Happy National AND Worldwide Quilting Day!

 Once again, it's the third Saturday in March which means it's:

As always there is a lot going on for this special day in the quilting world!   Check out the links on the Quilt Alliance page to connect with the fun events they are sponsoring.   They are also encouraging quilters to display a quilt outdoors and asking you to share your picture at #nationalquiltingday2021.  

Over at Quilting Daily (the people who bring you all the patterns and magazines from Fons & Porter, McCall's Quilting, Quiltmaker and Quilting Arts), they will be hosting a live virtual Podcast Bee today.  There will be opportunities to ask the hosts questions and win prizes from their sponsors.

The Fat Quarter Shop is offering a free mini quilt pattern to make to celebrate the day.  If  you finish it and upload a picture of your quilt to their website by April 6, you may win a prize from them!  

My NQ day already started well.  I usually DVR the weekly episodes of the Fons and Porter Love of Quilting TV show which air here on Saturday mornings.  This morning I was thrilled to see not one, not two but THREE episodes in the queue for today!  

With those shows in addition to Pat Sloan's daily video and the Quilting Daily Podcast today, I'll have a lot of quilty content to play in the background while I work on projects.  I have three things on my "To Do" list for today:

1.  Sewing today's "Block-A-Day" blocks:  I was inspired by Pat Sloan's plan to work on her "Hope" blocks daily for the month of March.  I decided though to use that prompt to work on two projects that I wanted to do and which I plan to continue not just for March but the the rest of the year. 

I'm making "Wishing Rings" blocks ala Cathy over at the Sane, Crazy and Crumby blog and I am finally getting started on some of the blocks for my own scrappy "Trail Mix" quilt.  I've long loved this APQ design and have seen bloggers I follow like Cathy and Vireya among the others who have made this one up.  Last week I set up a bunch of block sets in advance which helped me to be ready to sew each day.  So I will also do that again today in prep for the upcoming week's sewing. 

2.  Pick the next two blocks and fabrics for my "Scrappy Christmas Figs" BOM:

I want to get them done over the next few days so I can post early to next week's BOMs Away link up. 

 

3. As I looked back through my posts, I realized that last year we were just starting quarantine around the time of last year's NQD!  So the last time I posted about NQD was in 2019 and ironically, at that time I was working on this:  

This is my "Emerald's" project which I hope will one day be my display quilt for March in honor of St. Patrick's Day.  Unfortunately, I didn't get it done that year or last year. 

I did however, have big plans to get it done this year but had not pulled all the parts back out until the day of the holiday!  Just like before, I am still moving pretty slowly on it.  I'm having to come to terms with the fact that I was attracted to the quilt pattern because of the colors they used.  What I hadn't really taken into account were the types of greens used there versus what I had pulled from my own scraps and stash.  

I loved the yellow greens and olives used in the majority of the patterned quilt but had pulled mostly blue-, sage and forest greens from my own stash.  Fortunately, the tans for the setting triangles that I have are darker than the fabric used in the pattern so I think it will work out in the end.  I'll be cutting a few of those to put up with the blocks to see if I can get myself more enthused to push this to a finish.  

How are you spending National Quilting Day today?  I hope it is filled with projects or linkups that deepen your love and appreciation of this wonderful craft.  It is another opportunity to share that with each other and those we love!