Liam's Quilt

I meant to put these pictures up a long time ago since I finished Liam's quilt in February. I had great dreams of having this photo shoot with it so you could really see the the whole thing, but that hasn't happened and three months have passed. I said while I was working on this that I never wanted to do a quilt again, but now I'm having the itch. The learning curve was big, but I think I could do one again in less time. Also, maybe I need to make the next one bigger since this quilt only has room for Liam and I.

This was a trial run of laying out the fabric to see what it would look like together. This was before the solids were added.

Here is all the fabric with solids and my plan for attack. You are really supposed to do this at random, but I wanted all the colors to be distributed evenly.

My first strip sewn together. Only 9 more to go.

My collection of strips

Skip a few steps ahead and this is me quilting all the layers together. A very long process

A horrible picture of the finished product with black binding and a solid grey back. I like how it came out, just wish it was a little bigger. Oh well, maybe next time.

The Tough Transition into Motherhood

Last week I spent sometime evaluating different areas of my life and was really disappointed to find that I'm not doing so well. Once Liam came, life stopped and I hoped at this point I would be back to the familiar me, but I'm not. My life isn't much different than it was one year ago. The only area that I can see growth is in my mothering skills. Everything else, like my relationship with God, time with friends, doing things that refresh me, managing my home, etc., has taken a major downturn. It's like I don't know how to be me in this new role as a mother and keep up with all these other areas in life. I mean, I good day for me is Liam eating and sleeping well, beyond that, I make no promises. At this point I was hoping to be thriving again, having a deep relationship with God, enjoying my family, spending great time with friends, being healthy and taking care of my body, and having a clean home. I don't know how to merge what was true of my life before into this new role as a mother. It's not that I have high expectations on what my life should look like, I just don't know how to put it all together. I've been in survival mode for over a year now and I don't know how to move on to a more sustainable life.