Spring is here!

Well, not really. It's snowing here in Chicago-land again. But my projects are all springy, don't you think?

The Peace/Irish Chain/Lakehouse flowers quilt is done. I need to think of a good name for it. Irish Garden is probably a little obvious. Thoughts? Ideas?Anyone? It was the first time I did prairie points. They aren't that hard, but the corners are a pain on the binding. Binding Guru Karen hasn't ever done a binding like that either, so if anyone knows any tricks for it, please let me know. I quilted little swirls all around the flowers to make them poof out and a straight line through the middle of the "chain" squares. Have you ever noticed how photos don't seem to ever do quilts justice? These sure don't. It is soooo pretty and cheerful! I absolutely adore the hydrangea blue in the quilt. My boss said it reminder her of Easter. I would agree, it's all light and cheerful.

I also sent off a mini quilt to my Swap til You Drop partner from my Flickr mini quilt swap. I'll show you a small corner of it, since I want her to see it in person before I put up a photo of the whole thing. It's really fun, yet challenging for me to do such a small quilt. It can't be more than 15" maximum. That's hard for me since I generally don't do anything smaller than 50". Jeanette wanted aqua and red for her quilt, and I just happened to have the perfect fabric on hand! No eye rolling from those of you who have seen my stash.

And I finally finished up a blanket for a friend. It's a combo of Moda's Sanctuary and Seaside Rose lines with Minky on the back. I actually put it together once, but I did the Minky incorrectly and ended up ripping the whole thing apart and starting over. While ripping out all the top stitching and all of the stitching holding the front and back together I remembered how I put the first one together. It worked the second time. I just love these fabrics. Seaside Rose and Paris Flea Market were my all time favorite 3 Sisters lines. I still have a ton of each of them because I can't commit to what pattern would do them justice. I just know that once I cut it all up and put a top together that some other pattern will happen by that will be even more perfect, but I've already cut it all up and the lines are like 5 years old and I can't get anymore! Does anyone else have this problem? I guess that's a quilter's nightmare, isn't it?

Last night I spent a good portion of the evening making mini pineapple upside down cakes. Aren't they cute? It took a lot longer to make a bunch of little ones than it does to make one large cake, but I wanted to do something a little different and bring them in for the nice people that I work with. Everyone is really bumming these days with all the apocalyptic news that is constantly spewed at us both in life and on the constant news streams. I like to bake to help cheer people up. And there was a smile on every face that tried one of my cakes. And the office smelled so good to boot! A little aroma therapy never goes amiss. Since I only have 2 mini cupcake pans, I spent a lot of time washing, spraying and filling the pans. I used fresh pineapple and a touch of rum for goo part on top. I put the rum in at the very beginning when melting the butter for the goo, so that the alcohol burns off. I prefer either spiced or dark rum for this cake. They went over very well. I brought 2 plates of them and there were only 4 left cakes at quitting time.