Another Finish it February quilt! This could be a Christmas quilt, but the beauty of this fabric is that it’s really a snowman in the woods design. It could easily stay out until at least February 2, the day that the holiday greens where traditionally taken down.

The quilt pattern is one of Fabric Café’s® three yard quilts called “Stepping Stones”. It was a really straightforward pattern and one I would happily make again.

I quilted it with a very light blue thread, one which matched the blue in the snowman fabric. That was great until I started stitching the diagonal lines running through the red blocks. I stitched about 4 diagonal rows until I decided that I really didn’t like the light blue on the red fabric. So I unpicked all of those rows. Not my favorite activity!! But I’m so glad I did that. I restitched them using red thread and now it looks great!

The backing on this quilt is a baby blue flannel. I was worried that I would dislike the red stitching on the blue backing as much as I disliked the blue thread on the red blocks. But actually, it’s fine. Maybe because the stitch sort of sinks into the flannel fabric.

I used painter’s tape to mark the long diagonals I was going to quilt. Then I stitched 1/4 inch away from the tape, paying attention as to not sew over the tape. if you are going to use tape to make a quilt, make sure to leave that 1/4 allowance for stitching when you place your tape. You want the stitching to go through the corner of the blocks, so the tape should be offset by about 1/4 inch. The tape works really well, but only tape one row at a time as the tape can lift off during quilting. Don’t be tempted to using masking tape which might leave a sticky residue on your quilt.

I have another identical 3 yard set of fabrics in my stash. I think it might fun to make this quilt pattern again, substituting a blue fabric for the green in this quilt. I don’t have yard of a suitable blue in my stash, so it’ll be a project for a later date!

I did get all my finished quilt tops quilted during February, so March will be a Show and Tell month here on my blog! Hooray for whoever came up with the idea of “Finish it February!” I highly recommend it!