A Very Quilty February

Hi there and happy March! We've had sun shining and warmer weather in the last week and it is lovely - makes my afternoon walks so enjoyable. And even better news today in Indiana, as the Covid vaccine opened up to 50+ and all teachers - I am not in those groups, but a lot of people I know and love are and I will be next, so it is great news. I am looking forward to getting signed up and taking whichever vaccine is available. 

Anyway, back to some quilting...I had another good month with my quilting, spending just under 11 hours on my projects. I really did focus on the actual quilting this month, I started the month by finishing up the quilting on one of my UFOs - the Meadow Mist Midnight Mystery - I pieced this quilt back in 2015-2016 as part of the mystery quilt-a-long with Cheryl over at Meadow Mist Designs. I really love how it turned out but then was scared of how to quilt it and not completely mess it up. It has large blocks and a lot of negative space. In the end, I went back to the quilt reveal parade and also searched around Instagram until I decided that simple quilting would be best. I used some clamps on the wheels of my machine to keep the straight-line quilting actually straight and I was so happy with how they worked. There are certainly a few bobbles, but overall it is very straight and I am so happy with it. 

Midnight Mystery Straight Line quilting

I have the binding made and will get it attached this month to have the first of my UFOs finished for this year! 

Next up was the quilt for my son - I finished the top last month, so had to make a back. I found another bolt of fabric in my stash (you know you have a lot of fabric when you forget that you have two bolts of fabric!) and pieced in some other bright squares. 

Quilt back

I loaded it onto the quilt frame the same day and started quilting it mid-month when I took a few vacation days. I worked on it a few rows at a time and finished it up on Sunday, the last day of the month. Unfortunately, I stitched it to the quilt frame leaders when I did the first row so it will take a little time to get it off - that will be a project for this weekend! 

Whoops - the stitches above the narrow black fabric need
to be picked out to remove the quilt from the frame!

I need to pick up some binding for this quilt - I will look for another great royal blue to bind it with. 

End of the Rainbow ready to come off the frame

One other project was selected and saw some activity this month - my friend Stephanie of Lucky Star Quilts challenged us to pull out a notion that we bought a while back but hadn't used. I dug around for a while and found the Fit to be Geese ruler. I've heard great things about this ruler from Nicole at Sister's Choice Quilting (side note: if you've never ready Nicole's blog, please go and read a few posts - she does amazing things with fabric, writes awesome book reviews, and shares her adventures with life and family). I decided it was high time I tried it, so I pulled some gorgeous hand-dyed Australian fabrics to make the mini quilt. I've cut out and started sewing the blocks and the ruler is working great so far. I hope to finish it up in March. 

Fabric and tool selected - Fit to be Geese Ruler and pattern with Australian fabrics

Trimming up the geese with the ruler

Last thing for the month - let's go over the stats: 

Stash Report - linking up with Donna at Quiltpaintcreate
Fabric added this month: 6 yards for binding and a few baby quilts
Fabric used this month: 7 1/4 yards for quilt back, binding, and a new project
Fabric added year to date: 6 yards
Fabric used year to date: 13 1/2 yards
Net fabric used: 7 1/2 yards

My fabric additions for a few baby quilts

Stitching Days - linking up with Kate at Life-In-Pieces
27/28 days with at least 15 minutes of stitching

Hope you enjoyed seeing my February quilting projects - do you have a favorite? What have you worked on lately? I am finding (like I do at the start of most years) that I am really enjoying working on a few UFOs and getting them to the completion line - I will have another one to show you in a few weeks :)