our bed quilt goes on and on and on....

My honey made me a smurfy eggs/potato breakfast on Sunday (3/26) (with wonderful free range eggs given to me by my friend Robin):

so that I could jump right back into sewing.  By early afternoon I had this:  

I continued to work all afternoon and a little bit after dinner.  Did I get all of my blocks finished?  Yes and no.  I got all of the blocks finished that I had cut muslin squares for…but remember me telling you I was working on 100 blocks?  When I got to the end (I laid out as many of the squares as would fit and as I suspected, the entire quilt is too big for my design wall):  

it gave me a chance to count, and I only had 92 squares….NINETY-TWO!!!!!  So, first I gave a big sigh…..then I went upstairs to measure the bed to see if I could go with 90 squares….then I decided due to the pattern that that would drive me crazy (the last row wouldn't be a complete diamond, it would just be the top part)….so I cut 8 more muslin bases and will sew on those this week  ~sigh~.  Well, as Michael said, I have less than 10% of the quilt top to go.  I thought I should tell you about the fabric I have been using in this queen sized quilt.  Most quilters I know have a stash…..a yard or 2 or 3 (or more!!!) of various fabrics that we hope to make into quilts someday....and I certainly have that!  And then we also have scraps….for me scraps are 1/4 yard, or most of a fat quarter…..or any amount of fabric that is less than a yard, but still a sizeable piece.  And THEN there are the fabrics that I made this entire quilt with.  The center strip in each block was definitely cut from my “yardage” of fabric (I have a bolt of this that so far I have used in 2 other quilts).  But all of the rest of it did not come even from my scraps…it came from a strip here and a strip there….small bits I had leftover from other projects.  I have some of the tulip fabric in it from the butterfly/tulip quilt I just finished….but I also had ONE 1-1/2 inch strip of batik from the story I told you the other day….the stuff it took me 5 years to cut into after Paducah…and is in a wall hanging in our bedroom.  That stuff is over 20 years old.  Every time I was sewing on the blocks and getting low on fabric…I would again dig through my project drawers and find a bit more to keep me going.  And I'm not kidding about the word "bit".  For example, this 1-1/2 inch by 3 inch strip of gorgeous fabric I just couldn't bear to throw out:

Perfectly finished one corner of a block:

and I had several different 1-1/4 inch high by 2 inch wide triangles:

that filled in very nicely to finish some blocks:

This is pretty much all I have left:

I hope it will cover the 8 remaining blocks that I need.  I’ve already cut the center strips from re-claimed side fabric off of the long arm.

When you finish sewing on a block, you need to trim it to the size of the muslin.  This is one before trimming:

And here's a partial pile of trimmings so far:

And don't kid yourself....when I get down to the tips of these 8 final blocks....I'll probably be digging through this pile to see if there are triangles I can use  :~)....it is just too beautiful not to use each little piece.

In other news, I got artisan bread dough put together Saturday night when we got home from the playhouse, so dinner on Sunday was our first loaf of artisan bread in FOREVER:  

and Elephant Chicken Soup.  It has still been a bit too cold during the night to plant outside….but I’m trying to keep my mini-garden in the kichen going:

I'm really hoping to get my basil seeds planted in the next day or 2.  I figured for the moment I will keep the pot on the patio, and if it is going to get too cold, I can drag it into the basement and put it on newspapers overnight.  I really did not process enough basil last year to keep me in pesto all winter and I am determined not to let that happen again.