4x7 Sewing Challenge - COMPLETE!

I know February is a short, but still - wow, did these four weeks fly! The 4x7 Sewing Challenge is done! Though hopefully many of you will use the month's worth of practice setting aside time for your sewing as a jumping off point to carve out more time for it all year long. So how'd you do with your goals? Was it easier or harder than you expected to commit to a daily sewing practice?

This month started off strong for me as I worked on my quilting motif sampler book, but as soon as I removed my practice fabric from the longarm to finish an actual quilt, I started to drift off task and never did get back to it. I still did selfish sewing daily, with a few 2 hours one day, none the next thanks to school vacation in there ; ) But I also surprised myself with two finished mini quilts, some pattern and fabric shopping and PDF pattern preparation, as well as the fifteen sampler pages that I did get done early on. If March is as productive, hopefully I'll have a new shirt or two and a new dress made! Assuming I can just get over my initial hesitation to cut into the fabric... going to double (and triple!) check my measurements and then get started. 

This final week's finish was this adorable pattern from Juliet at The Tartan Kiwi. It really thoroughly chewed up my sewing time each day because of trying so hard to match the "rain" patterned fabric in the paper pieced block. The block itself was easy, but I added to the difficulty going with such a directional fabric. I think the effort was worth it for the finished result! 

I quilted straight lines at varying spacing and stitch lengths up and down the quilt to look like lines of rain. I skipped the areas that were under the umbrella, though, which you can see better from the back. I'm calling the piece "Oh, to Be Six Again!" since it reminds me of splashing in puddles as a kid. Back then I had a polka dot umbrella and - fun fact - actually hated the color pink! You'd probably never guess that since it's now an obvious favorite ; )

So all in all, a good month for me even if I didn't finish what I initially set out to. I'm taking away a renewed commitment to sew every day (or as close to as possible), and also a hope that I'll keep up the selfish sewing here and there all year long. Interspersing sewing for me among the projects I make for others really is rejuvenating. I need to stop feeling guilty about that and take a little break here and there even when I have some other big deadline going on. A few minutes here and there really adds up to great finishes!

Ok, here you go - time to link up your progress for the MONTH and let us know how you did! I'm going to run the completion prize giveaway a little differently than the participation prizes the last few weeks, though. I know some of us did a better job than others being faithful to our goals (no shame - I didn't stick with my initial plan after all! lol), so I'm going to start by looking to see whether or not someone truly stuck to the plan to sew every day (or make up for it during the week) and/or finished every one of her goals set forth. If more than one of you did, I'll draw randomly between you. If no one did, then I'll broaden the parameters. I'm going to read everyone's posts and see how everyone did first - some of you have been crazy productive and I'm excited to see what the last surge this week brought for your success!   

Last week's winner was JoAnna at Lia Sophia Tomboy! I think that's the first time ever RNG has given me a 1 in the results box. Early bird got the worm this round : )

Can't wait to see who wins the big completion prize! So much Tula Pink goodness! 

~ Sarah