Although I showed this to you yesterday, here is my grand finale post shouting out to the world that I've finished a quilt!

School Yard

The Details:
School Yard
Pattern: Square One from Simplify with Camille Roskelley: Quilts for the Modern Home .
Fabric: Punctuation by American Jane for Moda Fabrics - top, back & binding.  Sashing on top is Snow Bella Solids.
Size: 61" x 53"
Pieced and bound by me
Quilted by: Karen Kimmel - a long arm quilter from my guild who brought life to this quilt.
Started: January 2011
Finished: Sunday, February 25, 2012
Who is it for: Initially this quilt top had no intended recipient, but sometime in the middle of last year I participated in a Crafty Pay-It-Forward Challenge on Facebook and a lovely Kindergarten teacher friend of mine played along.  So School Yard is for her and it will go perfectly in the decor of her house.

Here are a few more photos:









What else am I working on:
The T-Shirt Quilt - plan to post T-Shirt Chronicles Part III by the weekend.
Sew Happy Quilt QAL - a week behind...need to catch up.
Mug Rugs - yesterday in class I doodled a bit and designed a thank you mug rugs for various friends & family who've been very supportive this past three weeks.

I'm linking up with Lee from Freshly Pieced for WIP Wednesday and Jenna from Sew Happy Geek for Manic Monday.

Happy Leap Year Day - hope you have a fun and productive day,
Susan

I love to bake cookies.  Cookies, to me are instant gratification - Ingredients on hand, mix in a bowl, bake them up and enjoy.  The classic Tollhouse Chocolate Chip cookie recipe takes me about 20 minutes to go from ingredients in the pantry to a hot cookie on the counter.  I have vivid memories of my mother teaching me how to make them when I was so young that I had to stand on a stool to see over the counter.  I was such an active child (not unlike now) that I was always falling off that stool and boy would she scold me to "calm down".  I treasure those those memories.

Peanut Butter Chocolate Chip Cookies

Sunday night while watching the Academy Awards (in between commercials), my younger son and I made Peanut Butter Chocolate Chunk Cookies.  This is a Hershey Kiss recipe (go here for the recipe) which after the cookies comes out of the oven, an unwrapped Hershey Kiss is placed in the center while the cookie is still hot.  So fun to come back two minutes later or so and see how the bottom part of the chocolate has melted into the cookie but the top of the chocolate retains it's shape. As you can see from my photo those are not Hershey Kisses - I actually had two huge Hershey Kisses on hand so I chopped them up and placed big chunks into the cookies.  By the way, as my younger son is a male version of me, guess who is telling him to "calm down" in the kitchen?  Too funny.

Huge quilting news....Last night I finished a quilt!  I'll have all the details and better photos tomorrow but for now here is School Yard!

School Yard - 61" x 53"

My quilter did an amazing job.

A label!  Now I just have to write on it.

I'm linking up with Debbie at her Tuesday at the Table Feature...she posted about Hostess Cupcakes!  Silly me giving up sweets for Lent...I want one of her cupcakes NOW.  I'm also linking up with Fabric Tuesday at Quilt Story - go see what others have linked up to today.

Yea it's a school day for me!
Enjoy your Tuesday,
Susan

Potatoes & Tomatoes

Fireflies Block  12" x 12"

School Yard enjoying the 80 degree weather

My first pieced label!

Wherever you are and whatever you are doing, hope you are having a great day~

My creative juices have been running very low lately with most of my brain power going toward bookkeeping audit work (which is most thankfully, almost done) so I thought I would take a photographic inventory of my quilting works in progress to jump start my plan to finish these up before the summer ends.  

FQS 2010 Designer Mystery BOM

Sliced Coins Quilt Along with Elizabeth from Don't Call Me Betsy.  Needs backing, binding and quilting.

Sliced Coins

School Yard made from Square One pattern in Camille Roskelly's Simplify  Have backing and binding, needs to be basted, quilted and bound.

School Yard

Supernova

Although quiet here on my blog, my life has been far from quiet.  The stunning events in Japan have held me transfixed for a week now - I'm going to do something to help but have not decided what to do yet.

School Yard top is finished.  I have backing and binding - may tackle spray basting for this one.

WooHoo!  Sliced Coins top is finished!  LOVE IT.

Picked Broccoli, Cabbage, and Green Onions on Monday.

Back for Open Windows quilt for my son.  Just waiting for the binding.

Yes, this is the biggest floor space in my house - barely fits this XL twin size quilt.

Birthday Cake for my 15 year old.

I like boxed cake mixes especially Duncan Hines (my mother thought they were the best so I follow her lead) but I usually think bought frosting is especially disgusting.  I whipped up a batch of Cook's Illustrated Chocolate Frosting and then used a carrot slicer to carve shavings from a Milk Chocolate Bar for the shavings on the top.  Looks great until the one blowing out the candles blows the shavings across the table!

Mac-n-cheese for the birthday boy.

Made this from the Barefoot Contessa Family Style cookbook by Ina Garten.  You can go here and get the exact recipe.  Very yummy!