but I also thrive on variety. Something yellow . . . or red . . . would be nice to provide relief from the cool tones in everything I'm doing right now. As soon as I finish the current priority piecing UFO, I'm going to look for something in my storage that will do that.

~*~*~*~

But now it's about you! Have you done any BOM type work lately? We would 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

March OMG Finish - Window 1

 Yes!  

My first window's valance is FINALLY finished and mounted! 

It's only been in the works for like two years. . .   ::sigh::

I *love* the fabrics. I worried that the turquoise embroidery would be a little weird in the cerulean blue room, but it's spot on with its cheeriness! And the texture of the lining fabric is perfect in the room. And then I also worried about the blush pink shantung silk tabs - was it too much of a pop for the room?

I intended their color to play with the pink-family tones in the floral oil painting I have by the sinks (and the floral arrangement between the sinks and the garden tub). I worried right up until it was finally hung and I stepped back and saw: Happiness.  :)   My ideas came together the way I'd pictured in my mind.

There's a lesson in that: Often as we're working, the components of what we're doing don't seem like they're playing the way we want them to. But in quilting (and décor) the sum of the whole is frequently more than the value of the parts alone, and if you persevere, the end result is terrific. It's hard to trust in that, though, when you also know that sometimes you just end up with a hot mess.

The problem with this project was - - - the upholstery grade fabrics are too much for my sewing machine to handle once you get multiple layers going. So all the header sewing has to be done by hand. It's not fun, even with the correct needle for the job. And we're talking a 64" header! It's hard to push through everything, and even with a thimble it does a number on my finger. So I found it extremely easy to continuously shunt the work aside and do bindings or hand applique, instead, each evening. It took an OMG assignment to get it done.

And now that the first one is finished and up, I have motivation to stitch the heading and tabs onto the second one without resorting to using a quilt's OMG spot to make myself do the work.  ;D

I love this room. It's a good thing I'm the one who pays the water bill each month, or I'd be lounging and reading in here every day. . . 

(Oh - if you're sharp-eyed and wondering about that painter's tape in the middle of my window frames, it's there to remind me that as soon as it's warm enough to open windows to work with smelly things that exacerbate my Lupus, I need to repaint the sashing that was marred when the middle broken window was replaced. Flying shrapnel from another project destroyed that glass - lucky it wasn't a person that it hit!)

Happily linking up to the Elm Street Quilts One Monthly Goal - March Finish Link-up 

BOMs Away - and ~ Flimsy Alert!~ Forever My Valentine on a cold, coooold day!

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)

Happy Valentine's Day.  :)

This turned out to be the absolutely most-perfect day to put this flimsy together - both for theme and for weather! 

The flannel fabrics helped warm my finger and legs while it was all of TEN DEGREES BELOW ZERO while I was working. In-house is a cool 63 degrees despite both fires going. I suppose I could have cranked the register up to 95, but we decided not to. Sweaters, socks, and quilts, Baby!

That super-freeze I was "complaining" about missing out on last week? It's here now!

This was a kitted Block-of-the-Month, designed and sold by Shabby Fabrics. I started it in February 2018. It's 59-1/2 inches square.

Our high today was all of -1 Fahrenheit while I was stitching up the next eight temperature dots. 

And partly because now I had enough dots for it, I'd finished stitching the "year block" during TV yesterday, and because now my BOM board looks So. Very. Bare. with the Valentine blocks gone, I put together the first two rows of my 2021 Temperature Quilt:

(It's still super bare on the whole right portion!)

During lunch, when I looked out at the bird feeder zone, I couldn't figure out what kind of drab-looking robin type bird was nesting in the snow underneath and occasionally drumming up seed from the ground. . .  

(An uncredited photo from Audubon.) I was seeing this big puffball from the top as it was nestled in a hole in the 4-5" of snow that it had carved out.

But it turned out to be one of our adorable little juncos all super-puffed for the polar cold! Good thing they're winter-lovers to start with.

Normally they're petite little things, much smaller than the robin, and you would never mistake them for each other.  I put the photo of the robin above the junco, with them sized to show you the approximate difference in the bird sizes.

Yesterday we had several groups of deer, and one lone buck, come through to suck at the bird feeders - I'm sure they sensed bad weather and wanted to stock up. We haven't seen any of them today. They undoubtedly stayed hunkered down together to keep warm!

So, anyway! I hope you are warm, wherever you are!

 ~*~*~*~

Now it's your turn to share any BOM type work you've done 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 - 2020 means. . . COVID

 

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)

So, Scott and I both have COVID. So does his father, and the timing indicates that we all got it at the funeral for Scott's mom - either from someone there, or in the funeral home or the hall where Dad had a post-funeral luncheon. His father was taken to the hospital yesterday and can have no visitors; I had to go on steroids yesterday, but no ER or ICU, and am at home; Scott, as usual, while he is sick, hasn't been hit as hard as it got me. I am very grateful for that. I find it surpassingly strange that Nebraska does not do any contact tracing. We did our best to get word to all the elderly and medically susceptible people who were also there.

