Busy Kitchen Day

Good morning, my friends. Our weather seems to have taken a turn for the better. We were expecting rain all this week. Yesterday turned into a pretty nice day, and it's even nicer today. It makes me happy since we're getting together with the fam. It's always nicer when we're not confined to the house. The temperatures this weekend are supposed to reach into the 70's. That's what I'm talkin' about! If our dreams come true, we'll be able to eat outside on Sunday for the first time this year.

As for yesterday... before I could do anything else. I took the first stitches on the Tiny Treasures. This is Tiny Treasure #37:

Pretty simple...all back stitch.

Moving into the kitchen, I made some dishes ahead for our dinner tonight. First off, I started the long and scary process of making the custard for creme brulee. I did a lot of talking to myself through this process. They're made in 1-inch deep fluted custard dishes. That wouldn't be so scary, except that they're baked in a water bath. And so with a 1-inch deep dish, I had to be super duper careful not to splash water into the still-liquid custard. They were all placed in a roasting pan, so that I could move them around. Throughout, I was saying, "Careful, careful, careful...don't bump into anything...careful, careful, careful..." I'm telling you, it was downright petrifying. In the end...Perfection!

We'll brulee them this evening. I figure with three grown men in the household, everyone will want to get into the act. Don't worry. I'll keep the fire extinguisher handy.

While those were baking, I made the deviled Easter eggs. Kind of fun. Mine were in the dye a full 20 minutes to get the depth of color I wanted.

It was late in the day before I could get to my quilting. Long ago and far away, I spent an obscene amount of money on some templates. It became clear to me pretty quickly that I can't use these while I'm sewing. I seem utterly incapable of keeping the template butted up against the foot on my machine. Oh well. Still, they make it easy to mark my quilts using a hera marker, and I'll be using these in this quilt.

My plan is to do some dot-to-dot quilting, Angela Walters style, but I want to preserve the traditional style of the Amish by using curved, rather than straight lines. Thankfully the boss was there to offer his imput. 

Don't mess up.

So I've been perusing Pinterest for inspiration. For this Friendship Star, I did a bunch of curved lines to create this pattern. 

This next block is known as a Virginia Reel. It's really just eight Flying Geese arranged in an interesting way. You'll see later that a switch-a-roo of the colors yields a Dutchman's Puzzle block. (I love that about quilting...the geometry and the color.) And this is my go-to motif when I'm quilting Flying Geese.

The only other pieced block in this first row is a Nine Patch, and these Terry Twists are my go-to motif for a nine-patch.

Also, in yesterday's post I mentioned quilting the sashings and the border. As it turns out, this quilt has neither, but each panel block has a border around it. Thinking about how to quilt these, I decided to think of them as applique. For now, I'm just outlining the design in the panel for functionality. I didn't want to do anything too fancy here. I'll decide what to do in the borders later.

The only other panel block was this one. It was hard to decide what to do here. I started and ended with the tree.

Here's how it's looking from the back. It's pretty hard to see the quilting, and so I've messed with the color and contrast in an attempt to make it visible. If you can make it larger, it's easier to see.

And that was the end of my quilting day. I left it needle down at this panel in the next row.

And then it seemed like a good time to fill the bird feeders. While I was out, I noticed another one of the new daffodils has bloomed. This one is known as "Pink Charm."

And can we all pause here for a moment to consider the deplorable conditions of Sadie's life. Malnourished...abused...forlorn...cold. It can't get much worse than this.

Okay, so the hardest parts of tonight's dinner are finished. Mike will be roasting the turkey in our Traeger grill. I'm going to make mashed potatoes and gravy. That will wait until later. Earlier, I'll mix up some Thanksgiving Slaw. We're having roasted asparagus as a side dish. Sounds yummy, no? The only other thing I'll need to do is to set the table. I pulled out some of my Easter table decor. With my Easter Egg table runner, I think the table is going to be cute. I'll take a picture and post it tomorrow.

So there isn't too much to do today since I did most of it yesterday. I should have plenty of time for sewing. I'll get back to my quilting. When the next row is complete, I want to catch up on the blocks for the Rainbow Scrap Challenge. I need to make March's red block. April's block will be pink. Here are the blocks I have for this project so far.

That's it from me today, my friends. I'm hopeful the weather will cooperate for your weekend. I don't know about you, but we're looking forward to spending some time outside for a few days. Probably I have time for a walk today. How are you spending your Easter weekend?