piecedgoods

Scrappy

Posted on February 14, 2013 by piecedgoods

Tripping Around the World is sewn together now, and ready for quilting. I tortured myself about whether I wanted a border on this or not. I’ve decided not. Stay tuned for post quilting updates.

Quilt 3

Meanwhile, other scraps were sorted and used in this quilt. There was no tutorial or sew along for one…Just the motivation to decrease the volume of fabric scraps stuffed in the corner. It’s embarassing, you know. Quilt 1

Scraps were sorted by colors of the rainbow and hue, trimmed and sewn into rectangles, rectangles were sliced diagonally, and resewn into rectangles which then were sewn into a bigger rectangle. Then quilted. Quilt 2

Of course I wouldn’t have had to do this if I hadn’t cut perfectly good rectangles of fabrics into smaller pieces to begin with, but where is the fun in that?

Posted in Art Thoughts, Quilts, Sewing | Tagged Quilt, Quilting, rainbow, rectangle, Scrap quilt, scraps, sewing | 21 Comments

Fat Tuesday

Posted on February 12, 2013 by piecedgoods

FatTuesday - King Cake Happy Fat Tuesday! FatTuesday 8

Truth be told, I’m not completely sure how Fat Tuesday is truly celebrated in New Orleans, but a group of us named ourselves the Fat Tuesday Group when we inaugurated a lunch thing two years ago – on that years’ Fat Tuesday as it happens. (If you’re insatiably curious, type ‘Fat Tuesday’ in the search box, and you’ll get a sampling of the places we’ve gone)

This year, I made King Cake. My first one. Turns out it’s more of a sweet bread than cake, and traditionally, it’s decorated with the garish colors of Mardi Gras. Here’s the recipe I used. Because I’m a rebel (and I was trying to reconcile this recipe with others I found on the web), I didn’t put in raisins, I didn’t make the cuts in the cake with scissors as described in the recipe (I think the sugar inside stuff would’ve leaked out and messed things up), and I put in a blob (maybe 4 ozs) of softened cream cheese in the frosting and decreased the amount of water.
FatTuesday 2 A plastic baby (symbolizing the Baby Jesus) is supposed to be hidden inside the cake. Who ever finds the baby is the “King” for the day.

I couldn’t find a plastic baby.

I rummaged through the drawer of little silly things I can’t bear to throw away and considered a plastic fish, dinosaur, Dora the Explorer or Hot Wheels, but decided instead to go with a gummy bear because, it was closer to a baby shape, and probably wouldn’t chip any teeth if accidentally bitten. Somewhere, someone from New Orleans is rolling their eyes big time. FatTuesday 4

In case you’re worried, the bears were not mixed up with the plastic fish, dinosaur, Dora, or Hot Wheels.

Posted in Food, Holidays | Tagged baking, Fat Tuesday, food, Gummi bear, King's Cake, Mardi Gras, Mardi Gras beads, plastic baby | 3 Comments

Tripping Around the World

Posted on January 19, 2013 by piecedgoods

Piecedgoods Scrappy Trip Around There are times when a quilt a long is just the thing. A bunch of folks got drawn into the vortex of the Scrappy Trip Around the World quilt a long. I was not able to avoid this vortex. There’s a Flickr Group for lots of pictures of what everyone else is doing. There’s the original tutorial. Mine was completely randomly put together of scraps and strips I had bits and pieces of. Thus the crazy color scheme. I kinda like it.

If you go to the Flickr group though you’ll see folks that were much more purposeful about how they placed their colors or selected colors for their quilt blocks.

It’s been fun to make these blocks. I have been consumed with the nonsense of every day, plus some other more strategic things. These are times I find repetitive, not-too-brain draining-creative-pursuits most satisfying. Knitting garter stitch shawls. Spinning. And here… making these Scrappy Trip Around the World blocks.

piecedgoods Scrappy Blocks The blocks are not yet sewn together. That’s next.