Bohemian Wife Quilting

I've finally made a start on getting the Bohemian Wife quilt actually quilted. First I did the vertical lines. A lot of stopping and starting, but it worked out. Used the walking foot, it went very well. 

Then I switched over to quilting the quilt blocks. And it turns out, I really should have switched over the thread color I was using.  

The medium red/purple that I was using blended in pretty well with all those vertical prints and on a lot of the blocks. A lot of the blocks have straight lines, which are tough to do well with free motion quilting. 

So I got out my new ruler quilting foot and the ruler I bought to go with it. Definitely straightened up my lines a lot, (especially for my first time) but still not good enough especially with that dark thread. And a lot of the blocks use lighter colored fabrics as well which makes that situation even more apparent. The quilting ruler is on the quilt there, but it's quite see-through isn't it?

I pinned up the quilt on the design wall to see if it was even visible from a normal viewing distance. Nope, not really. 

But a couple steps away from the quilt and yikes on bikes! Just to me, it will always bug me. I'm not planning on entering this in any shows or competitions, so it truly doesn't matter. Except I'll know it looks bad and takes away from the look of the quilt I've spent so much time making. 

I will have to pick out a whole bunch of quilting and then switch over to a lighter color so every little but and squiggle shows up so plainly.. Sigh, still un-picking and trying not to just give up on this one when I'm so close to finishing.

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Simple Sawtooth Star Blocks

A small group of friends is making a Quilt of Valor style of quilt for one of our parents who served in the military. One of us designed a really nice quilt in EQ8 and we diviiiid up the block making responsibilities. I didn't have much white fabric around, so I found this great white on white print to use with the solids.

Thank goodness the organizers reminded us to pre-wash, because look at those red splotches on the color catchers.

Here's my two Simple Sawtooth Star blocks.

September To-Do

Here's how my design wall is looking on the first of September. Four finishes are pinned-up, as I'm not working on piecing or designing, just doing a lot of quilting at the moment. Those finishes do need to move along and make room for what I'll be working on this coming month.

 Note: the use of 🥏👽  by a project name indicates that it's on the 2026 UFO Finishes challenge list of six projects that I committed to finishing at the beginning of the year (more on that list later). Note, this is not the same list as the UFO Challenge for BAMQ, that UFO will have this next to it on the list:🌀🌐  

QUILTS

Design & Begin

Pantone Project - work on an overall design, either in EQ8 or up on the design wall.

Lupine & Laughter Mystery Quilt - keep making units following the clue instructions

BAMQ BOM - make monthly blocks of varying sizes through the year.

Continue Assembly

Patchwork Palooza - Decide on borders, make backing & binding

Keep working on Sour Grass Grace from Jane Sassaman class.

Old Town Mystery Quilt - make a backing & binding, decide on whether to have it quilted

AG Stamp Quilt - continue to make more blocks using the final group of fussy-cut stamp block centers from Tula Pink fabrics.

Continue the piecing of Selvedge Candy (maybe the name) quilt originally designed for the 2025 MQG challenge.

🥏👽 Sew the last 6 columns and sashing together of the 2023  Temperature Quilt together to make the quilt top.

🌀🌐 David Owen Hastings class piece, assemble into quilt top, quilt, finish🥏👽 

                                      

Quilting

🥏👽 Bohemian Wife - Finish quilting it🌀🌐 

Final Steps 

🥏👽 Bending the Calendar - Cut up? Re-arrange? Embellish?🌀🌐 

HANDWORK/BAG/CLOTHING PROJECTS 

Make a Cotton Candy pouch for myself.

Make a Charlie's Aunt wool purse for myself, first felt the wool from Pendleton Mill.

Toned-Down Circle Sampler - now that I have the appropriately sized grey background felt, arrange and appliqué the circles, start embroidering.

Y.E.S. Coat - continue making pieces/blocks. assemble on foundation, cut out lining pieces from the fabric that I dyed

Snake In The Garden - Finish hand stitching -  🌀🌐

Body Pillow-knit cotton pillowcase - 🌀🌐 

Quilted Dog Jacket for Meg - 🌀🌐  

Hey! This Is All Finished!

Mosaic Table Runner -  this one is going right onto my dining room table.

I continue to be a bit shocked. This is now five months in a row with some actual finishing happening. 

Yes, it 's not all that much, but there's some movement happening on several of these projects, 

I am planning on continue with the finishing energy into September.

Splendiferous September

 

September has arrived, and so far, so splendiferous. extraordinarily or showily impressive, magnificent or extremely beautiful. I keep telling my studio assistants that if they sleep so deeply in the studio they are at risk of being decorated, as in the above monthly marker photo.

I started with this picture of the Mosaic table runner.

Then I ran it through the app Percolator.

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And then in SnapSeed I overlaid this picture of curled up sleeping studio assistant #2.

Here is the 1SE video for August.

