Cutting Corners

It is so COLD out there.  Mr. Responsibly kept saying we should get the yard stuff done last week "before the cold comes" all Little-House-On-The-Prairie style and I nodded and went back to my e-mail, because how cold was it realistically going to get?  Cold. Like, lonely playground cold.  Where do the toddlers go when they don't go to the park? This is my big question.  Do other people have children that are content to stay home when you explain what a 45 degree diaper change is going to feel like?

I know, I know, this is the season I was asking for.  I got that mailer from Trader Joe's with 62 different pumpkin-flavored products you could buy, so you can probably guess what I did.  I liked the pumpkin yogurt, pasta, ice cream, and poptarts (well, I would have liked the poptarts, if they were in stock), but this is what I was most excited to try:

I'm not one for mixes usually, but I'd heard people rave about it - warm, yummy bread, with just a flick of of the whisk.  I baked this from-scratch version too, for comparison:

They're similar, but with TJ's I stop after one slice.  With the other stuff, it's two to three slices before I'm done (advantage/disadvantage, haven't decided yet), and it's apple sauce instead of oil.

On a craftier note, I've been trying to practice my FMQ (free motion quilting) but am always scared to do it on something that's already taken me hours to sew up.  I remember Malini, a skilled FMQer from the BMQG suggesting you practice on a panel fabric instead of a quilt top that you've painstakingly pieced - and then you end up with a quilt but it's not that big a deal if you mess up.  The quilters version of using a box-mix cake to try out your homemade icing recipe.

I picked up this 1940s table cloth at Brimfield last year.  Very pretty but it' s for a square card table, which I don't have and don't plan on getting.  As Alidiza pointed out (it's Guild shout out day!), Bridge is much harder to learn than FMQ anyway.  This also had lots of curvy lines for practicing feathers, and flowers I could outline - the tablecloth was totally asking for it.

I used red minky for the back, which is so soft and wonderful, but I really should have used white. It pulled right through the batting and loose weave of the tablecloth, highlighting every mistake in pink (I was going for some nice, subtle white lines!).

In the end though, if you don't look too closely at the details and just take it as a whole, I think it came out pretty well.

It's going into J's crib, because whatever doesn't fit a real bed ends up there eventually.  I've struggled with satin binding all year because she likes satin so much, and I hate working with it.  This time I made 10" wide double binding and it came out the way it should, except for the corners, which I mitered.  A mistake.  If I ever have to do satin again, I'll need to learn a different method for corners.  Luckily the recipient maintains standards as low as her mother's.