Building Houses

Good morning, my friends, and a Dandy December to you. Let's send 2023 out with a bang, shall we? Next year will be the interminable campaign here in the United States, and I'm afraid it's about to get ugly. But let's not talk about that, okay? Let's talk about kitties. 

Sadie was my helper cat in the sewing room yesterday. They like that I've given them their own quilt to use when we're sewing.

She was happy we weren't doing any papurr-piecing during our sewing day. Instead, I was making four houses for the Painted Ladies quilt. Because of the way this quilt is sewn together, some of the rows have partial houses when the house and roof are split between the top and bottom of the vertical row. For this row, I was doing four complete houses. This is a great pattern for using up partially-cut fat quarters. I selected food fabric for the first house.

This next one is made from some shell fabric I used in one of the Shop Hop quilts.

The third one is another Shop Hop fabric...this one from Palm Springs.

Finally, this one.

Then, I sewed them together end to end and sewed them to the six rows I already had. Here are all the Painted Ladies I have so far. Three rows to go.

And that brings me to the last item on my list of WIPS. If I'm following my own rules, then I'd be making two more blocks for the Whimsical Quilt Garden today. 

But I'm the boss of me, and so I'm doing things a little out of order today. Recently, I received this email notification from my favorite quilt charity, Quilts for Kids.

They are in desperate need of quilts that are appropriate for boys. And that got me thinking. When I finish my list of WIPS, I'll be to the "Quilter's Choice" section of my white board. And the one remaining quilt for the current go-round on my list is a Quilts for Kids quilt. 

And since they want their quilts by December 17th, I have just enough time to make one and get it in under the deadline. There are lots of patterns to choose from on their website. I've always made this four-patch pattern. 

I remembered a frog fabric I've had in my stash for a while. I think this would make a great focus fabric for a boy's quilt.

Also, I had about three yards of a yellow gifted to me from a friend when a quilter friend of his passed away. It seemed like a good way to use that. I'll use it for the quilt back too. Quilts for Kids likes their bindings sewn by machine, and so that yellow turned from the back will finish it off nicely. (If memory serves, I might even have a frog stitch on my sewing machine. Wouldn't that be fun?) And so I spent the rest of my sewing day cutting the strips and pieces I'd need. 

The four-patch pattern goes together pretty quickly. There's not much else on today's agenda, and so it wouldn't surprise me at all if I finished the quilt top today. And this will make a great project for December's

When I publish this post, I'll head over to the party and link up.

Last night's dinner had me trying a new recipe I saw in the NYTimes recently. This is Glazed Cod with Bok Choy, Ginger and Oyster Sauce. 

I'll admit I'm not a big fan of fish, but I'm still trying to get more fish into our diet. I like all kinds of shellfish and I like salmon and halibut. As for the rest...meh. This was made with a nice wild-caught cod fillet. It was good. I like the flavoring the oyster sauce adds. My one note about the recipe is that I found it hard to fully cook the baby bok choy without covering the pan and steaming it, rather than just stirring it in an open skillet. If I were going to make this again, I'd probably get a fully grown bok choy and cut it into pieces. The baby bok choy I found in the grocery store was probably more teenaged than "baby," and so the stem end was fairly thick.

It was a pretty easy and quick dish to make, and at 362 calories per serving, it was a low-calorie dish as well. I've linked to the recipe above the image, but again...it's the NYTimes, and so you might not be able to open it. I'll pass along something my friend CathieJ shared with me recently. She was able to get a recipe by entering her e-mail without subscribing. You could give that a try. And if that doesn't work, then email me and I'll be happy to send it to you. Seriously. It's no trouble at all. I'd post it here, but I get worried about violating copyright.

Okay, so you already know how I'm going to spend my day. The rain that was forecast has arrived. We're expecting wet weather for at least the next week or so. It's good sewing weather, and that's what I'm going to do.