A Halt to the Un-Quilting

 After a lot of stops and starts and frustrations, the un-sewing or un-quilting has been completed on the Bohemian Wife quilt. 

I made myself stop and not take out the parts that don't really show that are really not my best free-motion quilting ever when you look at them closely.

This Kaffe Fasset fabric is not very robust shall we say? I didn't want to "age" it too much with all the ripping out of the teeny tiny free-motion quilting stitches I had ended up doing in some sections I was honestly struggling with while quilting.

There, it's good enough, I'm not putting it in a competition and it's going to be displayed up on my wall, not really in a close-up situation. Perfectionism is a terrible trial to get through and let go of, isn't it? I really was pushing myself to get this quilted when I was still in recovery mode for the August BAMQ UFO Challenge deadline. If I had just stuck with the walking foot and not tried to do the free-motion with the same dark purple thread, it wouldn't have turned into such a work stoppage. Now that I'm feeling much better, more myself, whatever, and I'll make better thread color choices I'll go back in with free motion quilting again
Okay, back to quilting this again!

Doggo Coat Finished

 

There were only two steps left to finish to complete the dog coat, adding the Velcro and the binding. This was very small binding, so it was a bit fiddly to get it on, but I went slowly and it worked out very well.

Before sewing on the "belt" and the velcro, I put it on Meg one more tine to make sure my triple try at measurements had been correct. It fit everywhere except the belt. I think the smaller measurement I got she was worried and so had sucked in her stomach with tension. So I had sew a little extension on the end on of the belt before adding the Velcro. Glad that I checked a fourth time.

The pictures of it without a dog inside are rather strange, what is this thing anyways? A quilt with a belt?

I used the new soft and thin Velcro as it was the only one in my stash. I had no idea I was mostly out of velcro.

She was snoozing with DH on the couch, but I woke her up and put it on her. It fits perfectly! And it looks so cute on her.

She looks rather unsure here, but she perked right up and went outside and then happily kept it on for the rest of the evening. She's got it back on this morning, I think she likes it! One of our cats freaked out about  it thought this morning, got all puffed up and stalker-y, he thought she was an intruder dog. Nope, just a cozy Meg, that's all.

Okay one more item off of the UFO list, hooray! This was much easier than I thought, there was no 3-D construction or fitting together of pieces. The hardest part was A) Finding the Pattern and B) Measuring the Dog in Question.

A Dog Coat Begins

Switching over to working on my BAMQ UFO challenge for this month, the Dog Coat I've said I'm going to make for many years. The hardest part so far was finding the pattern. I had put it somewhere it was supposedly going to be easier to find than where I usually keep patterns. Oh well, outfoxed myself again. I started out wit selecting fabrics and layering them quilt style and getting some basic quilting done before cutting the pattern pieces out. I'm using a Tula Pink print on one side, and one of my husband's pink Oxford shirts on the other. The fabric is perfectly good, just the cuffs and collars wore out,  but Meg doesn't need those. (or does she?hmmmm?)

Instead of making bias binding myself, I'm hoosing to try the vintage Bias seam tape from my Grandma's stash. New York Fabrics, remember those? Back in the day they had way better stuff than Joanne's ever did. This pink will be perfect1

The pink reversible with print piece is the "belt" that goes around the dog's belly and velcroes underneath.

I think all the Tula prints work together well as per usual.

So far so good, I think this is going to work well for Meg.

Adding Blue

 

Okay, I think that's enough variety of blues for the last ingredients of this block. The quilt and pattern designer, Bonnie K. Hunter calls this a Lupine Star. That sounds like a good name to me. While I was cutting out the blue pieces I  tried to cut from mainly the lightest blues I had been working with for this quilt. So they're not all different as the pink block centers are, but I don't think that will matter too much once the other block that makes up this quilt gets added in-between.

Twenty-five Squares

I only managed to cut out the twenty-five 1.5" pink squares for the Lupine mystery quilt today. The good news is that I was able to get the majority of them cut out of the scraps I've been collecting as I've been going through all the clues which was easier than wrangling big pieces of fabric to cut out that tiny square.

At least I pinned them up with the block units they'll be going into on the design wall. 

Next up, the blue sashing that will go in-between the four block units. I cut out three block's worth to see how it looks. hmmm. Not too sure about that dark one.

Finished Spikies

 

The rest of the spiky star block units left to sew together was a pretty big stack.

Adding to the finished blocks up on the design wall kept me sewing.

The chain sewing was quite long, but these go together easily if you follow the pressing directions.

All they need is the final seam.

And there they all are, hurrah! Now to cut out the blue sashing and pink cornerstones that will go in between each set of four. Getting there.

Still Spiking

 

I dealt out the colors and prints for the remaining Spiky Star blocks for the Lupine Mystery and sewed most of them together.  Chain piecing style. The remaining piles to be sewn are in the foreground.

Not too many of these sets left to get together I have quite an assortment of pink, purple and "white/neutral" fabrics in these blocks. Some are great combinations, some not so much. Overall, hopefully they'll work in the quilt.