Halfway Pink Flying Geese

 

First thing that I got sewn in March is the pink and white Flying Geese for the Lupine (no longer a) Mystery quilt.

I really have a large variety of pinks going on here, from very pale all the way to very dark. I really hope it works!

A closeup of the action, using the back of the black polka dot. 

So far I've gotten through all of them, but only on one of the sides.

March To-Do

Here's how my design wall is looking on the first day of this new month of March. Pretty un-busy and un-crowded compared to last month. That's because I had to take everything down in order take the picture of the enormous City Sampler quilt. The Patchwork Palooza blocks are now a top awaiting a border (maybe?).  The untouched blocks for the BAMQ Creative Play project are on the right.

Note: the use of 🥏👽  by a project name indicates that it's on the 2026 UFO Finishes challenge list of six projects that I committed to finishing at the beginning of the year (more on that list later). Note, this is not the same list as the UFO Challenge for BAMQ, that UFO will have this next to it on the list:🌀🌐

QUILTS

Design & Begin

Design and make a quilt for the BAMQ Challenge Modern Art to Modern Quilt display at the SMCF - No picture yet

Design and make a quilt for the BAMQ library display for The Wizard of Oz - No picture yet

Work on and finish my addition to the Creative Play for BAMQ before Sew Day so I can pass it on.

Pantone Project - work on an overall design, either in EQ8 or up on the design wall.

Lupine & Laughter Mystery Quilt - keep making units following the clue instructions

BAMQ BOM - make monthly blocks of varying sizes through the year.

Continue Assembly

Patchwork Palooza - Decide on borders, make backing & binding

Keep working on Sour Grass Grace from Jane Sassaman class.

Old Town Mystery Quilt - make a backing & binding, decide on whether to have it quilted

AG Stamp Quilt - continue to make more blocks using the final group of fussy-cut stamp block centers from Tula Pink fabrics.

Continue the piecing of Selvedge Candy (maybe the name) quilt originally designed for the 2025 MQG challenge.

🥏👽 Sew the last 6 columns and sashing together of the 2023 Temperature Quilt together to make the quilt top.

🥏👽 Bohemian Wife -  Sandwich this and start quilting it

                                      

Quilting

leaving this category right here so I don't forget to use it next time

Final Steps 

HANDWORK/BAG/CLOTHING PROJECTS 

Make a Cotton Candy pouch for myself.

Make a Charlie's Aunt wool purse for myself, first felt the wool from Pendleton Mill.

Toned-Down Circle Sampler - now that I have the appropriately sized grey background felt, arrange and appliqué the circles, start embroidering.

Y.E.S. Coat - continue making pieces/blocks. assemble on foundation, cut out lining pieces from the fabric that I dyed

Snake In The Garden - Finish hand stitching

Kawandii - Finish hand stitching/assembly

Hey! This Is All Finished!

🌀🌐May You Ever Return - Finished for the BAMQ UFO Challenge

🥏👽City Sampler- Wow! It's so big and beautiful and done!

Oxbow Tote - all done, I love it!

Actual finishing happened...again, that makes two months in a row. Feels like a good start to the year.

Fleeting February

Well, February certainly has passed me right on by. Sure, it's a short month, but it just felt like whoosh! And talk about apricity, (the word I learned at the beginning of February- it means the warmth of the sun in winter), the last few days of this month have been Very Hot! Like 84F all of a sudden, when last week there was snow on the surrounding mountaintops. 

The monthly marker is a combination of two photos, the first is my recently completed quilt, City Sampler.

I used the app, Percolator to manipulate that picture.

Then I used the app, SnapSeed to overlay this picture of the completed quilt, May You Ever Return and add the MARCH label.

Here's my One Second Every Day video for February, all 31 (why not 28?!) seconds of it! 

Monthly I-Did List for February

1. I did the BAM BOM Flying Geese blocks at Sew Day.
2. I trimmed the teeny tiny HSTs™from the Flying Geese in #1
3. I added the sashing/cornerstones to the blocks, then chunked and assembled the Patchwork Palooza quilt top
4. I wrote out and illustrated my two UFO projects this year, UFO Finishes 2026 and BAM UFO Challenge
5. I worked on the next steps of the Oxbow Tote, and then finished it.
6. I began sewing down the binding on City Sampler and then finished it and photographed it too.
7. I made the rest of the purple Flying Geese blocks for the 2nd clue of the Lupine Mystery Quilt.
8. I stitched a lot of green water on Snake in The Garden.
9. I embroidered on May You Ever Return and finished it just in time for the BAM UFO challenge.
10. I cut out the rest of the Flying Geese pieces for Clue 2 of the Lupine Mystery

