Slightly Inspired

Well, I won't pretend it's going to be the most exciting quilting of my life, but I think I've finally stumbled upon what I'm going to do for the Chocolate Covered Cherries quilting: semi-wiggly lines.

At least I hope that's what I'm doing - since I'm more than halfway done!

It's not as clear of a photo as I'd like, but I think you can see a little bit of the difference between the quilting and the basted area.

It's going well - though I think it is probably my densest quilting yet, and certainly it uses more thread than just about anything I've done before. It's also taking a lot of time - which makes me wonder all the more if I should re-think my initial plan to make these squiggly lines cross the quilt in both directions. I'm beginning to suspect that would be too much.

Overall, I'm happy with the way it's looking on the blocks, but I think I should have done something simpler on the border; I just feel like that much thread, in such a high contrast, is fighting with the fabric's design/print a little more than I'd like. But no, I will not be ripping it out of all the border to try that part again. It's going to be what it's going to be. And I'm just going to push through and hope that once it's fully quilted, bound, and washed, the fabric still shines as much as it did before.

I think it will. I think this is just one of those 'try not to question during the process' moments where the beginning and end are good, but the middle is awkward.

Now, I'm off to buy more thread so I can finish this up. Between ripping out a previous mistake, and the rather confusing mess of having a few feet of additional thread (not attached to the rest) wound on backwards (compared to the rest) in the middle of the process, I've fallen a bit shorter than I planned.

Green Food

1) I raided the garden last night and grabbed a little bit of what I found to throw in to this salsa/salad:

The avocado and black beans came from the store, but the corn, cilantro, jalapeno, and zucchini all came from the garden. I added a little lime juice and some salt and wound up with a bright, spicy salad/salsa to go with our burritos. (I had intended to add one of the onions the elk spared this time around, but the jalapeno was so hot I didn't need the extra heat - and yes, our onions are hot!)

2) Okay, mine didn't turn out nearly as cute as the ones I pinned, but I tried to follow the general recipe from ShakenTogetherLife.com for Key Lime Cookie Cups.

I guess I didn't let that one cool long enough before frosting it... or removing it from the pan...

These two look less melty - but no where near as appetizing as the ones I pinned!

Looks aside, they were delicious. I could hardly get them out of the oven, slightly cooled, and frosted quickly enough to suite myself (or the company I had over for movie night). Next time, I think these might be a cook in advance kind of thing so I have no excuses and will let them cool first.

I got a little tired of working with only 16 at a time (the size of my mini muffin tin), so toward the end of the evening I took the left over ingredients and super sized it:

Again, I know it doesn't look like much, but it was delicious. Don't take my word or my pictures for it, click over to the recipe, buy the ingredients, and give it a try yourself. If you like key lime, you will not be sorry.

Lucky - Ready to Wash!

After quilting what I'm calling my Happy Go Lucky quilt, I started on the long and disappointing process of choosing a material for binding. My hope was to find something in the purple/lavender spectrum - but no luck. I always thought blues were supposed to be the most challenging colors to match, but after the last few days I'm thinking it might be purples!

So, when failure met me at every turn, I started looking for yardage of the Good Fortune fabric line (the charm pack I used in the top). It didn't take much looking to learn that these fabrics are on their way out. Shopping online, I had about three options - none of which were quite what I had in mind. I left my browser open to the best of the three, and set out to check my local shops for any yardage - starting at my favorite place.

Where I had success. Whew! Alright, it wasn't quite what I'd have chosen if I had a pick of every piece in the line... but it would have been my third choice, so I think that's still pretty good...

The aqua floral isn't a great match with the back (you can see why I was leaning toward lavender), but it's not bad either.

It looks better against the front - although I still think purple or lavender would have been a better fit, and I would love to at least had an option of looking at a different print. (Most of what was left in my favorite store was of the green and/or coral variety - which would certainly not have worked with the back.)

I'm still just drooling over this one. Although I'm usually big on a quilt not being finished until it's been washed, I'm hesitating to drop it in the wash. Partly because, despite pre-washing the backing fabric, I am a little worried about colors running (I don't think I've ever worked with this much white before). And partly because I love it so much just how it is, I'm not sure if washing it will improve it or not... Since there's no one lined up to get it (in fact, I'm leaning strongly towards keeping this one), I'm in no rush to decide to wash it. I think I'll let it hang out and decorate the house for a while first - and get around to washing it in a little bit.

Probably...

Lace + Shirt

I'm not a big fan of shopping. I suppose it would be more fun if I could reliably find what I want or like in things that fits that worked for me, but that rarely happens. It's been a problem most of my life for one reason or another and I suppose I've kind of given up on spending too much time hunting for things. Now days I tend to settle for what I can find in a few minutes - especially since I rarely do more than work or run errands in it anyway. So, I have a drawer full of fairly basic shirts. Usually, that's all I need. But sometimes, I want to be a little dressier than jeans and basic shirts without going for the performance/event/church section of the closet.

I've recently been given a stash of laces and other trims, so it seemed like an obvious solution to use one of the pieces to dress up my plain shirt.

