Sewing Update, March

 All my sewing was done before the end of February.  So far in March, I haven't even touched fabric.  I will, as I still intend to participate in the UFO challenge I mentioned last month.  It's just that this month's number corresponds with a 'I want to make this, but haven't actually started yet or even have a specific design to use' entry on my list of UFO's to work from this year.

Combine that with a sudden and tragic death in the extended family (one of DH's nephews) at the end of February, and I've just kind of lost my enthusiasm temporarily.  I did do some fabric shopping in recent days, so hopefully that will kick start my sewing mojo back into gear.

For February, though, I feel like I accomplished a good thing: I finished my UFO for that month!  It's not just a bunch of blocks from an 8 year old swap anymore.  It's a totally completed quilt.  Yay, me!

I wanted to use those blocks to make a throw sized quilt that would be functional as a picnic blanket, beach blanket, play blanket for using with the grandkids.  I decided not to be super picky about color coordination, or evenness of the quilting.  For the quilting, I went totally freehand but kept a somewhat diamond design as that is what the very center of the quilt told me the quilting should be.  In the border, however, I just echoed the seamline at roughly 1" intervals. As a result of being freehand and me being fairly new at anything other than stitching in the ditch, the quilting isn't totally symmetrical, or even parallel, but that's okay.  This is a quilt to be used more than a quilt to be admired for it's craftsmanship.

Keeping in mind the contact with the ground that this quilt will definitely see during it's lifetime, I used a grunge style fabric for the backing. It looks like it all ready has dirt and grease stains on it.  Not at all my typical type of design, but it's what this quilt told me it needed.

photo op in the sun

grungy backing

this pic is more representative of the true greenish color of the backing

A few days after the quilt was finished, Faline ended up at this little place here during the day while her parents were at work.  Her other grandma (the morning babysitting shift) had come down with a cold and was unavailable to babysit.  Since DH is still working from home and had a couple gaps between scheduled teleconferences that were big enough for me to run off to work and get my own job done, Faline came to us so DH could do the tag-team babysitting with me around his meeting schedule instead of me going to her house to babysit in the afternoons.  

She got to be the first grandchild to use the new quilt, as both a playmat--she loved looking at all the colors--and as a sleep mat for naps.  It has now been officially broken in, baby spit-up and all.