… outings

i am slowly but surely working on the august quilt for do. good stitches. i had it on the ironing board, pressing in progress, when i had to stop work and attend to other things. the next day i caught this scene as i walked by the sewing room and it looked so perfectly lovely i couldn't resist the shot.

i did end up going with the light flax linen for sashing. it started to grow on me and now i do love it. i also picked up backing fabric so, if everything goes right, i can have it finished in the next week or two.



last weekend we took a little day trip up to la conner for the annual quilt festival at the la conner quilt & textile museum. it was mostly an excuse to get out of town on a gorgeous day. and also look at quilts. that was nice, too.



i have a pretty terrific little family.



fabric: jessica jones tulip in dusk (from the outside oslo collection)

14 weeks! she's a keeper.

… a challenge

yay for accomplishing things! as opposed to just sitting around and thinking of accomplishing things (as i am wont to do). the always-lovely amanda proposed that we all stop pinning and start doing. so i took her up on the challenge and baked a cake i pinned a while back to bring to our friends' house for dinner this weekend.



i made a root beer chocolate bundt cake from the kitchn. doesn't that sound heavenly? i am here to tell you that it was, so if you pinned this, too, you should go right ahead and make it. however, you might notice how terrible the frosting looks in my photo. and it's true, that frosting was no looker. it was so weirdly gloppy that i ended up applying it to the cake like putty. i'm not sure where went wrong, i know i followed the recipe perfectly, and i even put it in the food processor when it looked like it wouldn't come together, but still, it stayed super ugly. but honestly, it tasted so fan-feaking-tastic that i stopped caring how it looked pretty quickly. you really can taste the root beer in this cake, and it was insanely moist and dense and dark with that fudgey, intense frosting.



yum, yum, and yum.



fabric: anna maria horner fortune in sunset (from the folksy flannels collection)

and did you know that this whole ingrid-on-fabric project was inspired by something that i pinned? it's true! i'm making it happen, cap'n.



fabric: timeless treasures cotton lawn betty in cream (from the darling clementine collection)

(oh, i just love that little baby's smile. we are now able to make her laugh on cue by doing a comical stage whisper. i don't know why she's so tickled by that, but she is, and her laugh just melts my heart. swoon.)

so thanks, amanda, for the fun challenge and reminder that inspiration is just the first step and that actually following through can be so very satisfying.