 Monthly I-Did List for August

1. I worked and worked on sewing the 200 HRTs needed for the Lupine Mystery quilt.
2. I finished up my efforts for the 2026 ICAD.
3. I pin basted the Bohemian Wife quilt.
4. I started sewing together the first blocks for the Lupine Mystery quilt and finished them.
5. I made a pair of pillowcases for an exchange.
6. I made two big Bow Tie blocks for the BAMQ BOM.
7. I quilted and finished the Mosaic table runner.
8. I made a big Square in Square block for BAMQ BOM.
9. I dug out and actually worked on the David Owen Hastings class piece (on my UFO list.)

There were definitely some interruptions this month, some bad like the Meg foot injury and a four day fever I had with an additional few days recovery time. Then there were some good ones too like the local music festival, and the usual extensive summer gardening efforts. Mostly I think I was still in recovery mode from the unpleasantness from July, as they say "getting older is not for the faint of heart." Here's hoping that September will see some more sewing and finishing.

August Cornucopia

 

The end of August means it's time for a cornucopia post. This is a gathering together of links to various media that I've consumed, enjoyed, or learned from this past month. Hope you find something of interest to you.

🌞🌤🌥🌦⛅🌞

The interesting and terribly cute Seattle raccoon named Jimothy gets an EQ8 free quilt designed for him.

🌞🌤🌥🌦⛅🌞

I saw some clips on social media about the LA Public Library Guinness Book World of Records largest pop-up book, but this video is truly amazing. What a creative feat of paper engineering!

🌞🌤🌥🌦⛅🌞

A new and very fun collaborative app (so far just for Apple phones)  from Zak Foster, Our Daily Quilt

🌞🌤🌥🌦⛅🌞

OK GO has a fun word game, called Say The Same Thing, now in an app version. 

🌞🌤🌥🌦⛅🌞

💓RIP Dolly Parton, I will always love you💓. Did you know she did a version of Stairway to Heaven? She asked Robert Plant if she could add a new verse as she had a slightly different take on the song. He of course said yes. What a gift to the world she was, she'll always be missed and loved. 

🌞🌤🌥🌦⛅🌞

🌞🌤🌥🌦⛅🌞

🌞🌤🌥🌦⛅🌞

🌞🌤🌥🌦⛅🌞

🌞🌤🌥🌦⛅🌞

🌞🌤🌥🌦⛅🌞

🌞🌤🌥🌦⛅🌞

YMMV

I haven't sewn at all this week, had a weird fever for several days, which took a bit to recover from. Mostly just spending my energy keeping the plants (and the family) alive. So this is a bit of a YMMV *(Your Mileage May Vary) post. This is a picture of a succulent that's on our outdoor table that I eat lunch at when it's not too hot. I truly love the ombré colors of the leaves, sometimes when I'm not careful watering it holds on to one perfect drop of water in its center. The sun dries it out quickly of course. But it's always nice to catch the sun shining in it.  

When I was feeling yucky, my DH bought me a popsicle when he was out and about. It's supposed to be SpongeBobSquarepants, but looked a lot like how I was feeling at the moment. When you have a fever and don't want to eat anything, a popsicle really hits the spot. 

We've been making popsicles lately, and I made some with coconut/pineapple juice, wow was that ever weird. The saltiness fell all the way to the tip of popsicle and concentrated itself (heavier than everything else I guess), so the first lick was Super Weird. But then it was as good. as I'd hoped it would be. 

Hot tip:  The 

To The Power of Seven juice from Trader Joe's makes insanely good popsicles.

I took the traditionally terrible pictures of the lunar eclipse, which we had a lot of cloud cover for, but it opened up just enough to see the moon with a big bite out of it. But with the naked eye, I really could see the moon quite clearly, more than usual. I like the slightly red-orange tint around the edge, it was a visible "Blood Moon" in SoCal apparently.

We had a red flag warning on Friday because of the remnants of two tropical storms combining and coming through, so I spent a lot of time watering outside "just in case", even while it rained a little bit on me (as I was watering). The clouds were weird that day and it was very muggy for an hour or two after the rain.

And I happened to notice when my car turned over 86,000 miles *exactly* which was for some reason, worth a picture, even on Bear Creek Road.

Hopefully back to some sewing content soon!

Shades of 2022

 

Today was a super fun sew day with friends and I brought one of my UFO's to work on. This was from a wonderful class with David Owen Hastings. A virtual class that I took way back in pandemic-times in 2022 with SBAMQG. It's based on a Salvador Dali print that we have up on the wall. 

It had been quite a while since I'd worked on it, so I propped up the note in all caps that I'd left for myself. The key thing I learned in the class (and in many others as well of course): when sewing curved pieces of fabric together, don't forget: CONCAVE ON BOTTOM. It just works better that way.

A fabric layout for the next block along with the sketch/"pattern" with color choices and sewing order noted. 

these were the three blocks that I'd finished in the class.

And here are the three I made today. Yes, that one on the bottom was the last of the day and I really should have quit while I was ahead, etc and I'll be re-making that one! And the one on the upper left, that pinned-on dark blue shape is tbd on whether it is staying or not.

Here they are all together. I think I might need one more that's got the red/orange/yellows happening.. I have to go check my class notes to see how this is supposed to turn into a quilt top.