January Goal Üpdate

January has been a good month for sewing for me! I had the first week off of work because my school didn't go back from Christmas break until January 9th and January 16th was off as we observed Martin Luther King, Jr Day. 

This added up to lots of sewing time toward reaching my goals!

On my January 4, 2017 post I listed several of my goals for 2017. 

I joined the One Monthly Goal challenge over at Elm Street Quilts and chose my delectable mountain quilt as my January goal: 

My goal will be to finish the blocks, decide on a border or not, and get it to the flimsy stage.  

Not only did I meet my goal but I surpassed it! 

It is amazing what a deadline (and a lot of sewing time) can do for you! 

I finished all the blocks, decided on a 1/4" inner border of purple and a 2" outer border of black, sandwiched, quilted and bound this quilt!

The only thing left is to label it!

Although we have had very few sunny days,

 I took advantage of last Saturday's sun (we have not seen the sun since) 

to do a photo shoot. 

Presenting Splendid!

I quilted this quilt with organic straight lines about 1/2" apart from the top to the bottom inside the borders.

The outer border is also quilted in organic straight lines (seen in detail photo above).

The backing of this quilt was pieced with a fabric I had in my stash and the remaining scraps from the floral print. I really like how the back coordinated together!

The binding is left over scraps from the backing of my 

Diamonds in the Rough quilt.

This quilt finishes at 55 1/2" x 65"...a nice nice throw. 

Another of the goals I mentioned was #5: 

learn to crochet a border around it (flannel) for a sweet receiving blanket. 

Taking a break from the crochet blanket that I have been working on at my Knitting Club, I started crocheting an edge around a piece of flannel. I have made several crocheted edged fleece blankets using yarn but not flannel using pearl cotton. Some differences are: fleece doesn't ravel and with fleece, I rotary cut holes along the edge with my skip blade. 

I started by squaring off the flannel, then rounding the corner and finally serging around the edge. 

With pearl cotton and a steel hook, I started crocheting the edge with a stitch that kind of looked like a rose bud.

The pattern I followed said that you could push through the fabric with the hook but I found it difficult so I used a large needle to start the hole. I crocheted every 1/4" (eyeballed) around. It used a lot more thread than I thought that I actually ran out of pearl cotton. 

I couldn't find the same color so I used a coordinating color. Why not? We make scrappy binding for our quilts! Can you see the 3 colors I used?

This baby blanket finished at 33 1/2" x 38"

I'm linking up to One Monthly Goal ~ January Goal Finishes 

over at Elm Street Quilts. Linking up at Em's Scrapbag ~ Moving it Forward.

How did you do with your goals?