Meet Annabelle

I'm seriously loving this delicate little quilt. She was named by Teenage Daughter, who wants me to make her the big girl version. (That one is going to be considerably larger and won't include the prints with diaper pins.)

I started pulling together fabrics for this one after seen so many gorgeous low volume quilts out there. Somewhere in my sewing room is a bag of fabrics that I'd been pulling together for backgrounds, but  I pulled together these prints so quickly that  I didn't even bother hunting for those. I'll find them when I'm ready to start the big quilt.

This is the same quilting design as I used for Steve. I like it better worked over 4" squares than the 6" squares in the other quilt. It's closer to the dense quilting that I love so much.



This post is linked to to Finish it Up Friday, Can I get a Whoop Whoop?, Link a Finish Friday, and Freedom Fridays.

these blocks make me happy

Little Trips wasn't one of the NewFOs I had on my list for 2013. Then I started seeing everyone else's Scrappy Trips Around the World and pulled out Quinn's green quilt to finish it. And I saw that Karin at Cascade Quilts had made some blocks with 1 1/2" strips...

 

You know there's no way I wasn't going to try that!  

 

 

I love the bigger blocks made from the 2 1/2" strips, but these are something else entirely. It's easier to get 1 1/2 x 9" strips from my scrap bags, and they're just more fun. The blocks don't take that long to piece, but selecting and pressing and cutting the fabrics is going to be a long term project.

 

I'm trying to see how many blocks I can make without duplicates.

I've got yellow magnifying glasses left over from the binding of my Nancy Drew quilt, and some orange spiderwebs Mom gave me, which I love because they're orange spiderwebs!, and that green leafy pattern is from an old print with moths and flowers. I had a brown colorway of the same print and used it in a lot of my first scrap quilts. It's the one Heath could always pick out from a distance, so we'll see if he notices it in this one...if I let him  close enough to the finished quilt! Those pink flowers on the black background look an awful lot like some fabric I had fading problems with in an earlier quilt, but they aren't.

I'd planned to start my Keep Calm quilt for my February NewFO, but now Alex wants a low volume quilt and I just bought the neatest pattern for a star quilt. I guess I've got until tomorrow to decide between the possibilities. Maybe this challenge is helping me with my quilty self control....or maybe I'll wind up starting all three!  

This post is linked up to the NewFO Challenge at Cat Patches.
     

{yarn along} Rose Ribbons Shawl

After finishing Treads, I wanted to challenge myself again. What constitutes a knitting challenge for me has changed a lot over the last three or four years. Before the change, I could pretty much cast on and knit whatever I set my mind to. I had my limits, but they were a lot less....limiting.

These days, my results aren't so predictable. I think my knitting skills have atrophied, and I'm determined to build them back up.



My new project is the Rose Ribbons Shawl from Knitting Lace Trianglesby Evelyn A. Clark. That Amazon link is just so you can find information about the book -- apparently it's gone out of print since I bought my copy and the prices are just ridiculous. I might wish I'd seen that before deciding to write the abbreviations next to the chart in my own copy last night! Or not -- I wasn't planning on getting rid of it anyway. (I did a little more digging and it's available as a Ravelry download at a much saner price. I'm not going to even look at the patterns in the new version that aren't in my copy of the book...)

I'm using a worsted weight cotton blend from my stash. In one evening, I made it through the set up rows and the first flower lace repeat. Now it's time to switch to the leaf lace, which looks easier to follow.

 

 

And the reading for this week -- remember when I told you about the free Kindle download for Heaven Preserve Us? (It's not free anymore.) Before I had a chance to start that one, the kids and I made a trip to the library and they had the first book in the series. Might as well read them in order, right?

I absolutely loved Lye in Wait.  As soon as I can pry my Kindle away from the boys and get a charge on them, I'm starting Heaven Preserve Us. And I've already got the third book in the series sitting on the edge of my treadle.


  Cocoa butter soap, check. Lemon lip balm, check. A dead body?

That's just what Sophie Mae Reynolds finds in her workroom: the corpse of Walter Hanover, the neighborhood handyman. He died from drinking lye, something she has in good supply. But the police don't suspect Sophie Mae, a thirty-something widow who makes and sells beauty products. Instead they call it a suicide. But why would a man with lottery cash and a loving fiancée kill himself?

No one can stop the impulsive Sophie Mae from answering this riddle, not her sensible best friend Meghan or Detective Ambrose, who incites annoyance as well as stomach flutters. Sophie Mae's big mouth and sharp nose lead her to a peppermint-scented trail of arson, bigamy, and a shocking family secret that reveals a personal connection to Walter . . . and his killer

If you read horror novels, I hugely recommend Alex by Adam J Nicolai. It's a ninety-nine cent download for Kindle and it's one of the best horror novels I've read in ages. Ian Colmes can't manage to get to work on time because he can't drag himself away from the sounds of his happily playing son.  His son, who had been kidnapped and left dead in a ditch six months earlier.

