Simple Shrimp Gyro Sliders

My trip to Costco last week was the entire inspiration behind this particular discovery. Giant juicy shrimp, tangy tzatziki sauce, and mini naan all found their way into my cart and, with one more ingredient, a Fat Tuesday dinner. This meal was all about seasonal timing, keeping things simple and enjoying the occasional finger food.

With the season of Lent now upon us, seafood has been on sale in my neck of the woods. Giant raw, in-shell U15 shrimp were less than $10/pound at Costco last week. Though we still have more than a foot of snow on the ground, we are close enough for spring that seasonal tzatziki was back in the store, too. Yeah! I know it is a simple make, but sometimes, it's OK to be convenient.

I started with marinating the shrimp in a Greek vinaigrette for an hour. Then steamed them in the Instant Pot for 1 minute. One minute! Ok, really about 25 minutes by the time it built pressure, cooked for a minute and released pressure.

We enjoyed a dinner with fun finger sandwiches, plenty of napkins and a lot of laughs. These sliders would make excellent party bites, too.

Sandia: A quilt for my couch

One of the goals I had in 2018 was to make at least one quilt for the sole purpose of living on our couch for nights watching tv, fort building, slumber parties, and all of those things that quilts are great for. When I saw the Sandia Quilt from Southwest Modern: From Marfa to New Mexico: 18 Travel-Inspired Quilts by Kristi Schroeder from Initial K Studio, I knew this would be one of these quilts. I loved the bold pattern and immediately had fabrics in my stash in mind.

Why bigger? Simply, I wanted this project to be a pretty quick finish and fewer bigger blocks made sense. (I'm purposefully not sharing dimensions so you'll have to get the book!) If I would have cut it out correctly the first time, it probably would have been. Ha!

When I read the pattern the first time, I was a little surprised to see that this was a foundation paper-pieced pattern. Similar to flying geese blocks, the triangle seams are on the bias. The FPP method would reduce the risk of stretching the bias. Because I was making the blocks big enough that they would need to be printed on multiple sheets taped together, I decided to give it a shot without FPP. It worked! I would only recommend this, though, if you're pretty confident with bias. The FPP method would be excellent if you're not as confident.

One of the things I started doing awhile back was sketch out individual blocks and/or quilt layouts in Adobe Illustrator as part of my planning phase. Because I work in a not always tidy space, I find the one-page cheat sheet is easier to keep track of and follow than an open book or pattern booklet. Sometimes I use this to play with color. Sometimes it's in black and white or just a line drawing. The effort to draw the diagram is part of the thoughtful planning process. In some casses a photocopy could probably perform the same function, but I prefer to sketch it.

I took this quilt to Manglesen's in Omaha for edge-to-edge longarm quilting. Once picked up, I waited a fair bit to put the facing on. Fortunately I had this fun plaid leftover from backing the Hipster Cat quilt for the facing.

Since I've moved on to the next project or two, I don't often have the opportunity to take pictures of my quilts in interesting places, but with this one I did. In addition to some great vintage-y farm scenes, I had snow to cleanse the landscape.

This quilt has already proven effective at serving its intended purpose, including spending the evening with me in the recliner.