BOMs Away Monday - 20 May - Swap, Janes, Scott's USAFA Surgeon Command Coin

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.

Crazy busy here. This week for BOM sewing I did my swap partner's block, so just a peek:

and 5 Jane babies leaves me at only 1 behind schedule:

I've also been wanting to share the latest Air Force coin that my husband was awarded a couple of weeks ago. Being active duty Air Force since 1990, he's got quite a large collection by now, but what I find so special about this one is that the way Scott handled the emergent situation, the Commander awarded the coin not only to him, but also to everyone under Scott's command. In my book, that's pretty stinkin' cool.  :D

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 So - what have you 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.

BOMs Away - Mother's Day, Ruffled Roses, and Jane

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.

I have had the best time for Mother's Day - this is the first time in 11 years that I've had all three of the girls with me for the day. It was gorgeous outside, so we spent some time hiking around on the trails near the Air Force Academy. 

I just love these ladies.  :)  

Even when they're photo-bombing. . .   lol~!

 

We also got what has apparently become a regular Sunday visit from the nursery herd of mule deer in our area. They are a group of 9 mothers and juveniles that roam together. I think they are 3 mature mothers, 3 "babies", and 3 "teens".

Today the mothers and a teen settled down for rests under the ponderosas while the young ones lapped happily at the various bird feeders around the yard. Can you find all 5 deer in the shot below?

So - second week of the month is for Ruffled Roses. Got its trellis border finished and attached, along with the next stop-border to protect all those seam ends. 

And somehow I got 7 more Jane babies caught up despite a gruelling 1750-mile-in-two-days trip to St. Louis to move our oldest home from college for the summer. Got a nice little walk in with her on the Greenland trail by Palmer Lake on Friday morning. 

I hope you guys have had a nice week as well!

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 What have you 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.
  

BOMs Away - 5 May 2013

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.

First of all, 

to my Mexican friends!!

This week's BOM focus was Kelly's project, and the work load was so much nicer than the last two months' directions!

First, make a Tree of Life (in duplicate)

And spin it around if you are Blogger.   ;D

Then add the smaller stars to get this unit:

It's getting there!

And, the weekly Dear Jane catch-up pile:

Hard to believe, but it won't be too terribly long until this project is off my BOM list!

[Side grumble: Clearly, my camera is no longer functioning properly! Sorry for all the blurriness.]

~*~*~*~*~ 

 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 Report - Marissa's Restore Innocence Civics Project

In our school district, Civics is a required class for graduation, and to pass that class, you must do a minimal number of hours of an approved community service. Marissa got permission to make a quilt under the auspices of the Front Range Modern Quilt Guild, and her targeted organization was Restore Innocence. Before moving out here to Colorado and coming into contact with people who work with rescued girls and women, I had no clue about the extent of human trafficking in the United States. It's truly appalling.

The best way for us to journal this for me to insert her report, so I'm just going to do that.  :)  Hope you enjoy, and may you be inspired to include a little community service sewing each month in your lives - be that making quilts for Restore Innocence, Quilts of Valor, firehouses or police stations, or battered women and children's center, Christmas stockings for children's centers, bibs for Alzheimer's patients, fetal demise pouches for stillborns, wheel chair lap quilts for nursing homes, or individual blocks for any variety of gifts of love to people near and far. 

Here are Marissa's words:

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For my Civics project, I made a quilt for Restore Innocence. This included piecing the top, basting all the layers together, and quilting it. The quilt I made used a rainbow of colors on a white background. The entire quilt is 165 separate pieces. This part took about six and a half hours.

Finding a layout I like

I went to the April meeting of my mom’s quilt guild to show them the top. It took my mom and I about an hour and a half to pin-baste the layers. I quilted it in a grid-work style that’s popular with modern quilting. My mom did about a third of the quilting to get it finished on time, and it took us each about four hours to quilt the entire thing. Once the quilt was finished it was washed, so it would be clean and ready for its future owner. On the third Saturday of May, I will show the guild the finished quilt, and then turn it in to Restore Innocence.

Sewing rows together

At the guild meeting I learned that my work making a quilt helps them at the same time that it helps the charity I chose. This is because the guild is a non-profit organization and keeps track of its community service hours to help determine its tax-free status. But the real beneficiary will be a girl, probably very close to my age, at the Cinderella House in Colorado Springs. “Restore Innocence is a faith-based, 501(c)3 non-profit organization dedicated to helping victims of child trafficking. Because of the lack of aftercare facilities specific to victims of domestic minor sex trafficking in the United States, Restore Innocence operates The Cinderella House, a safe house where victims can find true restoration.”

Showing the top at the guild meeting

What new skills did I learn? I learned more about color theory, such as how the traditional R-B-Y color wheel is all wrong. I learned how to use an advanced sewing machine, and also how to pin-baste a quilt. You need to tape the layers down on a flat surface. You can’t let the pins be too far apart, or else the quilt will have ugly creases in the back.

Pin-basting the layers

I would say it was a positive experience because nothing really happened that was negative. I scraped up my finger pulling pins when the quilt was done, but overall, it went well.

