Cooking: A Late Breakfast of Herbed-Baked Eggs

I'm celebrating my 51st birthday, starting today.  I called in sick at work and am packing and then spending the weekend at a modern quilting retreat in a modern hotel, the Wild Palms in Sunnyvale.  And since I'm giving myself the treat of a leisurely-paced morning, I cooked Ina Garten's recipe for Herbed-Baked Eggs.  Here's how:  step out into your herb garden and pick a sprig of rosemary and a couple of sprigs of thyme.  Add parsley too if you have it.  Denude the branches of the leaves and chop with a clove of garlic as finely as you can--you can add some grains of salt to further pulverize your garlic but I'm a low sodium girl and think there's enough salt in my butter and cheese.  Cut a pat of butter and put in a ramekin baking dish.  Splash in heavy whipping cream and then add in your chopped garlic and herbs, a couple of teaspoons or so of parmesan cheese and then put into a preheated 400 degree Fahrenheit oven for 5 minutes to melt the butter and mellow the garlic as well as meld the flavors.  Then bring out your heated ramekin of seasoned delicious cream and crack an egg into it.  Pop your ramekin back into your oven for another 5 minutes or more, maybe 2 more minutes depending how soft or firm you want your egg yolk.  I like my yolk not firm and the egg whites creamy in which to dip my toasted sourdough and then eat with a spoon when I've run out of bread.  Yah I really don't measure, so if you want specific quantities see Ina's recipe.

Work in Progress: Amy Butler Strip Quilt Backing

I'm cobbling all of my Amy Butler stash, which is rather huge I'm ashamed to admit, into a backing for the strip quilt top I sewed a few months ago.  So far it's 75 1/2" x 79" but will need to be bigger I think.....And there's enough fabric for hotel style pillows and bolsters too.

Flower Arranging

My husband grows dahlias and also cares for some abandoned rose bushes at the community garden.  Yesterday he picked this bouquet for me, and I LOVE the color palette.  Seriously, I want to sew a quilt in these  fuchsias and salmon pinks.

Work in Progress: Crib Quilt Border

In all the artificial light of all the lamps turned on in my condo, you can't tell how vibrant the hues of pinks are in this quilt, but they are.  I took the seam ripper to it last night and removed a row on the top and bottom and then added more gray to the right and left sides.  On the whole I think it looks a lot more balanced and less oddly narrow.  I want this quilt to be dragged around for playing and napping by my grandniece, and so I'm hoping the dimensions of 51" x 68" will work.  Warm & Natural twin batting is 72" x 90" and I've already completed the backing with orphan blocks and extra coins.  This weekend I'm going to layer and pin and stitch in the ditch.  I'll attempt free motion the stippling over the embroidered text panel later.

On another note, I have lots of extra 9 patches from the wedding quilt I sewed and have bought more Essex linen to make another lap quilt.  This time, instead of long arm stitching the Irish Chain, I'm going to instead attempt Sashiko like this Purl Soho tutorial.

Work in Progress: Crib Quilt Borders

In looking at this quilt (and a friend iterated my opinion), it's too narrow.  I need to add more border lengthwise.  And so the plan today after work is to perhaps trim off the single strip edges width-wise and add more gray to all around.  And then audition more stacked coin borders lengthwise, for which I bought about a 1 1/4 more yards of pink fabric in light, medium and dark values.  Fingers crossed!

Sewing: Wedding Quilt + all the finishing touches = Done!

I finished embroidering the quilt label earlier this week and later went to a stationery store to purchase a gift box and wrap but  didn't like their offerings.  I instead went to the fabric shop and purchased orchid color cotton.  I then played with the fancy stitches on my computerized sewing machine, traced the bride and groom's name and wedding date on the sewn bag, which I then hand embroidered.  I'm quite satisfied that it's complete, storage bag/wrapping and all.