L is for...

It was another cold day outside, which makes a great day for keeping busy in the sewing room. My first task of the day was to start the laundry. I only bring this up because it meant I washed the piece of flannel I wanted to use in lieu of batting for the embroidery sampler. With that clean, dried and conveniently pre-shrunk, I was able to sandwich the embroidery sampler to ready it for hand quilting.

This piece will not be hand quilted as much as it will be hand embroidered with a running stitch. The only difference is that I'll be "embroidering" through three layers. So this begs the question: Is there any difference between hand quilting and hand embroidery? Aside from the layers and the kind of thread, it seems to me they are the same. Whatever. Now it's kitted up and ready to take along when we head south.

With that finished, I got to work on my challenge piece for Project Quilting: Abecedarius. If you missed my post yesterday, then know this challenge should be inspired by the letters of the alphabet. And it's kind of fortuitous that this theme came along because I've been thinking I'd like to find a pattern that included all the letters of the alphabet. And, yes, I know I could probably free piece them, but that would require thinking. As with so many things, I'm much too old for thinking. The last time an intelligent thought entered my head, I nearly started a fire. Lesson learned.

So I inquired of my good friend, The Google, and came upon this little Etsy shop from Ellis and Higgs, where I could get the entire alphabet and a bonus mini quilt. The mini quilt pattern is perfect for this challenge. Also, it was an instant pdf download, and so I could have it in my hot little hands instantly...always a good thing.

Here's the first block: An L.

Sorry, you don't have enough money yet to buy a vowel, but keep trying. Instead...how about this heart.

The center panel of the quilt is finished now. I took this picture thinking I would try to keep you guessing. But then there's that link to the Etsy shop, and so the mystery is ruined.

So here's where I left it. "L is for Love." It still needs a little work. What you don't see here are the approximately 146 different fabrics I lined up as potential borders and bindings. When Mike got home, we had a fabric consult, and he helped me choose the ones I'll use to finish it off.

By the way, the background fabric was used as a quilt back at one point in time. I had forgotten about the quilt back and expected to find yardage as I unrolled it from my stash. When I opened it up, I found pieces of it already cut into convenient strips. What a nice surprise! Today's goal is to get it to binding stage. Hopefully, I'll be hand-sewing the binding by day's end.

When I finished in the sewing room yesterday, I mixed up some bread dough. This sat in the refrigerator overnight. It's in my bread proofer right now, warming up. It has a long day's work ahead of it. I'll say more about it tomorrow.

For last night's dinner, I made an interesting dish. This is from the Cooking Light Diet. This is a Spinach and Feta Quiche with Sweet Potato Crust. It's not hard to make, but it does take a little over an hour because it spends quite a bit of time in the oven. I used my toaster oven for this. You thinly slice some sweet potato and line a pie plate with that. Then you roast the sweet potato "crust" for a bit. Then it's filled with some sauteed onion and spinach and covered with an egg mixture. Then you sprinkle feta cheese over the top. When it came from the oven, it looked like this:

The sweet potato crust is pretty easy, and you don't have to fuss over it too much. Mine had some gaps, and I worried it was too thick for all the stuff that was added. In the end, it gave me no trouble at all. It was very tasty, and we had the leftovers for breakfast this morning along with a toasted English muffin.

Generally, I'm not a great fan of feta cheese. (Feta makes me sweata.) It was good in this dish. It added a nice salty bite.

Since I was finishing up an audio book while I was stitching yesterday, I ended up stitching longer than usual and filled in the next portion of the hoop.

Now I'm moving down to the carrots. I think this is going to be a fast finish.

Today I'll be working on that bread recipe, and I'll finish off my challenge piece. Also, I suspect the next Tiny Tuesday block is posted, although I haven't looked for it yet. If so, I'll try to get that one done. After that, I don't think I'll have any more excuses for putting off quilting the flamingos. They're up next...by tomorrow at the latest.