"Spices" Reveal: Saffron

Good morning, my friends. Finally, it's the day we've been waiting for...the reveal of my mystery quilt for the "Spices" prompt. Maybe it's not the day you've been waiting for, but I'm always happy when I can finally show these secret projects.

Okay, so "Spices." I wanted to do something floral. I couldn't figure out any other subject that wouldn't involve a line of jars. One idea was to do the flower from whence we obtain vanilla. It's a pretty flower. Here's one I found in the Openverse.

(Image credit: "vanilla flower - Goa, India" by She Paused 4 Thought 

is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.)

Pretty, huh? My other idea was the crocus flower where saffron originates. And I fell in love with this photograph, also from the Openverse.

(Image credit: "Saffron - Crocus sativus" by themts is licensed under CC BY-NC 2.0.)

I decided to use this photo to create my quilt. Before I could print it, I wanted to turn the background white. To print it as it's shown above would probably have used up all the black ink in my printer cartridge. They're kind of expensive to replace, and so I turned the background white, and then printed it. This is the photo I was working from.

And then it was a matter of choosing colors and building the flowers on a teflon pressing sheet. 

Day by day...

by day...

until the flowers were finished.

I decided to stick with the black background as it appeared in the original photo. When it was fused to the background, it looked like this:

Since I didn't have a border fabric I liked, I went on a little shopping excursion to find the one I used. I'm not sure, but I think those are crocuses on the fabric. I gave it a dark purple stop border, and I liked that black in the corner just to break it up some.

From there, I went to work doing the thread painting for dimension and realism. It was hard to bring enough darkness to the flower center to give it depth. I ended up using both thread and a purple Sharpie paint pen to darken it up some. The thread painting was all done before adding the quilt back.

When that was finished, I added the back fabric and quilted it lightly with some crocus in the corner...at least, that what I was going for. Not sure if I was successful.

And then a leafy feather in the borders.

I used the same purple from the stop border for the binding, and my quilt was finished.

Here's how it looks from the back. I really like that fabric. Happily, I have a good amount of it left over to be used in another quilt.

It ends up at 20 x 23 inches, and I hope you like my quilt! To see more quilts created for the "Spices" prompt visit The Endeavourers blog right here.

Okay, and so there have been a few other things going on since we last chatted. I've made more progress on my slow-stitching. (I'm going to have to make up the next one soon.)

It's been raining buckets here. I'm sure we've gotten more than an inch over the past two days. This crazy Andromeda looks like its getting ready to bloom! It's a spring bloomer, so who knows what got into it. In any case, the sparkle of the raindrops caught my eye.

Two more shelves were organized and dusted off. These took a little longer, and there were some open packages of petrified dried fruit that had to be tossed out.

Now I'm down to the last shelf of the three large shelving units. This one contains a bunch of stuff for bread-baking and some large skillets. I've already moved all those little bottles of juice to one of the upper shelves, and so this shouldn't take too long. I'll still need to do the wire unit under the window, but this job is coming to a finish.

Okay, and I was excited to try this recipe for the Original Ted Lasso Biscuits. If you don't know who Ted Lasso is, allow me to explain: It's a comedy show on Apple TV. You have to have a subscription to watch it. There are three seasons, and it's in negotiations for a fourth season. It is absolutely hilarious, and it's won 13 Emmy awards, if that tells you anything. In any case, it's filmed and set in England. Every morning, Ted presents his boss (Rebecca) with a little box of "biscuits." We were watching a few nights ago, and I wondered if I could find a recipe for the biscuits online. Well, duh! Of course! Isn't the internet a repository for absolutely everything? 

The official recipe uses just four ingredients: butter (European style is preferred), confectioner's sugar, flour, and salt. I happened to use a recipe that also added some vanilla. It's a very stiff batter. I ended up mashing it into the pan using my floured fingers. The parchment is there to help get it out of the pan after it's baked.

After it's in the pan, it's refrigerated for 30 minutes, and then it's suggested that it be cut into pieces before baking it. And, if it isn't obvious, I'm terrible at cutting into equal pieces, no matter how hard I try. If there's no ruler and rotary cutter, I'm useless when it comes to cutting.

And it didn't really matter because it pretty much all melted back together in the oven. When it was finished baking, it looked like this:

And then, I got a second chance at cutting.

Basically, they're a shortbread bar. And they're pretty tasty...not too sweet. If you like shortbread, you'll like this.

But I wasn't finished trying new recipes. I had some crumbled goat cheese I wanted to use, and so I tried it with this recipe for Roasted Butternut Squash with Goat Cheese, Pecans, and Maple. The butternut squash is peeled, seeded, and sliced into half-inch slices. Then it's tossed in melted butter, salt, and pepper, and roasted in 425°F. oven. When it comes out of the oven, it's tossed in some maple syrup with just a pinch of cayenne, and then the pecans and goat cheese are sprinkled over the top. (I was also supposed to use some thyme here, but I forgot.) It was very tasty. I'll definitely do this again.

It's a recipe from Cook's Illustrated, and so I've given you the link. If you can't open it, then email me and I'll be happy to send it to you.

Smitty was my helper cat in the sewing room yesterday. We both had second thoughts about the background fabric I selected for Ruth's Legacy. I'll tell you about that in a minute.

I finished the border on this block:

And then did three more:

The longer I worked on this, the less I liked the choice of the quilt block batik I showed you a few days ago. Smitty helped me decide on this one. The batik seemed just a little too "pretty" for this quilt. I wanted something with a little more energy. This one has been in my stash a long time. It seemed like a good choice.

Okay, and so I have just two more blocks that need borders, but I suspect I'll have time to start sewing the blocks together today.\

November is here. Is it too early to say that Christmas is getting dangerously close? Let's just not talk about that for now, okay? Instead, let's get back to sewing.