"Life Is What You Make It" Quilt Top Finished

I finished piecing the top of my Life Is What You Make It quilt on Friday night (based on the Missouri Quilt Co.'s version). It's exciting to see it coming together so nicely. The backing will be made up of Grass Simple


and Colorful Ivory, divided by a row of charm squares (two-thirds of the way up).


The finished top is about 66 by 83 inches. I initially wanted to do a border, but I think the size is good for now.


I also pieced four more blocks for my Swirling Star quilt.


Eight down, four to go.

Organizing my stash

I went to get goodies for our Easter baskets yesterday. Since my two kiddos are young and just starting to get a feel for holidays (well, at least the oldest is) we haven't done Easter baskets before. Instead of just doing junk, we opted to get them a couple sweets and a toy. While I was shopping, I decided to get gifts for my husband and myself as well. For me, some bins to start organizing my fabric stash.

Here is most of my fabric. Keep in mind that I'm a beginner and didn't really start buying fabric until December 09. I have some more fabric that wouldn't fit in this three-drawer organizer. It's still in my cedar chest.


The top drawer has most of the designer fabric I've bought. There's some Blush, Oz, Panache, the fat quarter pack I won, Figgy Pudding, Cutie Pie, Arcadia, Goodnight Monkey, and some others that I can't think of off the top of my head.


The second drawer has most of what I've bought at Joann's for different projects. Skirts and pillow covers, the spring quilt, scraps from my sister and mom, etc.


The bottom drawer has my flannel. There is flannel for two rag quilts to be made in there as well as the leftovers from the two rag quilts I made in the last few months for my kiddos.


I love having my fabric better organized. Although I need to buy at least one more unit, it's nice getting the fabric out of the plastic bags they came home in and into something a little more see-through and accessible.


Maybe organizing my stash this way will be a good way of getting the big TV off the floor. Maybe we'll have to get a new flat screen to hang on the wall and make floor space for the fabric bins. The mister would love that!

Stay tuned: This weekend I'm going to work on finishing piecing the top of my Life Is What You Make It quilt as well as piecing the eight remaining stars/pinwheels for my Swirling Stars quilt.

Block #3

Here's my third block in the Jelly Roll Quilt Along. I played around with a few alternate layouts after I cut the fabric, but realized that my OCD tendencies forced me to have symmetry with this block.

Click the photo to view it on Flickr (and to take a peek at some of the other participants' blocks).

Here are all three blocks together (and a cute little hand courtesy of my three-year-old).

Life Is What You Make It

I've decided to change the name of the Make Life quilt to Life Is What You Make It. I've squared the blocks and sewn them into rows. I just need to piece the columns and then the top will be done. Because of the size, I'm not adding a border. Next up? Piecing the back, then basting, quilting, and binding.

The mister is the photographer in the family, but he wasn't home, leaving it up to me to document my progress.

Progress

I was busy last night. I've had a sick little boy at home and been needing some respite from wiping his nose. So this is what I worked on:


This is the block that I made three years ago as my first attempt at quilting. Unfortunately, this single block was the first and last quilting I did until the end of 2009. It's funny to think of how hard this block was for me to cut and piece as a beginner. I still am a beginner, but the other three blocks came together so much quicker now that I sort of know what I'm doing.


These are the variations that I came up with.



This one's my favorite.


I'm not sure how big I'll end up making the quilt at this point. It will for sure have 12 stars with sashing in between. I think that will probably be big enough, but I think I want to make it for my daughter's twin bed (when she gets one...she's still in a crib).

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I also worked on the blocks for my Make Life quilt. Forty down, forty to go.


Here's what some of the pieced blocks look like, minus the inch I have to trim to make them nine inches square. (I hate wasting fabric, so maybe I can incorporate that one-inch strip somehow. And, I don't know why this image is sideways; I didn't take it in portrait mode.)


I'm debating how big to make this one too. I have enough to make it 72x90 with a five-inch border all the way around, but I'm not sure I want it that big. I'm thinking maybe closer to 63x72 or something around there. Once I get most of the blocks sewn together, I'll lay it out and see if the smaller size looks right. No need to sew all 80 blocks if I don't end up using them all.