Single girl quilt update

Sorry I've kind of gotten out of the habit of posting! But now my camera is back and working again. I've also been inspired to try to finish up my single girl quilt top. This stage is very satisfying, I've finished all the quarters, and ironed them and I now have a nice neat stack that just needs to be put together into complete rings.

So far I have 5 out of the 12 rings completed (shown above). This is the amount needed for the twin quilt. But I'd like to make the quilt bigger so I've had the idea to finish the quilt top as suggested in the pattern, but then add extra plain panels on the sides to make it wider. This way the rings cover the top of the bed, but the sides are plain.

I'll have to find some muslin to match the one I've been using if I go ahead with the side panels. The muslin was from a curtain, so I'm not sure if I can find more of it that matches. I'm not even sure if muslin was the best choice for the background. I figured the curtain had been washed a lot so there was no evidence of pilling but a quilt can take so long to make it makes sense to use top quality materials. Well it's definitely too late now!
In case you're wondering, I finally gave up the hand quilting and finished up the quarters by machine. I guess it was nice having a portable project while we were selling our house. I had to put away my sewing machine for showings, and I was also getting kicked out of the house all the time. But now that we're settled in the new house I can leave my sewing machine out on my desk in my own workroom.

My thoughts now are that I prefer machine piecing for quilt tops but I still love hand quilting once the quilt is assembled. Although I do think I benefited from trying the hand piecing because it forced me to slow down, so the pieces are more accurate. Tiny errors can really compound so now I know I have to work carefully from the start in order to be happy with the finished result.