Baby Steps

I'm closing in on the last of the Broken Dishes baby quilt, but have taken a few sidesteps along the way so it is taking me longer to finish it up than it probably should. The bias binding is now cut (with all of my fingers still in tact this time) and applied, I just have to do the hand sewing.

It's always a bit of an exercise for me to work up to making the binding for some reason, so while I was in the zone I decided to tend to some unfinished business and cut the binding for the Dresden Plate that mom made - this one is waaaay overdue in getting the binding on it but it will be nice to put on the bed now that Spring is coming.

Then I enjoyed a friendly tug of war with it to get the binding sewn to the quilt - this quilt is just HUGE! In the end I won and it was well worth it because I think it's going to really finish off the quilt nicely, so there is a second one that I have ready for hand sewing.

And, since the gals at the church will likely soon have the quilting on my Goose Tracks finished, I decided I might as well get the pink binding for that one ready as well....M

The Accident-al Quilter

Some days it goes your way and some days it just goes so wrong. I was on a roll with the baby quilt, finishing up the machine quilting, when I discovered a little surprise.

As I was admiring the quilting design on the back my caught sight of...a little spec of green. What the...?!

Somewhere along the line I had picked up and sewn a green scrap to the back of the quilt. Sheesh. Time for the ripper and a little more stitching, but it's finished now and I quite like it.

Undeterred, I thought I'd start cutting the bias binding strips. Not quite sure where my head was (or my finger, for that matter) because about 3 slices in I managed to run the rotary blade through both the index finger and the base of my fingernail nail on my right hand. Ouch, ouch, ouch!

Thankfully no blood was spilled (on the quilt at least) and all sharp objects have been put away for the day to protect me from myself...M

A Culinary Diversion

I've been dividing my time between machine quilting Broken Plates and hand quilting Confetti and decided that I needed a little diversion. Spring is apparently on its way, though you wouldn't necessarily guess that from the blanket of white that still covers the ground, and it got me to thinking of all things Spring, and rhubarb in particular.

There are still several bags of rhubarb in the freezer from last year so my mission in life came to be finding a new rhubarb recipe to help use them up. The New York Times to the rescue! This upside down cake seemed to be calling my name, and I'm so glad that it did. From the lemony cake to the sour cream to the yummy sweet/tart rhubarb topping - it hit all the high notes. A warm slice topped with a dollop of vanilla ice cream was met with rave reviews by The Official Cookie Tester.

If you like rhubarb I'd suggest putting this on your list. One note about the flour. I bake a lot but have to say that I haven't had particular luck with cake & pastry flour. When I saw that this recipe called for cake flour I hesitated a bit but decided to go ahead with it. The Official Cookie Tester ran a few errands for me, including picking up some flour, but it was self-rising, so after a little Googling I found a way to modify all-purpose flour to get the same effect, something you might want to try if you find yourself in the same predicament.

We return you now to regular programming....M

Better Blues

The last couple of shots of Broken Dishes have been taken in the bowels of the quilting cave so I thought I'd share a few shots of it that show the blues in a better light.

The top is now together and just waiting to be quilted. Because it's for baby I'll machine quilt it so that it can stand up to lots of wash and wear.

I guess I could have started that last night but for the past 2 weeks I have been craving Anna Olson's Chocolate Chip Oatmeal Cookies so I made a batch of those instead. Okay, you forced it out of me, I had scarfed back 3 when they were fresh out of the oven. The recipe just calls for raisins but I add in chocolate chips and dried cherries as well.  YUM!....M