Setting my OMG for February

It’s time to set my One Monthly Goal for February, and I am linking up with Patty at Elm Street Quilts. I find that the challenge to complete one particular project each month (even when I’m not successful in finishing) helps me to focus on something that has perhaps been languishing too long. I like moving everything along with no fabric left behind!

For this month, I’ve selected my Lattice Birds quilt. My goal is to finish the top during February. All 63 blocks are stitched and I’m beginning the assembly now. But this is not a slam dunk goal for several reasons.

First, there are some who may remember that while I was sewing these birds along with the Rainbow Scrap color of the month last year, I bought a pattern from The Pattern Basket and altered it to fit my needs. I wanted a 10” block to alternate with the Irish Chain blocks instead of the pattern’s 8” block. Also, as suggested by my friend Sally, I added a flip corner to the upper part of the front wing to round it. Also, I didn’t like all the tiny fiddly seams for sewing in a beak, so I made prairie points and inserted them in the seam instead. I also shortened the tail to accommodate the scale of the lattice.

So here is a typical bird with those changes made. What I had to before I began assembly  was to go back and stitch down the prairie point beaks with brown thread so that the quilt could eventually be machine quilted! That’s what I worked on today. Then I began the process of laying out the rows and figuring out who goes where. My design board isn’t large enough to accommodate all 9 rows, so the other four are in piles on the ironing board for now.

I also had a lot of quilty math to do to figure out if I had enough of the feature fabric (see the breast of the bird, above) to make a 6” border around the quilt AND do the back. I had to order two more yards. That will be a total of 10 yards that I’ve bought, but I love it so much that I should have just bought every.single.yard.still.available.

And finally, there is a lot of block trimming, seam spinning/pressing and thread cutting to do on these blocks as it will be critical to have flat seams and no dark showing through the white background.

So that’s my OMG - finish sewing the quilt top by the end of February. And did I mention that we’d be gone on vacation for a couple weeks? Yeah, it’s going to be a challenge!