Busy but rewarding week!

Favorite fast cookies.....something quick for company and a easy for dessert for my Valentine dinner party after a week of quilting!

QUILT FOR THE BUSHFIRE QUILT PROJECT

This was a busy week with the invitation from Jeanamarie to join the Flickr Bushfire Quilt Project on Monday. This started with me going to just make a couple of blocks but then I thought how much work Tia was going to have putting all these Wonky star blocks together (over 193 quilters now participating) I thought perhaps I'd just go ahead and make a whole quilt top. Well making the "wonky stars" was not exactly my cup of tea, I've never liked paper piecing because I must be sort of dyslectic because I always have the piece I'm sewing on to flip over going the wrong way and it doesn't cover the area I want covered and I get so annoyed at how much work something that's supposedly so simple is for me. I must say I found this experience very much like that. So after making 16 of the 20 blocks needed I had experienced entirely enough "fun" so I coped out and did four blocks of scrappy 4 1/2 inch squares of the colors used in the stars and I actually think it's pretty effective that way (or that's my story and I'm sticking to it.....to quote a favorite Country Western song.)

I was very happy to get it finished up on Thursday and Friday went into my closest quilt shop and bought a lovely dimple print from Andover Fabrics in a bright turquoise which I think will just set it off perfect. Today I made the binding and packed it along with some thread, a few hundred safety pins I never use any more as they are too hard on my hands, also put in a Quilt Tak gun and extra Taks for her to try, it is my favorite way to sandwich quilts. Also just some fun extra fabrics for "whatever" , some backing fabric as well and have the box ready to mail off to Tia tomorrow. It's wonderful to be able to contribute even in a very small way to letting the people who are effected by this tragedy know that the rest of the world really cares.

This weekend we had company from out of town (dear friends that we have been close to for almost 30 years) and I had to do a quick return to normal on my sewing room and house in general as there were trails of snipped threads and "fabric crumbs" all over. Then some quick baking and getting food stocked in for the weekend. Since our friends also wanted to see our daughter and grand daugthers while they were down I threw and improptu Valentine Dinner party for my daughter's family, my mom and our company....nine in all. Fortunately I always seem to cook twice as much as I need so it was fine and we had a delightful evening. After dinner I showed my son-in-law Mike the Bushfire Quilt before I mail it off so that was nice as well. He is a the Free Spirit Fabric Line Rep for Oregon and is friends with Valori Wells so he enjoyed seeing what I did with his samples from her line. He suggested I email Jean and Valori a picture of the quilt which I did.

The plate of cookies at the top of this blog are my favorites as they can be produced really quickly and are really outstanding, plus they make big batches and freeze well too. The Thumbprints I like to fill them with Raspberry Jam or Lemon Curd. If you check out my Flickr page it has photo's of the process and the recipes. For both the Thumbprints and the improvised Chocolate and More Chocolate cookies. I found after creaming my eggs, butter and sugar that I didn't have enough flour to make the chocolate cookies so I used a packaged cake mix, chocolate chips and an extra cup of flour and it made a really delicious brownie like cookie. Mistakes are sometimes a very good thing in cooking as well as quilting as it brings out the creativity in all of us.