quilting progress and yummy dinner

That little dot is there because I couldn't figure out how to unpost a picture I didn't want there.:)

I realized the other day I haven't really done any piecing in a long time. Save for a couple of small side projects, I've been putting all my creative energy into Jason's quilt. I'm not as frustrated as when I was basting it,though, because I feel now that I'm quilting, I'm actually making progress.

I'm still not sure if I'll have it done in time, but I will try my best. The main reason I'm not on it right now is my left middle finger is sore from feeling the tip of the needle from the backside to make sure it's gone all the way through. I think I've even managed to sew my finger to the quilt a couple of times. Oh well, at least if I bleed on it, it won't show since the material is red and black. :)

Here's what I've done so far. I took pictures of the front but it doesn't really show well with the basting stitches. I'm using black thread in the black spaces,and red in the red. The lines in the square are nice and straight thanks to scotch tape. Boy, it was a pain stitching around it, but now that I see how nice the lines are I'm glad I did it. I had a hard time deciding what to do in the red parts, but I'm just going to free hand some nice little arches. I don't have a decent marking pencil, and I think with the mottled texture it looks fine it things aren't perfectly straight. If I were doing it by machine, I'd probably do a meander stitch there.

We had the best dinner tonight. For some reason, I was having a strong craving for black eyed peas (the food, not the band). So,I cooked two slices of bacon and saved the drippings and sauteed some chopped celery and onions in half of it, the dumped in the tins of the peas and let that simmer. Then, I made some cornbread from scratch, no sugar, with a drained can of fiesta corn dumped in. I used the remaining bacon grease to oil the pie plate so when I took it out of the oven the bread was light and fluffy with a fine brown crust on the outside. I plopped some beans on the plate, added a nice hunk of cornbread, and some thick slices of tomato on the side.Oh, and the sweet tea. It was all so good, it was almost better than chocolate. I'm definitely going to have it for dinner again tomorrow night.