Happy New Year -- Football and Crab Cakes

After a totally busy year including a lot of travel, both personal and professional, I got to spend some up close time with my Brother DreamWeaver machine over the last couple of weeks. I was hoping to finish two quilts for two sisters, age 7 and 9, who I love dearly, but with life intruding was only able to finish one and get a good start on the second.

Since, however, you can't gift one sister with a quilt without another one for the other sister, I think the gifts will be given for Valentine's Day -- a worthy goal!

So here's a picture of the first one; I made this for the older sister, Sammie:


Closeups of some of the quilting:





Used all of the leftover fabrics on the back; had a lot of small pieces so it took me almost as long to piece the back as the front!


You can see the quilting better on some parts of the back:





I don't always think about posting quilts in progress; perhaps if I did, it would inspire me to finish more of them? While browsing on Pinterest the other day, I came across a blog that encouraged bloggers to take the pledge to post our progress, not just our finished work. I thought that was pretty cool and decided to do it!

The website for taking the pledge is a pretty fun site, so you might want to stop by. Web addy is: http://r0ssie.blogspot.com/2010/05/process-pledge.html?m=1 Since I don't know how to make links from the iPad, you might have to do a cut and paste thing to get there.

In the spirit of the pledge, I decided to post pictures of Lauren's quilt, safety pins and all. I haven't started to quilt it yet, but it's all pinned up and ready to go:


There weren't as many leftover pieces on this one, so the back is a little simpler:


Sammie's quilt was pieced using a pattern from P&B Textiles by Nancy Odom called "Gather Sunshine":


Lauren's was pieced from "Winter Pinwheels" designed and published by Tiffany Hayes who owns Needle In A Hayes Stack, www.needlesinahayesstack.com. Fabric for both quilts was chosen by and purchased from Dawna Harrison, co-owner of my local quilt shop, Bolts in the Bathtub, www.boltsinthebathtub.com. The three of us can make a lot of quilting happen!

Now on to the New Year's Day food! Dan and I are going to dinner at the home of Dawna and her husband Robert. Robert is making all kinds of wonderful goodies; I'm contributing the home made bread I just took out of the oven:


I bake it on a large rectangular stone right on the silicone sheet you see there to the left. It browns up really nicely and I don't have to worry about the dough sticking to the peel when I toss it onto the stone. Just slide it on, silicone and all!

The other thing I am bringing is some crab cakes that my mother sent us as a holiday gift:


Dan and I each had one last night and they were really good. I like to serve them on top of mesclun tossed with a light olive oil vinaigrette and the crab cake on top. These are large crab cakes and one per person will easily work for a first course.

Along with baking the bread, I watched quite a bit of the Rose Parade this morning -- the floats are always so beautiful! It's daunting to imagine how much work and how many man-hours go into each one...then I didn't change the channel and have been watching the Capital One Bowl between Georgia and Nebraska -- good game! Georgia's coach just got orange Gatorade poured all over him -- geez, that's got to be cold!!! The guys pour it, ice and all, you know!

Waiting for the Rose Bowl game.....


- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Location:Home -- Palmdale CA