[Inez] Birthday cake

Okay, so this is a month late, but I made myself a pretty birthday cake and I wanted to share it with you. I seem to be going through a hot pink thing right now (you should see my nails), and I like to have fun with my cake decorating, so I made the whole thing hot pink. I used this very cool, very time-consuming frosting method I learned about from the internet on the coconut cake I've told you about before. it starts like this:

This has basically a thick crumb coat/thin base coat. Then you squeeze on little drops of frosting with a pastry bag and smooth it out with a spoon or a narrow spatula. Like so:

I only did the top so that I could still coat the sides in toasted coconut (omg so delish), but I think it turned out quite nicely.

[Inez] Quilting (Part 1)

I decided to make a quilt for my bed.

I blame Pinterest. I saw this quilt on Pinterest that doesn't require matching up corners, and I said "Sign me up!" It doesn't really have a pattern per se, and I couldn't narrow down my fabrics so I ended up getting a whole bunch of them.

They're mostly in the blue/yellow/grey range, with a  few highlights for pop.

I spent Hurricane Sandy cutting hundreds of pieces of fabric from approximately 9 yards of fabric. My hand and wrist muscles ached by the end of it.

But then, ta da! ready to start sewing.

So far I have sewed each of the individual rows (19 of them) and the next step is to stitch the rows together. Then batting, backing, edging, and quilting. No bigs.

I've learned a lot already, and would do several things differently if I were to start anew right now... but I'm not starting anew right now, so I'm just going to roll with it. It will be busy and imperfect, but it will bring a lot of light and color to the room during the winter. And who knows, maybe it will start something. Maybe I'll be buying self healing boards and roller cutters next. We'll see.