Cake on a stick

 

Cake pops.  Quickly shoving cupcakes aside as the new "it" baked good.

Vanilla cake mixed with vanilla frosting, dipped in dark chocolate.  These are for a reception at a local college who's colors are orange and black.  I had to make my own orange sprinkles since all I could find locally on such short notice were spring colored pastels (gotta love those 8pm calls where the product needs to be done in the next two days).  So I took some white nonpareils and put them in a ziploc with some orange food coloring and let my daughter go crazy shaking it until they were all coated.  A quick dry on a paper towel, and voila!

Quality control is very important.

For the love of scrappy quilts

I've been working on quite a few quilts lately (I think I have five in the works right now - all at various stages), but I don't like to post about them until they have been given to the actual recipient.  

This quilt was made for Steve and Michelle, two dear friends of mine who are getting ready to tie the knot this June. 

I wanted to keep it pretty and colorful for Michelle, but still masculine so it would be welcome in Steve's man cave.  I think the Kona coal balances out the bright patchwork perfectly - especially when combined with the patchwork binding, which I totally love.

Scrappy quilts are some of my favorite, because each piece of fabric is tied to such a distinct memory.  I'm thinking of one day starting a fabric diary - where I keep scraps of fabric and record either where I got them or what was made from them.  

 

I think it would be incredibly special one day for my children to know that the pink and green striped fabric on the right came from a skirt that I used to wear in high school, or the yellow modern meadow on the left was used to make Phoebe's crib skirt, or that the blue floral piece used to be a bag that I thrifted from a house that was overflowing with sewing supplies.

More Kona coal for the back along with a giant log cabin improve block.  I made the binding out of all the leftover binding bits from previous projects.  You can see that the section along the bottom right corner was originally used to make this special project.

Past Project Friday

Every Friday I will be posting some sort of crafty project that I have completed in the past.  It could be anything from baking, to sewing, needlecrafts, art, decorating, etc.

This is a pretty recent project that I finished just a couple of weeks ago.  Like I said earlier,  I'm not really feeling the Innocent Crush line - but I do have quite a weakness for the woodcut prints.  You might be seeing a project coming up where I use this print again in the home dec weight.  Also, have you seen Jamie's recovered chair?  I seriously did some major shrieking when I saw that post.  That's what's in store for my couch sometime down the road.

Anyway, back to the pillows.  Pretty simple, 26" with purple piping (oh how I love adding piping to everything now that I've conquered my fear of it), and a simple tuft in the middle, topped with a covered button.  Buttons that I've had to resew three times now since my toddler has gotten so good at ripping them off.

backed in Kona Coal

I actually made my own pillow forms for this too, because I could not justify paying $40 each at Joann's.  Heck, even if I used a coupon, it's still way more than I wanted to pay.  So I basically just bought two 32oz bags of fiberfill ($4.80 each w/a coupon) and stuffed them into some simple muslin cases that I cut and sewed myself.  They're definitely a bit more lumpy than true pillow forms, but the tufting really helps to compress everything down.  And Phoebe has been dragging them around and jumping on them for weeks and hasn't noticed a difference.