Grey Birds

 Time for me to make another block for the BAMQ BOM, so it's back to the Box o' Greys.

This month it's Birds In The Air, and I'm going to use an EQ8 version.

I made two of these blocks, and I really like how they turned out. I almost want to make two reverse blocks to make a big four patch out of them.

More of a Bowtie

 

I got a question about my original Bow Tie block that I made for the BAMQ BOM, why did I make it look like little butterflies? Good question! So, I thought I would try to make an actual bowtie looking block.

I used the same pattern to make the same size block,  and shaded it in for myself on the directions. That helped. I still don't see the shape as a bowtie, but I like how it looks.

And of course, now there are even more teeny tiny HST's™ to add to my envelope.

So there's how it all looks todgether.

Bam Bom Catchup

 

I realized I of course had missed out completely on the July BAMQ B.O.M. This month is square in a square. My studio assistant pretended to be napping but she was keeping a sharp eye on me.

Especially when I used the spray bottle of starch when it was time to iron.

There it is, a nice big block. And yes, I wish I had paid more attention to the direction of the dots. But it's not too bad.

All together now! It's getting pretty big, and I may go back and make some more of the alternative versions and sizes of the blocks.

Fairly Recent New Inputs

 

We had an excellent BAMQ meeting on Saturday, and as per usual I snagged something off of the free table. Is this not the cutest fabric ever? I have had several cats over the years who definitely believed they were part deer, because of their outdoor interactions with the local deer gang. I totally missed this Violet Craft fabric line from 2016, so it's fun to get a "vintage" fabric that's new to these eyes at least. I love how the free table changes over the year depending on who is doing a stash cleanout, etc.

And then there was a nice surprise, I won the drawing for the BAM BOM prize this month. And it's all yellows and oranges. These are great, I never have enough yellow choices.

Then I realized I hadn't posted my recent purchase from the great quilt shop, Sewlarium in Portland. The owner has been making very entertaining reels on Instagram recently, one that spurred me to shop online at his shop. Another one of the William Morris/Kaffe Fasset fabrics, an interesting check, too cute to pass up vintage looking owls and a speckled orange.

And how nice, he threw in one of their shop stickers which is so hilarious, I love it so much.And then way back in June, I went shopping for the fabric to make the pillowcases for friend Amy, which I found at Hart's Fabric in Santa Cruz. 

That's three of the fabrics there, the other one that Really Doesn't Fit In,  is for the medallion quilt I've been collecting fabrics for.

Also in June, I went to Santa Cruz Vac n' Sew, because I needed some more lime green for the 6x6 quilt, that's what those two greens are, then there's the yard of toweling that I got for more napkins,  and some upholstery thread and sewing machine needles. The Marcia Derse fabric is from The Granary.

Really catching up here, again in June, I went to a doctor appointment that is dangerously close to Golden State Quilting, and apparently I was in a shopping mood. I got two more new Marcia Derse prints, a couple of FQ's in acid green and yellow, a new Quilter's Select ruler, a mini braid template, 

and finally a FQ pack of the newest Anna Maria Horner fabrics. Aren't they just so fun and exuberant? Seen here with the two FQ's I got down at the bottom.

Well that turns out to have been a whole lot of fabric acquisition since the last time I updated the fabric tracker.  I swear, July was such a weird mind-bender that I was wondering where all this new fabric came from, so I'm glad I went through this exercise for this post and to:

Updating the 2026 fabric tracker: 

26.25 fabric in

- 26.85 fabric out =

-.6 NET Fabric Usage

Put a Bowtie on It

Back to working on the BAMQ BOM, this time we're making a bowtie block. I always put up the blocks I've made so far so that I can check on the print mixture and color balance I've got going already. I decided  I wanted a mostly lighter  overall block (except for the bowties), and a fairly large block this time.

There's so many different ways to do this one, but I chose a fairly large quadruple version. My idea was to have a lot of fabrics in this block, mostly light grey prints in the background, some of which I haven't used yet. And then a mix of the darker almost black prints I've been working with. This was my initial layout.

Here's the final layout I decided on. Too bad the dark prints are getting cut in half triangles to make the bowties, I kind of like this look as squares.

Time to use a specialty ruler, the Simple Folded Corners ruler.  I put little sticky bookmarks for the edge lines I'm aiming for.

I chose the No-Trim version instead of the Oversize and Trim version. I like doing it this way, no line drawing or extra trimming required.

Did I sew together that teeny tiny HST™ as well as the folded corner? 

I bet you already knew the answer to that one! There can never be too many teeny tiny HST™s!

All the parts ready to assemble.

And there it is, a quadruple bow-tie block with 15 different prints.

The new block fits in really nicely I think. This is going to be an interesting quilt to try and put together.
 

X-Plus Block

 I was struggling with the X-+ block for the BAMQ BOM, and it turned out that the template I printed out wasn't at full size. Soooo, no wonder it didn't fit! Started over with these directions for a 12.5" block. I almost 

I had to interrupt my studio assistant's nap time. And clean off the felt pressing pad. Usually I cover it up, but he always takes advantage if I forget to.

