Home Sweet Home

Mom's Dresden Plate is all quilted and has come home to be bound and used. It was a huge job and I owe a great big thank you to the quilters at the church who hung in there until it was all finished. I think it even surprised them how long it took to do.

At one point they wondered if they would have any quilting to do this year but I think this one made up for any doubts that they might have had.

One of the comments that came back was that they weren't convinced initially about  quilting the plates in concentric rings - they'd never seen that done before - but once it was all done they quite liked it. They even thought it really looked like a flower :).

The primary reason that I went with that design was because there was already so much quilting throughout the rest of the quilt that I was trying to figure out a way to make the plates go quicker than outlining each petal.

Half way through marking it I began wondering if I was being silly putting so much stitching into it, but when I see it finished I am so glad that I did.















You'll remember that the backing (and soon the binding) are in this great yellow polka dot.

Now to make the binding and get it onto our bed.

I haven't done a whole lot of baking lately but last week I tried a new recipe - French Apple Cake. I had 4 apples that were riper than I like to eat raw so I was on the lookout for a good recipe to use them in, and I found it. Not only that, it was both quick and delicious. There's 2 tablespoons of rum in the batter, which gives it, as the author says, a lovely je ne sais quoi flavour. I used Royal Gala apples and they tasted more like pears than apples when it was baked.  It calls for 3 very large apples - I used 4 and could probably have added another one and still had a lovely cake. I'd highly recommend trying it.

It was best still a little warm from the oven but you could toss it into the microwave for a few seconds to get the same effect. We enjoyed it with a dollop of French Vanilla Bean ice cream but a Devon custard or warm butter rum sauce would be nice too. Isn't it great to have options?...M