Be careful, everyone, particularly where vulnerable people are concerned.  :(  We are eating aggressively healthy from the moment we suspected we might be getting sick. GONE: sugar, coffee, chocolate. GONE: all dairy, all processed carbs. MOSTLY CUT OUT: salt. With COVID, days 8/9 will tell on whether it is going to hard-crash on you or not. (You start your count on the first day of your symptoms.) The greatest factors contributing to a dangerous crash: smoking. diabetes. advanced age. overweight. high blood pressure. pre-existing medical conditions. So you want to eat a diet that doesn't exacerbate blood pressure, blood sugar surges, or inflammation (thus all those "gone" items).

Every day, we eat fresh-made clear-broth soup loaded with veggies and usually chicken, sometimes a wee bit of beef. Toss in copious amounts of fresh onion, garlic, lemon grass, ginger, turmeric - all natural aids in medicinal boosts. Most likely, your smell is going to be 100% gone, anyway, so the extra onion/garlic isn't going to bother you a smidge. 

Eat plenty of citrus. The natural unprocessed sugar in these is not going to hurt you, particularly since you're not eating bad carbs right now. The vitamins are going to help tremendously, and if you slice lemons and pour hot water onto them (no sugar!), and drink this 2 or 3 times a day, it does a really good job of cleaning out your throat for you and reducing the coughing for a while. Some say it also reduces the viral load your body is having to deal with by washing a good portion of it out of your upper respiratory system. Not sure how much of that is reliable, but, hey. Can only help, not hurt, so I'm all for it.

And roasted veggies with paprika or turmeric sprinkled liberally are great for your other "big" meal of the day. Seriously, as sick as you feel, and as good as this diet hits the spot right now, you're not going to miss the things you've cut out. Although, I'm sure when I feel good again, some hot salmon dip and crackers will be nice. . . or some hot cocoa next time it's snowing . . but right now, no.

I've only had enough energy to do wee bits of hand work on some days. Usually I'm just a zombie staring at the TV if I'm not all the way down in bed. There was only a little bit left to finish Block 6 of my Octopuses Garden project, so I finally have this one to share:

If I weren't so sick, still, I'd be quite excited. That puppy has been in my TV applique tote for AGES. It has four hundred thousand layers.

My method is back-basting, and I absolutely love doing fun inter-layered portions like the curl of the seahorse's tail. It means a dual approach of two different fabric pieces, kinda like braiding. Very satisfying when you finish it.

These blocks also have embroidery on them, but their work greatly exceeds my patience level. So I'm appliqueing all of them in the first go-'round, and then I'll come full circle and do the embroidery.

But now, I am going back to bed. Sorry to be late with this posting. I was too sick yesterday to even think of beginning a post - didn't even realize what day of the week it is. But I'm looking forward to seeing what others have accomplished.  :)

~*~*~*~

Have you been able to do any BOM type work lately? We'd love to 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 -- And Mold Away! (with some Dahlia thrown in)

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.)

Hi! Hopefully, things are going better at your house than they are here. We are living with what sounds like jet engines in our house since Monday - expected to be here until Tuesday, when I really REALLY hope they have done their job and go away!

A peek through the back door.
You CANNOT believe how noisy those blue machines are!!!

Last Sunday evening, Marissa came over for Father's Day, and when she was ready to leave, she wanted to look for a coat she hadn't taken with her before all the stay-home orders began and she quarantined with her boyfriend. 

We haven't touched the coat closet since the third week of February - Stay Home meant no coats needed, grocery stores wouldn't let us use our market bags that live in there, and the dojang's been closed, so no need for the sparring gear. Well, she opened the door, and an EXPLOSION of mold smell flew out into the house. 

Zero sign outside that a huge problem was developing

Whaaaat????!!   How the heck did that develop in such a short period of time?! Turns out the tub drain above the closet decided to leak. Thank goodness Marissa wanted to find her coat, or we may not have found the issue until late August!! As it was, we really lucked out, and the mold/moisture damage had not yet spread past the subfloor to the basement bedroom underneath. 

As it was, I CANNOT believe we didn't know that was happening, that simply keeping that door closed kept us from smelling the mold growing. Lots of different kinds, too. There were gorgeous bright yellow, a cool cheddar orange, but mostly blues and greens and grays. A couple colonies of straight-up black. The team leader said a whole lot of it looked like Penicillin. Cool. We're both allergic to it.  

So that's all torn up, been repaired by the plumber through the ceiling, and then all the closet, ceiling, an adjoining cupboard, and floor were ripped out by the mold mitigation crew, treated, and been "contained" with their specialty equipment doing their thing. 

