crazy baking

so I haven't posted in the past week. because not much is happening. really, this is where all the action is:



I've funneled much of my nervous energy from the past few weeks into baking. that's three kinds of cookies (oatmeal chocolate raisin, chocolate with chocolate and peanut butter chips, and chocolate chip) in the tupperware, as well as some homemade blueberry muffins.

I made the muffins last night as well as these cupcakes:


other than baking up a crazy storm, I haven't done much. eating gobs of delicious peach ice cream (shown above), reading the awesome US Weekly subscription I unexpectedly have been getting in the mail (do I have c-dog to thank for this?), and enjoying these gladiolas.



they remind me of my grandparents, who would give me a bouquet from their garden when I visited. actually the US Weekly reminds me a lot of my other grandparents, and how my sister and I used to read my grandma's Star magazines when we were over to visit.

maybe some craft posting to come in the future. for once, no quilt in progress. but I do have some fabric sitting around to sew into a skirt...

surprise, surprise...

...I made another baby quilt. while I do have a stockpile of quilts ready for my friends having kids, my stock shifts generally in favor of girl quilts. so when a friend recently welcomed a boy child to the family, I decided to throw together a little quilt rather than choose one from the stash.

I decided to make Hop Skip and a Jump from the Denyse Schmidt book. it went together quickly - cut and sewn in one evening. but I had only six blocks and it looked disproportionate for a small quilt. so I ended up cutting all the blocks in half. unfortunately, the strips look a lot more rectangular than wonky in half size, so I think it ended up not looking quite as good as the original pattern.





for the back, I took inspiration from Denyse Schmidt's Rugby Stripes design. I might like the back better than the front.

the latest from the baby quilt factory

I finished a baby quilt today. I really like how it turned out.



The design is a combination of the Big Zig from the Denyse Schmidt book and a zig zag quilt I saw on the Purl Bee. I made the triangles from squares which made sewing triangles much less stressful than my last attempt.

The back is a vintage animal fabric.



I used the colors from the back as inspiration for the front colors, which can be a more satisfying way of choosing quilt colors than trying to line up different options myself.

quilting bee

I was recently asked to join an online quilting bee, which sounded like fun, particularly given the excellent quilts I had seen made by other members of the group. you can read more about the group, Common Threads, here.

Rebekah has the first month, and she sent out a stack of red and black fabric. She asked for "anything that is striped, log cabin-y, box-y or wonky." I think I've covered most of these in my block.

I had intended to sneak in a bunch of red scraps from this quilt, but ended up using only one piece and instead relied on more solids.

lemon cupcakes with strawberry filling

a cupcake update! I made lemon cupcakes with strawberry filling - loosely based on this recipe. the raspberry filling was a little better, I think, but I was able to use up a bunch of strawberries lingering in the fridge this way.

panda cupcakes

another round of panda cupcakes!

back to quilting!

so yesterday I finished my paper, freeing up time to quilt!

I worked on a baby quilt, of course.

a few weeks ago, I managed to give one away to a friend who's expecting, so I of course needed to make another one, to add to the other six I have in reserve.

It's a very simple version of a coin quilt. based on some questioning of the expectant couples at work, apparently no one likes baby patterns or colors anymore, so I kept the colors a bit more 'mature'. some Heather Ross fabric from the stash, a collection of dots in slightly odd colors from Lecien, and some odds and ends from the stash.


I quilted it simply with a pattern of vertical lines.


the back is one of my favorite fabrics - echino by Etsuko Furuya. a year or so ago when the Japanese fabrics hit the market, this was one of the first I coveted. I could never think of a good use for it though, so I never bought any. but then I realized it could be the right dimensions for a baby quilt, and managed to find a yard of it online.