Cutting a New Project

After I finished quilting the Churn Dash and Mustang quilts, I decided to reward myself by starting a fresh new project. Yes, I have umpteen unfinished ones to work on, but sometimes you've just gotta start something new and fun!

This quilt is made from the Tula Pink collection called "Eden" and there's nothing better than getting to play around with Tula Pink fabric - the colors, the patterns, the hidden animals!

I can tell from the cutting that this quilt will require careful construction. There are tons of bias edges, so precision, careful pressing and starching will be the order of the day.

In other momentous cutting news, I put a new blade in my rotary cutter! It had been...I don't know...a YEAR since I'd done it last? I don't know why I'm so terrible about doing that, because each time I start cutting with a new blade it's a revelation and I think "It's so easy now! I must do this more often!"...and then a year goes by. But this time, I WILL do it more often, I swear.

Quilting Up a Storm

My Juki has been going a mile-a-minute for the last couple days, as I've been working quilting on two finished tops.

I've been doing Figure 8's on the Churn Dash quilt, and I have to say, I love this pattern. It's fast and easy, and fun. Three very key things for me!

I'm doing a simple diagonal grid for the mustang quilt, and it's also fast and easy, but not that fun...more boring than anything, but I'm almost done, so that's good.

Friday Finish: September Mini Quilt

My mini quilt for September took a little longer to finish, because the final touch was adding some hand stitching around the border. Isn't it cute?

I quilted this in a meandering loopy pattern which I thought was reminiscent of unspooling thread or something like that...to match the little spools of course! It might have been a bit too esoteric, because I think it's kind of hard to see, but whatever - it was fast and easy!

For some reason (I think it was the hand sewing that did it), this got a little off-kilter and I think I might block it so it will hang nice and square.

Recipe Time: Layered Asian Dip

When some friends came over last weekend for extended sit-on-the-deck time and dinner, I decided an appetizer was needed to take the edge off since our gatherings are notorious for delayed dinners. Who wants to go in the kitchen and start cooking when there's deck and wine talk going on? In fact, there have been times when 9 pm rolls around, no dinner has been made, and everyone's too soused to care, which is why pizza delivery exists. The answer to all of these problems is appetizers! Why haven't we thought of this before?

I knew just by looking at the ingrediants that this recipe was going to be awesome, and it was. We scarfed down a batch of it Saturday night, and it was so awesome I made more of it to take to a party on Sunday night, where it was also scarfed down and demands were made for more to be brought to future gatherings.

The recipe can be found here: https://www.landolakes.com/recipe/18806/layered-asian-appetizer/ and I pretty much followed the directions, except for a few things:

• I didn't add the butter to the cream cheese, because why? Cream cheese is already fatty enough
• Maybe because of that, my cream cheese was a little stiff, so I added a splash of milk when I was blending it to make it a little more spreadable
• There are tons of different asian chili sauces out there - I used one by the same company that makes Sriracha Sauce - it has a rooster on the jar
• My peanuts were salted, because I like salty stuff. Unsalted peanuts? Gross

Courthouse Steps Progress

I've sewn a total of about two hours this week, so I don't have much to report. I was able to add to my scrappy Courthouse Steps blocks, and I can now shut the lids on my pink, yellow, and green scrap bins! I think I'll put these away for now and buckle down on quilting some of my many quilt tops - I have a whole drawer-full, and it's time to finish some projects!