This side also has a blue monster machine.

Then the mudroom is also sealed off from the rest of the house and has its own little blue monster going, as well. Everything was fumigated on that part of the containment, and yesterday the testing crew did their thing. Assuming the mitigation guys got everything and the tests show up negative on Tuesday, the equipment can be taken out so the rebuild crew can start their work. 

We're still supposed to keep that all sealed off from the rest of the house, but today we were allowed to use the washer/dryer. At least we didn't have to tote everything to a laundrymat. . . although, it would a lot quieter there. . .   

All the coats' shoulders were covered in hairy mold growth, and it was going down most of the arms. They'll all at a textile company's location that specializes in restoring clothing and furniture after mold infestation. Super cool, because the company came and got them and will bring them back! The two pair of snowboots we had in the closet, I just tossed. I'm not convinced they could be cleaned well enough that I'd want my feet in there, sweating for long periods. >Ewwwww<

Anyway - Quilt stuff!  

Do you remember the Dinner Plate Dahlia technique-of-the-month quilt tops that I did last year? This weekend I got a really great start on the quilting of Heather's.

You can see the Caducea that I trapunto'd onto the black petal tips. This quilt celebrates Heather's graduation from medical school. Last year. Yeah. It's getting "2019" quilted onto another spot in the dahlia, and then the big black corner arches are getting a DNA motif that Heather requested. It'll be fun!

Especially since I'm almost finished with the stabilizing task. Super finicky work on this quilt pattern - soooo much curved stitch-in-the-ditch. I finished all the white work for that today, and tomorrow I'll do the black stabilizing SID. Then the real fun begins, with the decorative quilting.  :)  I can't wait to get to that part. 

~*~*~

So, what about you? Have you been able to work on a BOM? 

Sure would love to see!

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 - A Little Reflection in the Water

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.)

How are you doing? We finally got full-on spring here for the past week. Everything is AMAZINGLY green. I've been taking long walks outside lately, often in the meadowland of our area (which we are lucky enough to live right on the edge, of, so I literally just have to step through the backyard to go walking in this:

^^^My absolute FAVORITE kind of day, right there!^^^

The changing colors of the different grasses and reeds mesmerize me.  :)  Those are different plant greens, not cloud shadows. But yes, the sky is that blue, and the meadows are that green right now. These untouched photos match real-life colors remarkably well. No oversaturation here!

The other day I saw some distant neighbors had put up a display of an old wagon they'd acquired, at the top of their driveway.  Cool! 

Of course, my second thought after, "Cool!" was that I should find a way to ask them if they would let me take quilt photos on it. . . 

I didn't feel like sewing much at all this weekend, so I only got part of the Month 2 work done on my Water Reflections BOM:

But, hey! All the Y-seams are out of the way now.  :)

My biopsies came back negative for cancer, which is WAY good, of course! But also means more diagnostics are underway.  ::sigh:: story of my medical life. . .  Ha!   (and more on that subject later, but for now I'm turning this linky party over to you guys!)

EDIT:  OK, Here is the scoop regarding that cancer screening, and since I bet I'm not the only one who didn't know this already, let this serve as a 
Public Service Announcement - 

If you're in official menopause (it's been a full year since your last cycle), you should not have spotting. Not any at all. If you have any - even just a tiny bit - you need to get a GYN appointment. They'll order ultrasounds (be prepared for how physically thorough those are), and they'll likely want to run some blood tests, and do typical pap exams and all. That's because, while there is a good chance that the spotting is from nothing other than hormones wigging out for who-knows-why, it's also the very first sign of several reproductive cancers. Not pain. Not nasty stuff. Just some plain old itty bit of spotting. And say you've got uterine cancer kicking that spotting off, if it's caught right then, it would be extremely rare for you not to be completely cured of the cancer with surgery.

But how many of us who are new-ish to menopause know that even a tiny bit of spotting is something that has to be taken very seriously?

My initial ultrasounds showed traits of concern, so I had to get some biopsies taken. Happily, those came back negative for cancer, but true to form for my body and medical tests, they don't provide any answer as to why my organs are having issues. So currently I'm in the next step of tests, which is a hormone challenge designed to - essentially - reboot your system. I have 5 more days of pills, then the behavior of my body in the following 2 weeks will tell us if that re-set put sense back to things, or if I get to start through the next phase of invasive diagnostics.

In any case, it'll either be all over in a couple of weeks, or if there is some super-slick cancer lurking somewhere crazy, it's so early that it doesn't freak me out.

So tuck that in your head, menopause ladies: Spotting of any degree is not good. Call for a GYN appointment.  :)

~*~*~

So, what about you? Have you been able to work on a BOM? 

Sure would love to see!

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