Turns out for a short month that whizzed by, I got quite a bit done. In February I only traveled to going up and back to Spokane once again for the medical study. I went hiking with family twice, both were new hikes, a great one in a new place and the one closer to home in a part of the park we'd never seen. And DH and I re-joined our local gym. So a lot more of my energy is going towards getting more fit. I kept on being pretty active on social media, posted here on le blogue 26 times,...over on BlueSky 26 times, on Flashes 7 times, and on Instagram 8 times. March is going to be a busier travel month so we'll see if I can continue at close to the same rate.

February Cornucopia

 

February is always disorienting to me, after the busy start to a new year, winter is still here on some days, but on others not so much. And still the Magnolias bloom. Here's the February Cornucopia post, a collection of links to things online that I've noticed, enjoyed, found useful or entertaining.

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Spineless Feathers is a great free motion quilting design demonstrated in another well-done ChristaQuilts video. Definitely going to try this one!

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This image really cracked me up, the longest sock monkey in the world. Fifty feet!

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In case you need an excuse to hang out on Pinterest, I thought some of the things on the official Janome Pinterest boards were interesting.

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It's Oscars season, so that means trying to watch many of the movies nominated before the awards are given. I want to recommend a watch of these two short films that are nominated, A Friend of Dorothy, available here on YouTube, and The Singers which is available on Netflix, here's a preview of it on Youtube. Both are just so human, very moving and just plain lovely.

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I listened to several audiobooks this month, all thanks to the app, Libby and my local libraries. I'll recommend two of them here:

The Family Roe - a deeply reported book about the woman who was the Roe plaintiff in the famous Supreme Court decision, a surprisingly moving family portrait. 

The Winter Goddess - a great new version of the story of Cailleach, the goddess of winter in Irish mythology.

💓💔💕💖💗💘💝💞

In one of my college email newsletters I learned about a UC Santa Cruz alumnus who made a documentary film about a surfboard created out of 10,000+ cigarettes picked up on the local beaches.

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💓💔💕💖💗💘💝💞

💓💔💕💖💗💘💝💞

💓💔💕💖💗💘💝💞

💓💔💕💖💗💘💝💞

Pink Lupine Geese

 

So much pink all of a sudden!

Because I was cutting out all of the pink base triangles (the geese?) of the Flying Geese units I'm going to make for Clue #2 of the Lupine Mystery quilt.

Here they are, all ready to go with their white side triangles. Now to get sewing on these,

Lupine Flying Geese

Back to working on the Lupine Mystery quilt, and that means trimming the Flying Geese from Clue 2 that I sewed at the January Bamq Sew Day.

There's all 72 Flying Geese units together, and now to do the other 72 Flying Geese that will be white wings and pink geese. 

City Sampler Final Photo

Tah-dah, here it is, my now-completed City Sampler. It was much too big for my design wall and my work room as you can see. Get ready for a whole lot of pictures so you can see some of the details.

I made the 100 blocks in Tula Pink's 100 Modern Quilt Blocks book way back in 2016 out of Tula Pink fabrics and my own hand-dyed cotton fabrics. 

I designed the outer border and am quite pleased with how it turned out.

It took a lot of figuring, and sketching, but it was worth it to make the quilt big enough for our bed.

The rest is all gray(s) but of course not just one because of...reasons. 

Turns out keeping track of solids is Very Hard because there's no printed selvedge. 

We live--we learn, right? 

And here's what the back looks like. I love love love that snake.

The blocks sat around finished for quite a while, and then I went to a CQFA retreat in January 2020  (four years!) where I sewed the grey sashing to one side of a lot of the blocks but not all of them. 

Then they sat around a little longer (four years!) before I went to a BAMQ retreat in 2024 and I sewed the rest of the sashing onto the blocks, and then sewed most of the blocks into rows. 

The rest of the assembly and then the making of the backing took a while too. The backing got started in  July 2025. 

Then later that month, I finished the backing, the binding and eventually I turned it over for the fabulous quilting is by the wonderful long-armer Colleen Granger. 

Then this week, I finally sewed down the binding and today was the pinning up and photographing. What a long, drawn-out process this was! In the end, this might be the quilt I'm most pleased with that I've ever made. Don't tell my DH, but it's going to be the anniversary gift this year. And as I said yesterday, a project to take off of my 2026 UFO Finishes Challenge list.