Rare Week at Home

Remember that fruitcake I had in England? And remember I said I was going to fiddle with a gingerbread recipe when I got home?  Well, I found what looked like a dense recipe so I tried some fiddling.

 This basic recipe came from the most recent issue of Bake From Scratch magazine (Nov/Dec 2018). When I read it I thought it sounded like a very dense cake so it was my first test. But of course, I changed it a lot. The recipe didn't call for adding fruit.  I soaked some golden raisins and dried ginger in rum. No measuring, just "some."  I forgot to buy a real orange but had a single serve bottle of Adelaide's orange juice in the fridge so used that.  Where the recipe called for a whole cup of juice I used the rum that came from plumping the raisins and added the juice to equal one cup.  I  also chopped up a bunch of the candied orange and lemon peel I made last winter and found in a container in the freezer. The recipe called for a 1/2 cup of grated ginger and I thought that was a lot, but boy the heat and flavor is tops in the cake!  The pecans were a must.  And voila!  It may not be a real fruitcake, but it has more fruit in it that I have ever put in a cake.  I'll make it again soon because this is truly dense, moist, gingery, but you'd never know the fruit is in it now so I'll add more raisins and orange and lemon peel next time.

 Looking at the calendar and seeing a whole week of empty squares got me to prepping the next big project.  I used to keep my mom busy embroidering these squares for me.  By the time she couldn't do it anymore I had a stack of embroidery in lots of different topics.  Well, because I'm on a mission to use what I have I decided to make a simple quilt for each of the grand girls using the squares their great grandma embroidered.  I had twelve tea cups, twelve tea pots and twelve sunbonnet sues.   I split the cups and pots so two quilts would have 6 of each, those are for Elizabeth and Adelaide. The Sunbonnet Sue is for Ceci because the baby quilt I made for her was a much enlarged Sue in a garden.

 I used my scraps to border them.  The pink plaid is the sashing for the Sues.

 These are Adelaide's.  She likes blue and perkier colors.  The white/blue at the top is her sashing.

Elizabeth likes the classic look and the green is her sashing.  I'll big stitch quilt them and have them for the girls next Christmas, 2019.

I spent this week cutting and piecing these borders for the squares and yesterday cutting the sashing for Elizabeth's. You can see they are all the same, scrappy and simple.  Last night Friend Linda called.  "Whatcha doin'?"  I'm ripping apart something I was sewing today.  "I didn't think you ever had to rip."  (silly girl)  I told her I was ripping because I was using the machine and when using the machine, I rip.  Occasionally I drag the machine out to do simple bordering like these are.  Well, the thing is it's a circle, isn't it?  I'm not good at sewing a straight line.  I'm not good because I don't do it. If I did it more I'd be better at it.  But give me some little pieces and a background and my needle turn applique any day!!  Sheesh!