Needle and ThREAD

When Tess was born, I bought the quilt pattern Ode to a Cupcake. I had planned to make the quilt for her first birthday. She's 3 1/2 now. I've learned that quilting plans never go as planned. We call Tess our little cupcake and this quilt is perfect for her. I love these simple little applique squares. It's absolutely adorable!

A few months ago, my husband, who supports and encourages all of my very expensive hobbies, bought a new-to-me Janome 10000 Embroidery sewing machine. As much as I wanted to learn how to use this new machine, I was also terrified of it. My best friend has this machine and the embroidery makes her quilts even better. So, my new machine sat in its case while I continued to use my mom's Bernina for piecing my quilts. On Tuesday, Stephanie walked me through my first embroidery applique square! Instead of using the template to piece the cupcake appliques for the quilt, I'm going to use my new machine to embroider cupcake applique.  Here's what I did on Monday:

Those cherries are all embroidery thread! Isn't that so cool? The cupcake on the pink background doesn't have enough contrast from between the top and bottom, but I'm still learning. Now, I just need to make 18 more cupcakes, cut the blocks down to 6", and piece the topper. Well, I'll need to cut and add the borders too and oh, yeah, cut the binding. There's still a lot to do!

As for reading:

I'm reading The Jane Austen Guide to Happily Ever After by Elizabeth Kantor.  A while back, I read Jane Austen's Guide to Dating by Lauren Henderson. Both books are similar in that both authors believe that in our modern times, we've lost our way on how to navigate relationships. It seems that even though Jane Austen herself never married, she had some good insight on relationships and what makes them successful or not. We just need to look to her novels for evidence that Jane knew what she was writing about.

7/5/12
Clarification: The picture of the cupcake quilt above is the picture of the pattern that I bought. I haven't made the quilt yet. I don't think I was as clear as I could be on that. I'm using embroidery applique to make the cupcake squares. I only have 2 cupcakes squares done right now.