A Quilt is a Thing with Feathers

Apologies to Emily Dickenson. I couldn't resist. I have to write fast this morning. It's going to be a bad day for kitties. They have an early appointment with the vet to get some of their immeowunizations.

Yesterday's sewing consisted almost entirely of quilting the Stitched Inchies 4.0 wall-hanging. It first needed sandwiching.

Smitty was my helper cat for that part of the day.

I had only a vague notion of what to do with this, but I put my needle down at one of the corners, and feathers flew out.

They're birds and birdhouses, right? Feathers seemed a good choice. I'm doing them in all the bird fabric surrounding the embroidered blocks.

In the areas close to the embroidery, I'm just doing some straight-line stitching.

Here's how it's looking from the back.

I really like that fabric. It seems a shame to use it only on the backside of a wall-hanging, but it was the best choice from my stash.

There should be plenty of time to finish it off and get it to binding stage by day's end. If the worker bees working on reconstructing our basement show up this time (grrrrrrrrr), I should be getting kicked out of my sewing room tomorrow for about a week. We'll be gone for a portion of that time, but all the contents of the downstairs will be moved up into the garage in preparation for new carpeting. And after living with the chaos since early April, I'm more than ready...fit to be tied, you might say...for this job to be done. I'm just glad Mike has been handling all the hounding and phone calls because I might have killed somebody by now. And with me in prison for murder, who would finish all the quilts I have in the works?

My sewing day was a little shorter yesterday. I was trying a new recipe, which wasn't difficult, but it did take quite a bit of time in the oven. This is Lion's Head Meatballs, or Shīzi Tóu, if you want to get all Chinesey about it. I first saw this talked about on social media, and people who'd made it were raving about it. You can find the recipe right here, but know that this is from America's Test Kitchens. You'll need a subscription to access it. If you can't get access to the recipe, and you really want it, just email me (in my right sidebar), and I'll send it to you.

So here's how it looked when we sat down to eat it. The meatballs are from ground pork and some other seasonings. I made the full recipe, which included 2 lbs. of ground pork. It was mixed up using my electric mixer, and then I made the meatballs by taking big handfuls of the mixture to form 3-inch meatballs. They're braised in a broth for an hour, and then some napa cabbage is added before the last 30 minutes of braising. The rice vermicelli noodles are cooked separately, then added to the bowls, and the soup and meatballs are ladled over the top.

It was really good. I'd make it again. It wasn't exactly the right dish for a hot summer day, but it would be great comfort food in the cold of winter. I made it because I had a half head of napa cabbage, and this gave me a way to use it.

Okay...like I said, I have to write fast today, and I need to get going with breakfast. I'll finish up my quilting this afternoon, and move it along to the binding. We have another short getaway planned for next week. I'd like to take this one along to finish off the binding.