Quilt Now BOM - Issue 13

The Quilt Now magazine Mystery BOM has finally reached its final set of instructions in Issue 13 which has just landed with subscribers.  Having followed along with Reene's skill-building 4 weekly challenges, and mostly kept up to date, I have been very excited to see how she would finish the BOM quilt and she has not disappointed!

At this point, I have a small confession to make.  This issue of Quilt Now seems to have taken longer to be published than usual and I knew I would never get this top finished on my own if I waited for it to land on the doormat.  So, a few weeks ago I knew that there was a single day opportunity to get my sewing machine out and get to work for what was the last machine time pre-arrival of my now massive pregnancy bump.  I was so keen that this quilt top would not lie unfinished (at least in the piecing of the quilt top sense) for months and months that I decided to make a guess at how the final two side block panels were supposed to go together and then to add a final solid aqua border myself ahead of knowing what Reene's plans actually were.  In the pic above you can see what I decided in terms of the block layout for the two sides.  Reene's top and bottom block panels really helped me to understand and make a reasonable informed guess as to where I should position the final blocks and by Miss Marple deductions I made the right decisions!

So I sewed and sewed, happy as the flowers in May, knowing that I would actually achieve a quilt top  finish before child no 2 enters our lives.  Yay!

Ta-da, here is my finished Quilt Now Mystery BOM quilt top!!

I really, really love it!!!  It is by no means perfect.  Some of those skills were not my forte and are a bit lacking in precision and talent, but oh I am so glad I gave them all a go.  I think my favourite new-to-me technique was the needleturn appliqué (which I really want to do more of in the future) and I also loved trying out the no-waste method of making flying geese.

I may have said before that I found myself quite surprised to jump in with the Quilt Now magazine's Mystery BOM right from the start, mainly because that word "mystery" doesn't tend to do it for me normally.  Joining a Mystery BOM or QAL involves NOT knowing what you are making ahead of time and that's not usually something I want to commit to (control freak alert).  However, this was definitely the right one to throw my inhibitions away on.  It did what it said on the tin and introduced new skills to try across a small selection of blocks with each issue of the magazine, and you know, if I really hadn't enjoyed it I could have just stopped at some point.  But, the team at Quilt Now were right to trust Reene with their first ever BOM project and I say thanks to them and to Reene for the challenges and fun along the way.

Now I'm off to store this pretty flimsy away carefully until I have the time to baste and quilt it - maybe a touch of hand quilting this winter if I'm lucky!