Coming Up Off The Floor

I received a cute nudge a week or two ago from Deb at Wonky Girl in Australia who follows my blog saying that she was missing seeing progress on the Pumpkin Patch at Midnight. I believe her exact words were "Hey - can we get back to this one? LOL - I was really enjoying watching the blocks come together; wanna see a finish, please ;-) ". Well, what could I do but oblige?

I'd been stalled a little bit waiting for more of the mottled black border fabric so the blocks have been sitting on the floor outside my sewing room patiently waiting to be assembled. I guess I could have put the blocks together but I was too busy distracting myself with other projects.

Anyway, the day I received her note I had actually started working on it, so we were on the same wavelength, but every little nudge helps.

You'll remember that I injected a few different colours into the occasional ring within the 'pumpkins' to create more interest and I also wanted the rings to be a little wonky when they came together - not perfectly aligned all the way through.

The wonkiness worked to a certain extent but, in hindsight, I think it would have helped if would have varied the widths of my strips a bit more - they are all pretty consistent. I have some wonkiness but not in a really big way. Hopefully it will be seen as wonky and not as a really bad job of assembling the blocks!

All said though, I do love it, every last bit of it.

The cat is out of the bag on this one. Since Jane is the Queen of Halloween it's a birthday present for her (does it matter that her birthday was in February?). She's quite excited about that so it's extra incentive to get it finished. I figure that if she needs it for Halloween then I have until the end of September, no? And Jane, if you get it by then you'll have Deb to thank.

Now the real challenge begins. I want to machine quilt it with cobwebs but I have never done free motion quilting, so this could get really interesting....M

Houston...

With all of the fresh rhubarb popping up all over the place I've been craving the  Lemon Rhubarb Buttermilk Bundt cake lately, so I decided to whip one up last night and had an interesting experience that had me thinking, 'Houston...we have a problem..."

I mixed everything up and as I was putting the last of the batter into the pan I did a double take - a corner of my rubber spatula was missing and I know it was there when I started! That upper left corner used to be square...eeek! My trusty Tupperware spatula was no more.

I took a table knife and ran it through the pan to see if I could find the culprit, but no luck, so I decided to bake it, spatula tip and all, and see if I could recover it from the final product. It reminded me of when we were kids and Auntie Ann would wrap nickels in wax paper and tuck them into the birthday cake, but not nearly as exciting.

As luck would have it, the piece had sunk to the bottom of the pan so when I inverted it onto the serving plate it was there in plain view.

A little strategic surgery before I glazed it and all was well again (this time I only made half the amount of glaze and it was still lots). We had a piece for lunch today and it is as good, or better, than I remember, so all's well that ends well.

It's been herky jerky with meetings and travelling lately so not much stitching is happening. There are a couple more hexies for Minnie that are now finished though...

love them both.

And after my culinary adventures last night I put the finishing touches on this one, which has yet to be pressed....M

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

The Quilts at Pooh Corner

Time for an update from the land of the baby quilts. Anne and her friend's mom continue to move along on the quilts that they started a little while ago, with great success.

She has started cutting the striped sashing for Winnie and continues handing the sewing off to her friend to put it all together for her. Her work is not only impeccable, it is proving to be a big help to Anne in getting the project closer to the finish line much faster than if she was doing it all solo.

They laid out the blocks and realized that they were one short of 30 so Anne made a block using the striped sashing fabric and it will become the centre block for quilt.

Anne is really tickled with how it is coming together; I believe, "It’s going to be a cutie when it’s finished", were her exact words. I think she's bang on.

And, she has finished machine quilting Twinkle, the little blue & pink one that she had been working on with Betty. It's been delivered to the gift shop at Madonna House and they were so thrilled to get it.

Look closely inside each of the pink gingham blocks and you will see where she has stitched either a tiny heart or a small star. Cute. Her stash continues to shrink, so she's doubly happy...M