cupcakes, anyone?

Last weekend my youngest daughter was confirmed, and we had 22 family members here for dinner on Saturday night! Lots of laughs, great food, and marvelous cupcakes baked by the confirmand.

My daughter is a dessert-baking, pink-loving, girly-girl, so when I saw three new (good quality) cupcake fabrics at JoAnn's, I had to make a table mat for her planned cupcake centerpiece. The pink dot is Moda's Essential Dot in Bubble Gum.

The pattern I used is Terry Atkinson's "Happy Holidays", and like all her patterns it is well-written and easy to follow. There are three size options, and this is the smallest at 23" diameter. Other sizes are 35" and 47" (tree skirt size). The only advice I could add to her directions is to make sure and trim all your triangle units with a 60-degree ruler before piecing the top. Those bias edges and pressing caused several of my triangle units to stretch beyond 60 degrees, but I made sure to trim them all so the mat would lie flat without rippling.

In these two photos you can see how the free-motion quilting resembles a Joseph's Coat pattern. Completely unintentional, but I love that it turned out that way :)

Up close you can see the backing fabric has a dessert for every day of the week. Exactly how life should be!!

Pre-party cupcake assembly with sprinkles assistance from sous-chef Grandma...

Piping on the homemade buttercream frosting. Now I ask you, is there anything better than homemade buttercream frosting?? I think not.

A tower of spring cupcakes for dessert!

We've got three small leftover tubs of pink, green, and lilac buttercream frostings in our freezer now, so all we need are a couple dozen more cupcakes to frost and eat!