March Recap: Another Month Has Just Blown By!

As my posts recapping the month of February showed, that was a busy month and March has been no different!  

Garden Activities

This year I am taking on the Event Coordinator duties for my community garden's Season Opening/Earth Day event near the end of April.  I've had to reach out to other community organizations to see if they want to participate.  In addition, our garden is replacing all of our wooden raised beds with new (and longer lasting) metal Vego beds so everyone is expected to chip in and help with demoing the old beds and setting up the new ones.  

So the garden has been front of mind this month and will continue to be so during the next one.  

Quilting

For me, with the season opening event now fast approaching that also means I am now back to crunch time on this raffle quilt project:

However, I am once again not sure I will be able to get this (and its companion!) ready in time for this year's opening day event now that I have the event organizing duties also on my plate.    

What I have finally managed to finish is the top for the scrappy strings project I started while away last month:

"Scrap Vortex" is now in the "flimsie" category.  I already have ideas for how I think I want to quilt it but don't have a backing plan as of yet.  Right now figuring that out will not be a priority so this project will probably sit around for a (long) while before it moves further forward.

However, that doesn't mean there isn't new stuff starting!  Having put out a few Blue and White quilts for the change of season to Spring, I realized I could use a few more.  My stash yielded some starter for not one but two projects.  Some filler for one just arrived at the end of last week but the other is already almost a finished flimsie:

This is another American Patchwork and Quilting magazine freebie:  It is the "Roaring Waves" color variation of the "Quake" quilt that was originally published in the Spring 2016 issue of “Quilts and More” magazine.   It's always interesting to see how different fabrics and colors can work in the same design.  

It is a little wider than it is long so I'll be adding small borders to the top and bottom to bring it square using the fabric sitting at the top of it.  Ironically, I had purchased that for use in the other B&W project I was trying to start up.  I may still include some of it in that one too if I have enough leftover.  Since it turned out to go so well with this, I will also use it for the binding.  I also already have ideas for how I want to quilt this but still have to figure out what I am going to back it with.  

Cross Stitch

At the start of March I had three projects going:

I had finished stitching the "Year of the Dragon" in early February so now needed to work on "fully finishing it".  My plan had been to finish it in a lantern design and I had gone through my Asian fabric stash to pick choices for that.

I've gotten as far as deciding on the final fabric and format of it.

The Dragon print in the picture above will be on the back.

And there are plans a foot to finally try making  my own cording and tassels to add to the finishing.

Because things have gotten busy on the garden and quilt front,  I haven't moved forward on that yet.  

For Black History month in February, I had started on two projects.  One was the cross stitch version of the Fat Quarter Shop's "Stronger Together" campaign from last year:

I finished stitching that in the middle of March and now need to think about how I can frame it for display along with the history information provided.

The other Black history month project I worked on was "Harriet Tubman":

Work on this one is still on going and the great news was that it also counted as a March "Women's History Month" stitch.  I've loved stitching on the 18 count Fiddler's Cloth I chose for this.  As a primarily Aida stitcher, I like the way the stitches sit on the weave of this fabric and feel like it gives it a "closer to linen" look.  I definitely look forward to using this kind of fabric for CS projects again.  

At this point it looks like this will also be my focus CS project for the start of April.  That said, I also have things coming for a new stitch along that starts later that month!  So I have no expectations that April will be any less busy!!