LAL#5: Giant Clam Shells in My UFO Pipeline, Planning, and Goals for a Shiny New September

 Hello, my lovelies, and welcome to the 5th installment of the Long Arm Linky party!  Also, welcome to September.  I think we're all hoping September will be better than August, July, June, May, April, or March...

I do not have machine quilting content to share with you of my own because I've been focused on getting a LONG overdue baby quilt pieced.  Hopefully I will be able to get that on my frame for quilting soon, because this is my OMG (One Monthly Goal) for September.  

September's One Monthly Goal: 

• Piece, Quilt, & Bind My Modern Baby Clam Shell Quilt

Now that I finally figured out how to sew my giant clam shells together, I'm obsessed with getting this embarrassingly late UFO assembled and ready for quilting.  I've got another outreach top that another guild member pieced in my que for quilting and I had these fleeting thoughts that I'd have that at least loaded on my frame to show you for today's post, but then Creative Obsessive Hyperfocus kicked in on the clam shell quilt, and I was powerless to resist.  

That's the Frosted Butterfly design from Urban Threads, currently under strong consideration to be added to this quilt top.  I'll either change the color of the background scroll so it doesn't blend into my background fabric, or else change that to a contrasting thread color.  Which necessitates a detour of test stitching and experimenting...  Monarch butterflies have a special significance to this baby's family, and I look at the fabric prints from a collection called Painted Garden and I just feel like there ought to be some butterflies flitting around on top of this garden.  So that's your cliff hanger today -- Will Rebecca get sucked into a rabbit hole of machine embroidery and forget she even owns a long arm machine?  Or will she be able to make this decision quickly and efficiently, so she can get back to the quilt at hand soon enough to finish this baby quilt by the end of September?  Tune in next time...

This Week's Goals: 

• Finish piecing Modern Baby Clam Shells
• Decide whether or not to embroider butterflies on the finished top before quilting (I'm so strongly tempted, even though that will slow me down)
• Load outreach top and decide how to quilt it

I haven't even taken a picture of the outreach top top that's waiting patiently for me, but it's a red, white and blue Veterans' quilt with a big white star in the center.  There are decisions there, too -- I volunteered to quilt another outreach top sight unseen with the objective of practicing some of those new paper pantograph designs, but now that I see the big star in the middle, I'm torn.  I wish I had a way of quilting an allover pantograph pattern around/"behind" that star without quilting the pantograph OVER the star, so I could emphasize the star with ruler work etc.  I'll be mulling this in the dark corners at the very back of my mind while my immediate attention is on piecing clam shells, another huge chunk of brain power is thinking about butterfly embroidery, and whatever remains of my brain power is engaged with listening to podcasts.

I'll be linking today's post up with the following favorite linky parties:

TUESDAY

·       One Monthly Goal at Elm Street Quilts. 

·       To-Do Tuesday at Home Sewn By Us

WEDNESDAY

·       Midweek Makers at Quilt Fabrication

·       Wednesday Wait Loss at The Inquiring Quilter

THURSDAY

·       Needle and Thread Thursday at My Quilt Infatuation  

Even though I quilted absolutely nothing myself this week, I still want to see what all of YOU have been quilting, though, so please link up your quilting-related posts below.  Have a great week and a great kickoff to your shiny new September!

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