March was Betty Ninja’s month to send fabrics for the Threads Together Quilting Bee, which was exciting for me, because I haven’t made any quilting bee blocks yet!

She requested triangles a la this quilt, and, at the risk of being a bit witchy, I have to admit I did not feel like doing that. At first.

But one of the reasons I’ve never tired of quilting in almost 15 years is that, even with restrictions, there’s always room for creativity.

I was concerned about the amount of background fabric I had to spread over two blocks, so rather than paper piece, I decided to use fabric-conserving half-square triangles, and mix up the placement of the red for movement.

Block #2 was truly an effort in maximizing what little background fabric I had left. I added a bit of forest floor, a bit of night sky, and some gray fabric from my own scrap pile to attempt a 12″ block. I failed, but Betty’s got more gray at home, so I’d better let her deal with it.

Remember how I said I didn’t feel like making these blocks? Not only am I glad I powered through; I’m beginning to wonder if there’s a triangle quilt in my future.

Does somebody have time to drop by this afternoon and slap my wrist with a ruler?

And can you leave the ruler? Some leprechaun stole all of mine when I was busy making triangles….

To see more progress on Betty’s quilt, check out the Threads Together Group Photo Pool.

Another view of all the blocks:

These do require a foundation for piecing, so I’ve been experimenting a bit with that. Water soluble interfacing was kind of cool, but a little pricey and can be tricky to work with. Some of it is nice and stiff, which is great for tracing and ironing, but I’m worried about the bulk it adds. I found some that was whisper-thin, but it sort of dissolved on contact with a hot iron, and shifted and wrinkled while I was tracing the pattern onto it. So I wasn’t too sorry to run out of that!

I tried freezer paper, which is super cheap, but more opaque than useful, and baking parchment, which is nice and transparent, but on a skinny roll that means a lot of waste for a 5.5″ block.

At the moment, I’m using tracing paper from a tablet, which is my favorite option so far. $2.40 buys enough paper to make 80 blocks, it doesn’t wrinkle, I can see through it to sew, and it tears away much more easily than any of the other paper I tried.

One downside of tracing paper is that I’d hoped to run it through my printer, thereby avoiding tracing out every. single. block. But it just isn’t of a weight that my printer can handle. Blerg. And, easy or not to tear, the whole tearing process takes longer than I would like.

But then, I’m trying to make 254 tiny log cabins. I don’t have much room to talk.

Just a quick update on this quilt. 54 down, 200 to go! I am feeling RIDICULOUSLY triumphant, given the scope of the project in front of me!

Yesterday, I spent something like 11 hours making 14 quilt blocks. Which makes… not quote a full row of my scrappy cabin quilt.

Today, my feet hurt from all the trundling between the machine and the cutting board, and I’m torn between

1. thinking it’s stupid to want to make a Queen-sized quilt out of 5″ log cabins and

2. feeling psyched that, after many gazillions of hours, I will get to sleep under a quilt so special that one-sixteenth of it couldn’t even be sewn on a full work day.

The cabins so far (32 in number):

Just 224 to go!

A little sneak peek of what I’m putting together for Doll Quilt Swap 6. Paper pieced from a place mat pattern from this book.

I’m really grappling with how large to make my doll quilt. Swap partners are meant to be a secret, so I can’t ask mine. In some ways, larger is better, because, you know, more work + more fabric = better value. In theory, anyway.

On the other hand, a doll quilt is, by definition, small - somewhere between mini- and wall-sized. Whatever those mean!

Hmm.

Not much going on here, other than hand quilting - I broke my last machine needle the other day in a fit of temper, and need to wait for the nice postman to bring me some more. This is what we call learning a lesson, I suppose!

But I’ve been wanting to link to a few recipes I’ve found online and tried over the past month or so. It’s tough to tell if a recipe without any reviews or anything will actually turn out, but I’ve had fabulous luck with some lately, so it seemed time to share the love.

I’m warning you, nothing here qualifies as health food, except for maybe the pudding cake made with whole wheat flour. But, obviously, I served it with ice cream, so, you know.

This lemon curd from the one, the only, the Martha has been consistently reliable after about three tries. I have to admit, one of the reasons I favor it is that it seems to yield a fair amount for the amount of ingredients that go into it. I don’t consider Martha to always be a paragon of thrift, but I can almost always make this with stuff I have on hand, which is rare for a fancy dessert recipe. And it tastes flippin’ great.

Pink of Perfection can boast pretty consistently great recipes, but this pudding cake is most certainly my favorite. Not too sweet, not at all difficult, and made with whole wheat flour, it can be made in a 9×9 and still stretch to feed about 10 people, if the aforementioned ice cream is available. I find a lot of “I’m glad I tried this” recipes online; this one belongs in the “I need to make this all the time” file.

A couple of years ago, I was sad because I didn’t know how to make a brisket. I was never able to find a recipe that didn’t require sever days of prep. So I was skeptical when I saw this on Mama Urchin’s blog - it just seemed to effortless! Which is was. And also delicious.

I usually stay far away from recipes that call for a can of cream of ________, but I will occasionally bend that rule when I am already making a bunch of stuff from scratch. My Superbowl Party was structured so that I had to prepare both lunch and dinner for quite a few people, so, enter creamed spinach. I was initially drawn to it by the description: “This spinach casserole is similar to one served at a Boston restaurant chain.” Which it does! But it has two other things going for it. One is that it is possible to dump every ingredient listed into a saucepan at 10 a.m., cover, and heat 9 hours later for dinner. The other is that it looks exactly like the processed algae they eat on Battlestar Galactica, so if you routinely eat dinner with a bunch of BSG fans (and why wouldn’t you?) you can serve them algae.

And, finally please don’t eat this, but do make it: laundry detergent a la Neesy. This was SO easy, and it works great. I’ve even been giving jars away as gifts. Which probably seems lame. Until they try it! It’s got a great smell, it’s eco-friendly, and won’t irritate any allergic types. But the best part is, nothing will ever make you feel more usefully domestic than making your own laundry detergent. Seriously.

I know they barely even qualify as a variation on the other quilty things I make, but, holy heck am I into potholders right now!

Behold the pile:

They are not selling as quickly as I’m producing them, which seems almost wrong, in a way. Not monetarily; I’m just sure I can’t be the only person thoroughly infatuated with hotpadded goodness at the moment.

A few sets are available here.