Finished Product

It turns out that that my new house is not well suited to taking photos of quilts. I love my place, but it's a little short on wide open places. It took quite a bit of wrangling to find a place where the whole quilt would fit in the photo. It's still working on a good set up.

For a long time I thought to do the binding for Broadway Boogie Woogie in white, but I'm glad I went with the yellow. It's like a nice exclamation point at the end of a sentence. Now, when I was in design school, the first thing they said about presenting was not to point out errors in our work, because maybe people wouldn't notice them. In that vein I won't point out some assembly errors, but oh boy, I notice them. I'm not sure how I feel about the finished product yet, but it's done, unlike some other projects I've attempted.

Like this one! This was my monkey wrench quilt. I finished it in a period of non-blogging, but never did the binding. So far, it's my most dreaded part of the quilting process. The actual binding for Broadway Boogie Woogie Pt. 2 wasn't that bad, but I did it by machine, rather than by hand, which I suck at. I'm pretty sure that my hand sewing skills are bad because I never actually do it, and I never do it because I suck at it. Bad cycle. I'm hoping my applique project can help with that.

In any case, I have no intention to bind the Monkey quilt. I just don't care enough about it, and it's going to good use as a cat bed for Fritz, and it saved my comforter from being a cat hair depository.

Fritz, the Helper Cat

There are a few new additions to my household. In terms of sewing, I got a new machine! It's the Janome MC 6600, and already sewing is so much better than on my crappy PFAFF hobby machine. I'm having a few issues with the machine, which are probably due to it being used, but it sews like a dream. It is so much less stress, and the whole experience is so much more enjoyable.

The second addition you can see with new machine is Fritz. He likes to help out. In fact, he likes to be everywhere I am. Like in the sewing machine!

On my newly sewn blocks!

In my scrap bin! It's a little cute, and a little annoying. It's a big enough house you know? There are a lot of places to be, but he chooses to be in the most in the way ones! That's having a cat I guess.

In terms of Barrel of Monkeys, I've got the first set of blocks done. I've made some pretty major mistakes placement wise, which isn't really apparent here, but will be when the whole thing is together. I'll go into it later. There is also a huge problem with the scale of the two blocks, as the head block pictured above is 12 inches, and the body blocks are 10'' (I'll explain later, but it was a bonehead mistake on my part).

The good news is though, that I'm getting a lot better at matching seams. There is still improvement to be made, but it's getting there. This particular layout is good practice for that. I cut a lot of extra pieces, so I can whittle down the blocks that are really visually off, which is a good idea for now.

Lemon Merinque Pie

It's not only the baked goods contests I like to enter at the fair. There are also daily contests you can participate in, and get a free entry into the fair for participating.

A contest they've had for a few years is the Eagle Brand Sweetened Condensed Milk Challenge. I haven't had much luck with it, although I thought my coconut milk flan last year was really tasty. Last year there were only nine entries too, which was a little disappointing for me, as with such limited numbers I thought I had a chance. The flan needed to bake in a water bath, which I think was maybe too complicated for that particular contest's aims.

I think I've found a good recipe for this coming year though, if they have the contest again. The link is here. It's an approximation of a lemon meringue pie. I think I can change it up enough to make it unique (it needs at least three significant changes to be on the level) by using a pre-done chocolate crust, lowering the sugar in the egg whites, and adding a few more whites to the mix.

I would make a homemade crust, but the goal of the contest is to make it as simple as possible. The egg white bit worries me as it is a more complex and time consuming step, and I'll have to try it again to see if I can get it done without the meringue weeping, but I think the recipe has real potential. Looks pretty too!

On the quilting side, I finally got a new sewing machine. I went for the Janome MC 6600, which I was lucky enough to find used. Consumer Reports rated it very highly, so I have high hopes. I haven't really gotten down to business with it, but I finally finished cutting out all the pieces for the Barrel of Monkeys quilt so I'm ready to go. 

I'm also considering taking a block of the month class at the great local fabric store. It might be nice to meet some other quilters.