Quilting Unlimited

Good morning, my friends. Well, what can I say? I'm not very good at following my own wise counsel. (The level wisdom is open to debate, of course.) When I got started on the quilting yesterday, I told myself I would stop after an hour. But then, I had to pick out some stitches when I made a wrong turn, and so I gave myself a little extra time. And then I had to pick out some more stitches, and so I added a little more time. When time was up I said, "Just a little more." And then I kept going and I said, "But I'm almost finished! I can't stop now!" And on and on it went like this. Me arguing the case for quilting restraint...other me ignoring my well-thought-out arguments. In the end, all the red patches were finished.

The motif was pretty simple: upsy-downsy-leftsy-rightsy. As I went, and particularly when I changed direction, I was counting out the squares to make sure I wouldn't end up with the upsy-downsy-leftsy-rightsy designs side by side, rather than alternating, as you see here. 

I would have thought with the hundreds of patches, I'd quilt myself into a corner at some point. It never happened. It worked out just right all the way to the very last patch. When it was all finished, I took it off the machine and laid it on the floor. Only the borders are left to quilt.

It's a little hard ot see the quilting. Here's a close-up of the top.

Here's how it looks from the back.

So, I'd like to keep going on this, but I'll admit my left wrist is hurting today. Sometimes it feels better as I go about my business and give it a chance to loosen up. I neglected my art quilt yesterday, and so that will be the first thing I work on today. If I can get back to my quilting, I'll make my way around the inner yellow border. And I'll tell Smitty to drag me from the machine if I don't stop there.

Backing up to earlier in the day, I spent some time on my slow-stitching. These kitten quilt blocks are so cute and fun to work on. They were a little tedious to work on one after another. Now that I'm doing them one at a time, they're just plain fun.

When I was finished there, I prepared the Stuffed Flank Steak and got it going in the slow cooker. This turned out to be as good as I remembered it, but there was a little problem with structural integrity. I had about 30% more flank steak than I needed for the recipe. If I were to do this again, I would use the whole thing. Instead, I cut about 1/3 off mine. I cut it across the width which left me with a slab a little too short for what I needed. 

I've had a mostly-used bag of bread stuffing in my freezer, probably since last Thanksgiving. I had just the amount I needed for the stuffing, and it mixes up pretty easily. Then, I spread it over the meat and tied it with kitchen twine. The two ends of the flank steak didn't quite meet at the top and so I used toothpicks to close the gaps. When it went into the slow cooker, it looked like this.

And that would have been fine except that the meat shrank as it cooked, exposing the stuffing at the top. I still needed to make a sauce from the juices left in the slow cooker. The "log" of meat was so tender I was hard pressed to get it out of the slow cooker without having the whole thing fall apart. Using two spatulas and with Mike holding a plate at the ready, I was able to get it out in one piece.

From there, all I needed to do was to add some red currant jelly to the sauce in the slow cooker, whisk it in, and dinner was served. We had it with a side of Honey Cinnamon Roasted Sweet Potatoes. The sweet potatoes were easy to make and really tasty. A good accompaniment. Also, I had some leftover mashed potatoes and the sauce was good on the potatoes and the meat. 

So, in the image below, you can see how the meat wraps around the stuffing as it's sliced crosswise. It would be prettier if it hadn't shrunk apart. Either way, it was very tasty. I'd do it again with a longer strip of flank steak next time.

So I told you I'd share the recipe if it turned out, and I'm saying it was worth the effort. Here's the recipe if you want to try this yourself. Here's a hint: Have your kitchen twine under the meat before you start to roll it up. Then, it's simple enough to loop the string and pull it tight to hold the whole thing together as you prepare it to go into your slow cooker. (I hope that makes sense.)

In other news, Mike has fixed the electrical problem in the fifth wheel and everything is put back together. Yay! I'm so glad it didn't turn into a major undertaking. We're still not certain what happened. It didn't seem to be the work of critters. Mike's working theory is that he may have pierced the wire with a screw when he installed a back-up camera a couple of years back. It didn't cause problems when he installed it, but over time, it may have chafed at that wiring until it came apart. There's really no way to know for sure, but rodents don't seem to get the blame this time around. Sorry, not sorry, Rodents. You brought these false accusations on yourselves.

Okay, so today I'll get back to my art quilt and try to make a little progress there. I'll do more quilting if my wrist stops hurting. Some ibuprofen might help. Right now it's time for breakfast. There's nothing else on the agenda, so it will be an NBS day (nothing but sewing).