A Sweet Quilted Mermaid / Beauties Pageant 256

 

The past six weeks have been marked by an unusual phenomenon for me: foundation paper piecing. I am no stranger to the precision I can achieve with this technique, but I am more of a traditional-piecing kind of girl.

Past FPP projects have included my last week’s Little Sprout mini (see it here), Grape Fizz, a Henlo Fren pillow, my Warm and Cool Quilt (which requires minimal and very basic FPP), and my Set to Spin design (which involves a bunch of time and many pieces but is so pretty) ...

 

This week, I’m unveiling my finished mermaid mini from designer Kid Giddy (see the top of the post). This design may be small, but it is definitely an intermediate-level project. My seam ripper got a good workout as I connected the pieces with long stitches, tore those stitches out, and then tried again to get a clean join. In the end, the effort was worth the great results.

I finished this cutie off with minimal quilting. I didn’t want to take away from Miss Mermaid or the fabulous mermaids in the background fabric ...

That amazing background fabric—and the prints for her body—came from a half-yard bundle of Magic, an older line by Sarah Jane. There is a lot of that bundle left, and I have a new freebie in the works as a result. 

Here’s the deal with my free patterns: They are sent directly to newsletter subscribers. I then release them in my Etsy shop for a nominal fee for quilters who aren’t into newsletters. A dollar of each of those sales goes to support a Down syndrome organization. (Read about my connection to DS here.) If you want to get in on the free option, I recommend signing up for the newsletter now. I expect to release the pattern before the end of the summer!

Linking up to My Favorite Finish at Quilting Jet Girl!

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A Little Sprout Mini / Beauties Pageant 255

One of my special talents is signing up for quiltalongs and then never sewing a stitch. I mean, I get excited to sew with others on social media—I intend to sew along with everyone else!—but life always gets in the way. So far, I’ve signed up for three different QALs this spring, determined to reverse this trend and produce something.

The Modern Quilt Guild’s Satsuma was the first one I signed up for ... and flaked on. Too much time with my rotary blade at a less-than-ideal table height had messed up my right rotator cuff with a different project. After some self-prescribed physical therapy, along with some rest and ice, my shoulder was fine. Cutting out Sasuma’s curved template pieces didn’t seem like a wise decision, though, so I bailed on the project before I had even begun. That QAL has since wrapped up. If you’re a Modern Quilt Guild member, however, you have access to the Satsuma pattern here.

My second QAL is Kate Basti’s annual Summer Book Club. I’ve signed up for this in the past and sewn zero Tall Tale blocks. This year, I am ready. As I mentioned last week, I have already cut into a bunch of my novelty prints for my projects (note the plural, please). Stayed tuned for some finished evidence of progress!

And finally, I committed to the Back to Nature QAL, hosted by Leila Gardunia, which features nine small foundation paper-piecing patterns from nine different designers. This is a nice twist on the QAL idea: Small blocks that can be used in a variety of items—or sewn together in a mini, of course—are a good option. I am happy to report that I sewed my favorite pattern of the nine, called Little Sprout, and have already quilted it, bound it, and have gifted it.

This was a nice, 6.5-inch block that I chose to complicate by using Essex Linen as my background of choice. (Darn you, Essex Linen! I love to hate sewing with you!) Still, everything turned out lovely. The quilting is a simple diagonal line, and I used my usual double-fold binding because it was easier than trying to remember how to work with a single-fold binding. In the end, I noticed a little puffiness in the leaves that I remedied with some impromptu embroidery stitches. 

The Back to Nature collection includes a frog, a snail, and a parrot, among other cute designs. The patterns are available free of charge through June 21. At this point in the schedule, you can sign up for the QAL here and have access to all nine right away.

OK, confession time! Who else signs up for QALs with the best of intentions only to flake out when it’s time to sew?!

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The Pomodoro Method X Quilting / Beauties Pageant 254

There is a serious backlog at From Bolt to Beauty world headquarters right now. Regular life and house administration, bigger non-quilty projects ... pretty much everything was put on hold while I finished my manuscript. Then, once I submitted that to the publisher, my younger son and I came down with Covid. (It was unpleasant, but we’re both perfectly fine now.) Life really came to a grinding halt at that point, and my to-do list continued to grow while we sat on the couch, watched bad TV, and drank apple juice.

So here we are: It’s early June. My kids have three more days of school. That is to say, I have three more days to do all the things. All. The. Things. But where do I start when my to-do list is overwhelmingly long?

I start with a 25-minute timer.

When there is too much to do or when it’s hard to prioritize the tasks at hand, I use the Pomodoro Technique to help me with focus and structure. The process is easy: I choose something from my to-do list, set a timer for 25 minutes, and focus on that task until time is up. After, I take a 5-minute break, set the timer again, and return to that task or a different one. Once I’ve completed a few rounds of work, I can take a longer break.

I am not super legalistic about following this structure—there are plenty of times when, say, my alarm goes off and I reset it without taking a break—but using the Pomodoro Technique helps me make measurable progress. It also prevents me from allowing one job to take over an entire morning. Yesterday I spent time looking for accommodations for a summer trip. At the end of 50 minutes, I knew I needed to shelve the project, talk to my husband about our options, and return to it later.

I’ve accomplished a lot over the past week. I’ve cleared out my bedroom, painted it, and had new furniture delivered. I’ve taken the dogs to the vet and scheduled their stays at the boarder for upcoming vacations. I’ve even chipped away at some quilty to-dos. In 25-minute increments, I’ve posted some lots of fabric, including the batiks at the top of the post, to my shop at FeelGood Fibers. I also cut some of the novelty fabrics I will need for the Summer Book Club quiltalong.

You may be wondering what this technique has to do with pomodoro tomatoes. Do you remember those old-school kitchen timers shaped as tomatoes? They’re the origin of the name, and if you have one at your house, it would be much cooler to use than the boring timer that I am using on my phone!

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The pageant rules are simple:

• Post your finish in the linky tool. (No links to your own giveaway or linky, please!)
• Point your readers back here with a text link or use the button above.
• Visit and comment on other participants’ finishes.

You are invited to the Inlinkz link party!

Click here to enter