In Like a Lion...

It's March and as the saying goes, the weather has been roaring. Cold and still snowy! I was lucky to have spent the last part of February into early March down with my family in Austin, TX. Although the weather was up and down (true Spring weather), it was nothing like Chicago weather!

Because I expected to spent lots of time with my grandson (and I did), I only  brought a book for reading and a small reverse applique project.

Not long after arriving in Austin, my DD3 asked if I could knit a baby hat for a college friend of hers that was expecting soon. Since I didn't have any knitting supplies with me, I looked though my DD2's supplies and found needles that would work. We went to Hobby Lobby for some yarn (in the color she wanted), and I was ready. Of coarse, I knitted one for my grandson, too! 

While I was at it, my DD2 asked if I could knit another one for their friends that had a baby girl a few weeks before my grandson was born. So, I added a crocheted bitty flower to the hat. 

Done with baby hats, my DD3 wanted a hat for herself. She scrolled through my Pinterest board and found a hat with cables! How was I going to manage that without a cable needle. Hmmm 🤔 I used a circular needle as the cable needle and used double points for knitting in the round! It worked!

I did work a little bit on my reverse applique blocks, however, I struggled with the inner and outer corners/points. I'll keep trying ~ a little here and there.

My last project before coming home was a play mat for my grandson. My DD2 wanted something to go under the wooden gym she made. She wanted a high contrast black and white print. We went to several big box stores and didn't find anything. Then we went to the local quilt shop where the saleslady suggested using different fabrics in the quadrants. Why didn't we think of that? 

My daughter choose 2 different fabrics and we bought 2 fat quarters each. 

We found a cute black and white flannel print for the back. We purchased a thick polyester batting, black bias tape, and black and white perle cotton thread. I went to work! My DD2 has a old basic sewing machine (works great but doesn't have quilt accessories.) We cut each fat quarter into squares and stitched them together. Then we cut it into a circle as well as the backing and batting. We then sandwiched it and I got started hand quilting using Big Stitch quilting. Trimmed it and added the bias tape binding and ta da!

The stripes are stitched in the black stripes with black perle cotton and the white print is stitched with white perle cotton in arches following the pattern. 

Here is my grandson enjoying it! 

Once home, I made a list of all the sewing/quilting that I needed to catch up on. The first being the RSC for March. The color for March is green. Here is my Reverse Star block!

One down....

I'm linking up to ScrapHappy Saturday over at So Scrappy!