All pressed, including the bonus HST's. They're not teeny tiny but they will probably make it into the final quilt somehow.

All together now. Hey, I actually like this one! After all the hassling around because of my mistake in printing it really wasn't a hard block to do.

Note to self: Always check the size of the printing - not fit to print, but 100%

I may still do the giant (24" square) version.

Here's how all the blocks are looking together. Some of the "mistakes" from making this block are on the upper left, they may or may not make it into the quilt.  It certainly would make a very strong border if I continued those!

Back to BOM

 

Back to the BAMQ BOM, two month's worth of blocks are due at our upcoming June meeting. I got the Drunkard's Path 6" block done very easily, which was a nice surprise as I usually have some struggles with piecing curves.

I think it turned out pretty nicely, and I'm happy with my fabric choices.

Here's how all the blocks are looking so far. Not a final design at all, just putting them all up on the wall.

Now on to doing the next one, which is an X Plus block. I am struggling so far, so I may just make a ginormous one using this tutorial from CapitolaQuilter.

Sawtooth ++

 After fiddling around with the teeny tiny center block I started, I finished the rest of it up. 

Not terribly happy with it because a couple of the points got cut off, and for such a complicated block it was very small at 5.75"square. But I did like the way the various fabrics I used worked to get across the SnailTrail/Sawtooth Star idea. So, I decided to use it anyways, make a frame and put the block on point. That looked a little better to me, and now it was a lot bigger at 8.5" square.

And then, hey, why not plop it into the center of another Sawtooth Star to finish it all off and make it big big big? I tried out some ideas (from this tutorial) pinned up on the design wall to make sure I'd like the look of that.

K-bam@*%! Now it's pretty darned big (16.5"square) and most importantly it's all done. I'm calling it a Sawtooth ++ and I'm ignoring the cutoff points thank you very much. Now to post it to the BAMQ BOM.

Sawtooth Star Started

 

For this month's BAMQ BOM which is a Sawtooth Star, I was inspired to try to make a combination Snail's Trail/Sawtooh Star block. I saw a version of this block called a Woven Star, in friend Jaye's Star Sampler quilt, and there's a tutorial here that she had linked to.

Doing the first part first, before cutting out anything else.

Why did I make this so small to start with? Who knows, but it looks cool.

Am I wishing I'd followed the helpful tutorial now, instead of making up my own version? Maybe, we shall see.

I like how complicated and layered this is looking. 

Now on to the rest of the block.

Bad Bunny Trimming

 

After making those Flying Geese blocks for the Bamq BOM, I ended up with a bunch of teeny-tiny HSTs™ to iron and trim. All because I didn't bring the special ruler along with me and so I had to make the Flying Geese blocks the "wasteful" way. I wasn't feeling up to going to Costco for our usual Super Bowl speed run, so I set up with my iPad on my sewing table and watched some of the game as I pressed. I may use these teeny-tiny's in the quilt that I make out of all the Bamq BOM.

And then I trimmed all of them. It was such a great halftime show. It was like a little mini history lesson and musical and dance party all rolled into one. I don't know Bad Bunny's music at all, I've only encountered him in movies like Bullet Train. He is quite a performer.

I know just enough Spanish to be able to catch a lot of what he was saying and singing, but I looked up the translation of how he first introduced himself: "My name is Benito Antonio Martínez Ocasio, and if I'm here today at Super Bowl 60, it's because I never, ever stopped believing in myself. You should also believe in yourself. You're worth more than you think. Trust me."  What a great message to start out with! 

I had a hard time simultaneously chair-dancing and trimming, but I was careful to take turns so I didn't cut myself. I can see why he's the most popular current artist these days. The NFL was smart to ask him to do the halftime show, they're looking to get a wider range of fans watching worldwide, and the ratings were record-breaking, at least for the halftime.

I'll admit I was crying a bit at the end, Bad Bunny saying "God Bless America" (the only words of English that he spoke) and then naming off all of the countries that comprise South, Central and North America was so beautiful and moving to me. The football that he had been holding the whole show (he got more yards rushing than the Patriots did, hah!), he then held it out and you could see that it said: 

TOGETHER WE ARE AMERICA.   

The big screen at the stadium displayed this very powerful message:

THE ONLY THING MORE POWERFUL THAN HATE IS LOVE. 

Here, here!

That was a really good combination to keep me going until I was all done.

Afterwards, I loved reading all the how-they-did-it information about the complicated production of the half time performance. It was really quite impressive technically, because the limitations of not ruining the real grass playing field and getting set up and off on time. The couple that was shown being married during the performance, actually got married.  This interview with one of the 400 people who wore 50 pound grass costumes (seen above) is a great behind-the-scenes peek of how something like this works. That would have been very fun to be a bunch of grass!

In case you missed it, here's a link on YouTube to the whole thing.