Key Limes

The latest addition to our family arrived on Wednesday.  My sister had her first baby, a chubby little boy named Cain.  I am so behind on the quilt!  This is the start of it.  The browns and yellows on the left are the start of the triangle blocks that will be the background.  I started off thinking I would make a whole bunch of half-square triangles, but it didn't seem right.  When your quilt is inspired by key lime pie the half-square triangles seemed odd.  So I cut them into rectangles to make narrow, right-angle triangles.  And the greens will become... wait for it... appliqued circles.  Hey, it's for the key limes!

Yup, quilts inspired by food.  It was only a matter of time.

In truth, it is also a reminder of a time as a family in Mexico at Christmas.  My sister and I rekindled our relationship there and I thought this quilt would serve as a sweet reminder of us putting the past behind us and focusing on the future.  Oh, and the baby's room is yellow.  

Unmitigated Kitchen Disaster

I'm sparing your the disgustingness of what this photo could be.  Just look at my overcooked, but nicely crimped crust.  You've got to find something nice about it.  Please?

It snowed again this week.  Rain would have been welcome, but snow that we actually had to shovel?  So not welcome at the end of April.  In an attempt to remind myself of what indeed will return - summer - I pulled out one of the pies I made with the last of last summer's peaches.  The promise of sunshine for breakfast was enough to get me through the snow.  I should have stayed in bed, covers over my head, babies calling to me, and no tea in the pot.

The pie was horrible.  Although I faithfully researched different ways to freeze pies before I even attempted things last August, this was an utter failure.  A lot of information simply said to make the pie as you would, but not to cook it.  A little extra flour or starch in the filling would capture the extra juices you would get when you bake it.  So make your pie, freeze it, then bake it straight from the freezer.  Let me now tell you that this was bad advice, very bad advice. There was so much liquid from the fruit that the top crust effectively poached.  This is not an attractive way to cook a crust.  I even drained out some of the liquid, to no avail.  So my filling was nice, but the pie was both overcooked and undercooked.

I still managed to salvage some semblance of my summer dreams by scooping out the pie filling and eating it with yoghurt, but it wasn't the same.  I guess I'll just have to wait until August.

Improv Sampler - Completed Top

So, would you hire me to teach you improvisational quilting?

My improv sampler is done - apologies for the crappy photo, Hubby was an unwilling partner as we photographed quilts yesterday.  And the quilt ended up much larger than my brain was thinking it was going to be.  Right now it is 76 inches square.  I think I should quilt it before I start pitching, what do you think?

This was the first time I used a solid white for the sashing.   I'm not sure why I resisted solids.  I do like the texture you get from a nice white-on-white, but the solid makes the blocks pop that much more.  Even better is that it is cheaper!

The colour scheme for this quilt came from one fabric alone.  It is a sweet print with birds and trees on it.  It actually was a scrap from a crib sheet that my mother-in-law made for my nephew, born almost two months ago.  I pulled the rest of the fabrics, other than the white, from my stash.  Each block contains that bird fabric as a way to tie it all together.  

Now, if only we could pin down a nanny and I could get out to stores and start pitching.  In the meantime, I'm plugging away on a baby quilt for the latest addition to the family, my nephew that was born today.  More on that this weekend.

In Honour of Poo

Gee, you would think I'm trying to get caught in some interesting searches.

It's Earth Day today.  There are a million and one posts out there about eating organic, the 100-mile diet, plant based eating and so much more.  For a dedicated foodie, reader, and magazine slut (yes, I am one of those too) none of it is particularly eye-opening for me.  Interesting, but not mind-blowing. Lately, the people I've met are the ones that blow my mind, not what I read. I probably won't blow your mind here, but maybe a simple poem can.  And when you take me out for beers I promise to blow you away, or at least get you drunk.