Learning to use the safety-pin tool

I have grown personally working on this project, because I learned that there’s so much more to community service than volunteering. The guild my mom goes to now does things like fetal demise bags, so mothers who have stillbirths don’t need to take their baby home in a brown paper bag. They also do firehouse quilts, so that if a child’s home burns down, the fire station can give the child a quilt. The Flying Needles quilt guild focuses on quilts of valor for military people who are injured on deployment, wheelchair lap quilts for nursing homes, quilted bibs for Alzheimer’s patients, and quilted stockings for children’s centers. And my mother told me about opportunities for community sewing that are organized in the blog world; for example, in the past year, she has answered calls for cheerful pillowcases for the surviving elementary students at Sandy Hook, quilt blocks for a woman whose husband died of a brain tumor, quilt blocks for a young bride whose husband was killed in Afghanistan, and most recently, blocks for victims of the Boston Marathon bombing.

Showing the finished quilt to Mrs. Richie, my Guild supervisor

I never realized how much community service you can do from your own home. It’d be great for someone who’s very introverted, or has just moved to somewhere new and doesn't know anyone.

Here you can see the back

When I took the finished quilt to Mrs. Richie’s house, she told me how I probably won’t be able to give my quilt directly to a girl because after the FBI bring them in, their identities and locations are kept secret for their protection. I’m glad I made a quilt though, because for a lot of them, this will be their first personal item, as they don’t even have the clothes off their back because they’ve been taken for evidence.

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I just love the giant smile on her face when she was showing her quilt to Melissa.  This quilt is 65" x 72", has a scrumptious batiste backing with a very thin poly batt, which made for a super-scrunchable feel that just begs you to squish it in a hug. 

You gotta love the rainbow ice cream fabric that called to her!

The feature squares are the Mirror Ball Dot Michael Miller fabric. I let Marissa use up the set of 18 colors in fat-sixteenths that I got in my swag bag at the Crazy Old Ladies retreat in February, along with a bunch of my Kona snow yardage. Scott sponsored her for buying backing fabric since we couldn't find anything in my stash that looked really great for it, and it was going out as a special gift from the heart. 

I did put the binding on for her since she was out of time, way over the required hours, and had never done that before. Whenever her next quilt-making time is, I'll teach her that skill, too.  

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Linking up at

TGIFF

Can I get a Whoop! Whoop!

Link-a-Finish Friday

May Goal Post and Tutorial for Matching Stripes in Binding Strips

May First-of-Month WIPs 'n UFOs

This is my monthly planning link for these wonderful motivationals:

Carrie's NOTHING BUT UFOs 2013

A LOVELY YEAR OF FINISHES 2013

Lee's WIP Wed

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May Goal Post:  

On the UFO front:

Dragonfly Party 1 (UFO) - Hand stitching station. Home from southern Utah - This will be my first time blocking a quilt before I bind it for the finish!! 

Dragonfly Party 2 (UFO) - Hand stitching station. This quilt got home from rural Scotland in an amazing 4 days - block and bind it for the finish!!

TUTORIAL FOR MATCHING STRIPES:

The binding for these finishes is a stripe, and since the quilts have enormous sentimental value and were quilted by master-longarmers Kay and Judi, I'm making sure those stripes line up perfectly on the diagonal joins of the strips. Here's how I do that:

Square off the selvage: 

Lay the square-off end perpendicular to the end you're joining, making sure it's perfectly lined up at the top:

Fold a diagonal this way, perfectly bisecting that top corner and carefully lining the left edges of the top strip up. Give it a good finger crease:

Normally I open it back up, pin it like the first picture below, and sew down the crease. BUT. . . This time, slide the folded end to the left until the stripes are matched perfectly and pin it like the second picture below:

Those actually match perfectly when you hold the top corner down. The metallic strips in this fabric fight the crease.

Now set your machine to the narrowest zigzag it will do:

And you will sew the folded edge down with a minute zigging. The right-fall of the needle should lie against the edge of the fold while the left-fall catches just the tiniest smidge of fabric (one thread's width):

I find it very helpful to use a pin to hold the fold steady. For this job, I want something even more precise than my Purple Thang. 

You can assembly line these, and you'll have this:

Open the fold and flatten it out without stretching the bias line:

Then close it back up so you can cut off the overhang:

And then the whole shebang is ready to go to the ironing station!

~~Back to my May goals~~

The next UFOs I want to work on this month:


Kelly's 1930s (UFO) - Hand stitching station. If the stitching on the two above is completed before month's end, start finishing Kelly's hand quilting for her. Learn to use that funky spoon thing.

Mermaid Fantasy for Heather (UFO) - Piecing station. Finish the borders and prep for quilting.

(There's more to it than this focal panel)

The NewFO NETY of the month: (Not Even Touched Yet) - Today I really don't feel like pulling the project I'd projected for May back at New Year's, which is Tuscany Terrace on the top of these photos. Instead, I might pull Valley of the Kings, or Simple Pleasures, or Spring Pillowcases. . . Or maybe I *will* do Tuscany Terrace. It would be nice some day to have more than one king size bed option. . . 

Who knows??

And I probably won't get past washing the fabrics, 

but the real point for this month's NewFO is to get a NETY out of Cold Storage and into the land of the living quilt lineup.

Now for the WIPs, which you've seen lately:

Run, Kitty, Run (Gift from stash) - FMQ station. finish the blue portion of the FMQ, and do at least the running on the cream. Really would like this completely finished.

BOMs (4 UFOs and the long-term WIP) - Piecing station. continue one morning's work each week with rotating focus on Kelly's Heritage quilts, Ruffled Roses, Block Swap Adventure, and Hello, Moon. 

Dear Jane - Piecing station. Catch up the remaining blocks. This was April's catch-up progress:

So - I'm hoping for two UFO completions and one WIP pretty darn close to being finished! The rest is just forward motion, and that's OK by me.