I'm making the baby version which is a mere 4 blocks a week at this point. I realized just how quickly they sewed up when I pieced 4 blocks in a half hour on Saturday evening. I finished 4 more on Sunday and pressed them all up to share with you today. This makes me caught up to the QAL schedule. Woo hoo!
In my week 5 blocks I focused on making the darkest blocks I could.
In my week 6 blocks I made some of the lightest possible blocks.
Here are my first 12 blocks all together. I definitely have a variety of values, but I'm missing some mid-tone blocks at this point. I may also rip a few seams in my strip pieced units to mix things up and create some lighter overall strips and darker overall strips. My finished quilt will have 30 blocks, so I'm approaching halfway.
In 1978, when I was one year old, a family friend started hosting a Christmas cookie exchange. My mom attended that first year. The 12 ladies would each bake 13 dozen cookies, sharing a dozen on a plate that evening and taking home 12 dozen (one dozen of each variety) to enjoy for the holidays. Once I was old enough I would always wait up for my mom to arrive home after the annual party to see what treasures she was bringing home.
At some point the women stopped sharing plates of a dozen in favor of half dozen, requiring a mere 7 dozen cookies for the exchange (a dozen to eat that evening and 12 half dozens to swap). Once I was in college I started attending the party, tagging along with my mom (but she baked). Then there was a phase post-college that I lived alone and my mom and I each baked 7 dozen and attended as two separate participants. Now I'm the official participant, and my mom comes along with me.
I'm kinda fly by the seat of my pants and usually pick a recipe that I've never made before. I went one step further this year. I picked a recipe I'd never made, and then asked my husband to do the actual baking (while I sewed and played board games with the kids). He made two 13 x 9 pans which I cut into 48 cookies each. With the big mixer he was able to do it all at once as a double batch.
The recipe I chose is Easy Peanut Butter Bars from Midwest Living. I think they went together easily as advertised, but they could certainly be improved by the addition of some chocolate. ;-) I could see them crumbled over chocolate ice cream. With hot fudge. Mm. They came out pretty much looking like the ones in the picture on the recipe, though I cut them a little smaller. The bar itself has the consistency of a cake-like brownie. And some of the topping (peanuts and Reese's Pieces) were sacrificed in the cutting of the bars. I'd maybe smash them into the dough a bit more before baking if I made them again. Overall, tasty... but I'm hoping to end up with some delicious chocolate cookies in tomorrow night's swap.
I'm still behind the official schedule, but I'm making progress on my Waterfall quilt. Week 4 included cutting up the strips and making the first 3 blocks (for the baby size quilt).
My lights feel not so light to me, but I'm happy with how these blocks came out and I have stacks lined up for some of my darkest blocks next so you'll see the value contrast as I continue sewing. I think I also didn't follow directions for the strip piecing and may pick out a few seams to shuffle things around so I will have some lighter strips and some darker strips.