I often find it easier to make decisions from pictures rather than the actual samples, so I took a few photos of my favorite pieces auditioning against the chosen shirt:

I actually wound up going with the very first piece I tried (the upper left side image). Some of the others seemed too large (lower right image), and I knew I was going to have to sew along the top and bottom of the lace, so the less straight lined ones (like the top on the right) were thrown out as well.

I wanted the lace to wrap all the way around the neck, so I chose a spot in the back to be my start/stop point, where the two ends of the lace overlapped a little, then pinned the lace in place.

Stitching along the top line was easy - I had a very straight line to follow both in the lace and the line of the shirt's collar.

Stitching the other edge of the lace was a bit more time consuming - but absolutely necessary to keep the lace against the shirt. Again, I used a lot of pins, and just did my best to keep the line of stitching hidden in thicker trim near the edge.

Fortunately, this is a shirt that goes over my head with no need for any stretch, so all I needed to think about was a straight stitch. There were a few places, especially on the outer edge of the lace, when I had to allow the lace to 'gather' under itself in order to make the curve nicely. These areas were a little trickier to sew, but nothing going slowly couldn't handle.

It's not a huge difference, but I think it made the shirt a little less basic than it was before. I certainly enjoyed wearing it more than I did before - and while I think it could still be layered or worn with accessories, it felt more 'finished' without them than it did before.

My husband likes it, but my brother's first comment was 'ew, grandma shirt.' So, outside opinions are tied, but I like it, and since I'm the one wearing it, I figure my vote carries the most weight!

How (not) to Quilt

My machine and I have yet to come to an agreement on how to work without the feed dogs up, which puts things like the 'typical' meandering free motion quilting out of my reach right now. Which was a little disappointing (again) when it came to trying to figure out how to quilt my Chocolate Covered Cherries quilt. I really thought something like the meandering free motion style would have worked well to help blend my franken-blocks, as well as not clashing with the on-point blocks (like I think straight line quilting in any direction would have).

It was difficult to decide what to do - because while I wanted to go with a fairly dense amount of quilting, I also wasn't certain how I could quilt over the textured pieces. Initially, I thought I would do thin stripes around the borders, as well as outlining each block, thin stripes in the solids, and then something patterned in the triangles (leaving the center blocks, the ones likely to be textured) alone.

I got about this far:

a full outline of the first block, as well as a few lines into the solid before determining that this was simply not going to do what I wanted.

And yes, although I often choose to make do instead, this time I really did spent over an hour ripping out that quilting error until I was looking at a blank slate again.

So I've set it aside again for the night. Maybe inspiration will hit while I'm sleeping and tomorrow I'll have an idea what to do.

My 17th Quilt: Monkey Whack

It's taken me much longer than I anticipated, but the simple stack & whack, stash busting "Monkey Whack" quilt is finally finished - and joining my 'done' stack as number seventeen.

Although I didn't use up all of my stash of this sock monkey fabric, I made another large dent in it - and I did come very close to using up the two mugshot style prints (a completely un-child-friendly name for them, I know, but I don't know how else to describe them) as well as the yellow/pastel bubble fabric that makes up the entire back.

I think that the only purchase I made for this one was the red dot for the binding material. If I recall correctly, even the batting came out of my stash.

As usual (sadly), this will be joining the stash of ready to go baby gifts - but (more happily) this is certainly going to give me a non-pink, non-floral option. And that doesn't hurt.

I think it's come a long ways from the beginning stacks of fabric - with the surprise addition of sash (possibly the best choice I made on this), the surprise addition of quilting (no, wait, maybe this is better), and the bright pop of red for binding.

Slow Cooker Korean BBQ

The only Korean food I've had (so far) has been cooked at home with the help of seasoning packages - so I admit, I have no idea what the 'real deal' should taste like. But last week, we happened upon a package of Campbell's Slow Cooker Sauces in Sweet Korean BBQ and knew we wanted to give it a try.

Since I spent most of the day at work while Greg got the day off, the effort involved, and the photos, are all his.

Following the directions on the packaging, he added some stew beef that we'd picked up just for trying with this, covered in it sauce, and left it to cook for several hours.

By the time I got home, dinner was waiting for me!

Yes, you might notice, it cook just a little long, which led to some of the pieces being a little black - but they weren't yet burned, and still tasted great. We ate it over quinoa (having burned rice the last several times we've tried to make it) and with a large side of broiled broccoli. It was delicious. Sweet/savory enough to appeal to his taste buds, but not so sweet that I was unhappy.

Again, following the lead of the package, we packed up the left overs for the next night - tacos with cabbage. I didn't feel like picking up a whole head of cabbage just for this, so I grabbed a bag of 'Asian Chopped Salad' kit - cabbage, cilantro, wonton pieces, and a ginger dressing.

And as I was working again, once again the photos and credit for fixing dinner go to Greg.

Oh My! Honestly, the burritos/tacos/whatever was even better than the previous night (with the quinoa). I especially loved the bites of cilantro against the sweet bbq flavors. And we are always happy to find a new way to eat cabbage - so this is another win win win!

So, slow cooker win and taste bud win? Absolutely doing it again!



Note: I am not in cahoots with Campbell's or anyone else. I was not asked to talk about this nor do I get anything for doing so. Again, if that's ever the case, I'll say so. This really was us just finding something, trying it, and wanting to talk about it a little bit.