Making lemonade quilt tops!

Martha Circle quilt top
Originally uploaded by Suzie Rozie.

After having dealt myself a lemon by cutting 4-1/2-inch squares instead of 5-1/2 inch, I added a border to make up the difference between the overall size and ended up with three quilt tops for the Martha Circle project. I'm not too disappointed in the end result, but having to add the borders meant that the work didn't go as fast.

Making the tops quickly isn't necessarily a goal when I put these together, but I do have an overall goal that I don't want to complicate the process and create something too fancy just for the sake of having created it.

These tops are for my self-set February quota of four, and because of my mistake, I ended up with three. Had these blocks been standard size (9 inches), I would have alternated them with plain 9-inch blocks and gotten 6 tops from them instead of three. Thus, I needed one more for my February quota. Click the picture of the top above to go to Flickr, and you can see the fourth top. I pieced blocks together from scraps and alternated them with solid blocks. I pieced together 30 scrap blocks, and combined with 30 single fabric blocks, I'll get three quilts from that. Then I can get started on a fresh design of some sort.

I have learned a lot from making these tops. Looking back at the first ones I made (at least the ones whose pictures I took), I can see that I have become a little more adventuresome. Besides the very important fact that I can imagine someone using the quilt when it's complete and I can imagine (and hope) that the design and colors somehow make their days better and more interesting, I can see that I've learned a number of new techniques (hey, they were all new to me a few months ago!) and I'm getting better at some of them! I'm really glad to have something worthwhile like this to do with my days!