New York Beauty

I rearranged my office and now stare at a blank wall where my cabinets used to be. I was going to look for a painting or picture to go there.  This morning, I thought about making a quilt to hang there.  Jennie at Sunflower Quilts has been making gorgeous New York Beauty blocks the last few days and inspired me to research this block more.  It has curved piecing, which would be new for me.  I love the movement and colors in the samples I've found.

You can see Jennie's blocks on the Chicago Modern Quilt pool and on her blog.

And some of my other inspiration quilts:

http://www.ezpiecing.com/Old_Time_New_York_Beauty_Quilt.jpg

http://www.twomanyquilts.com/images/c09.jpg


http://www.flickr.com/photos/whskr/597374692/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/whskr/597374692/

Triangle Quilt

I finished my half square triangle quilt this past week.  The fabrics match our family room well.  I used two charm packs (don't remember which ones off hand) and some Quilters Only cotton from JoAnn.  I used the backing fabric, which I bought at The Quilt Basket, for the binding as well. This definitely goes into the better-finished-than-perfect category.  Still, I'm pretty happy with it.  There are some corners that could be better.  It's a little wavy in the middle.  Whatever.  It's big and snuggly and mine.

I have, like many other quilters it seems, given away almost every quilt I've made.  My mom has a few.  Most of them went to the babies of friends and family.  I've given quite a few to charity, either Project Linus, Shriners Hospital, or through a Craftster.org Unswap.  Now, we have the one I made with my mom and grandmothers for college, the large queen size "flag" quilt we sometimes use on our bed, the one I made for LBK, and this one.  I think that's it.  I have two three more in the UFOs:  a wonky log cabin type block using my mom's leftover grandmothers fan triangles, Christmas quilt blocks from a swap, and a Christmas jelly roll.

Valentina's Quilt

My very good friend finally, finally, had her baby girl!  She told me she was using lavender and green for the nursery colors.  I visited my LQS and bought a stack of Asian prints, but something about them just wasn't right for this project.  I went shopping again and ended up with fabrics I was much happier with.  A box of scraps I bought arrived just as I was in the middle of the piecing, and this little guy was just waiting to hop into my quilt.

 

Here are two blocks so you can see all the fabrics.

 

The finished front:

 

And the finished flannel back:

I used a piece of off white for the label and worked it into the piecing on the back.  I wrote a note to the new family, dated it, and put my initials along the side using a Micron Pigma pen.

I'm always nervous about being neat, evenly spaced, and accurate when writing a label.  I usually decide on the size of the label, then go to the computer.  I use Microsoft Word to create a text box of the same size, then play around with fonts, layouts and wording.  Once I'm happy with the label, I print it out and use a light table to copy it onto the fabric with the Micron pen.  If your fabric needs stabilized, you can also iron on a bit of freezer paper. 

I hope little Valentina loves her quilt!

Eggplant Pizza

I saw Ree, over at Pioneer Woman, made a delicious looking pizza.  What does that woman make that doesn't look delicious, though, really?  I had some Neo-Neopolitan pizza dough in the refrigerator.  It was the first time I tried Peter Reinhart's recipe, so I liked the idea of a sauce-less pizza to really be able to taste the crust.  I picked up an eggplant and used some of the hothouse tomatoes we already had instead of the cherry tomatoes Ree used.  It was quick, easy, and so good!  The eggplant gives it a meaty flavor.  It was even tasty cold for breakfast, although a bit garlicky for first thing in the morning.  I loved the crust and will continue to use this as my go to recipe.

Not Your Usual Breakfast

repost from 9/2009

As a follow up to Not Your Usual Sandwich, I present Not Your Usual Breakfast: bacon, eggs and pancakes.