 

There are things that his little boy desperately needs to tell him, but he can only communicate by repeating conversations from his past. The scene where Ian comes home with a ouija board and the ghost of his five year old stands there tearfully telling him that it is NOT a toy (replaying an incident when he'd gotten in trouble for playing with an eletrical socket) is seriously creepy.

 

 

I'm tempted to order the author's second book, but I'm not sure I'm ready for that one yet. I'm still kind of spooked by the first one.    

For more fun projects to drool over, check out On the Needles at Patchwork Times and Work in Progress Wednesdays at Tami's Amis. 

{what's cooking?} Alex's Hot and Sour Soup

When Judy said we were doing tofu this week, my heart sank a bit. Not because I don't like tofu -- in some recipes, I absolutely love it. But hubby had just made his wonderful soup with the tofu and bok choy and udon noodles the night before...there was no chance of getting him to make it again before today. 

And it didn't occur me me until just now that I could have taken a pretty picture of the leftovers and cheated!  Teenage Daughter heard me talking about sitting this week out and jumped on the opportunity to make her hot and sour soup.  It's absolutely loaded with mushrooms, so Hubby and the boys won't eat it. It's a rare treat that the two of us enjoy for lunch or a late night snack.

Alex's Hot and Sour Soup



Ingredients:
6 cups chicken broth
6 oz sliced mushrooms
1/4 cup rice vinegar
1 tsp sugar
1 can water chestnuts
1 tsp grated ginger root
1 tsp pepper
1/2 a package of firm tofu
1 tbsp cornstarch,
1/4 cup (about a handful) of soaked and rinsed black tree ear fungus
1/4 cup chopped green onion
1 beaten egg
1 tbsp soy sauce

In large pot combine broth, mushrooms, vinegar, pepper, ginger, sugar, soy sauce, and bring to a boil. Cover with lid, reduce heat and simmer two minutes. Add tofu, cover again and simmer two minutes.
Stir cornstarch and one tbsp very cold water together and stir into broth. Cook and stir till slightly thickened and bubbly. Cook and stir two minutes more.

Gently pour egg in a thin stream into the soup to create shreds. Stir one or two times but no more or the egg will turn into mush.

Remove from heat and garnish with green onions.
Makes four servings.

Notes -- Alex's results with this recipe have been kind of hit-or-miss, possibly because no one in this house uses measuring cups for much of anything. This batch turned out great, and she measured things as she was adding them. Do not substitute regular vinegar!  We've tried it with truly frightening results. Feel free to leave out the black tree ear fungus. I like it best when she adds a bit of chopped and cooked pork.

This post is linked to  What's Cooking at Patchwork Times and WFMW at We are THAT Family.

my abandoned plates

Long before I became a quilter, I slept under quilts my great-grandmothers had made and those patterns are the ones my memory immediately pulls up when I think quilt.  Those are the quilts I'm someday determined to make -- double wedding rings, and pieced baskets, and Dresden Plates...

All of the gorgeous Dresden Plate variations I've been seeing as part of the Dare to Dresden blog hop finally pushed me over the edge and I got my own plates appliqued onto the background...

And assembled into a little top...

This project seemed like a good idea when I started it. I made these Dresden Plates back in 2007 and put them aside as soon as I realized that they weren't going to lay flat and even if they did I had no idea how to applique them onto the background fabric anyway.  There were plenty of other non-quilty things for me to stress about around that time, so they got buried in the sewing room. Now and then, they'd resurface and I'd bury them again because by that time I'd also misplaced the pattern and the fabric that was intended for the pieced border. (Since then, I've realized the value of plastic storage boxes and become much better at keeping projects together!)

Last summer, I washed Lobster Sue and fell in love with the way that combination of batting and dense meandering crinkled up in the wash.  If I did that to my poor, deformed plates, they wouldn't need that fancy pieced border with its ice cream cone scallops...

It's taken me five more months to pull them out and get it done, but now they're on the background fabric and I'm wondering what all the fuss was about. If I could manage Grandma's Donuts, why couldn't I finish this one?  I think it was all of those little points.

To see more design walls, head over to Patchwork Times.

low volume scraps

All of the gorgeous low volume quilts I've been seeing lately inspired me to go up in the sewing room last week and dig out all of the light and neutral scraps I could quickly lay my hands on, the ones that weren't already set aside for that pineapple quilt I'm going to make one of these days.

 

There were a surprising lot of them and it didn't take nearly as long as I thought it would to find enough prints and cut enough squares for the experiment I have in mind. Most of these are fabrics I had no plans for, so I'm happy for a chance to use them up.

 

Weekly Stash Report

Fabric Used this Week: 2.25 yards
Fabric Used year to Date: 14.5 yards
Added this Week: 0 yards
Added Year to Date: 10 yards
Net Used for 2012: 4.5 yards

Yarn Used this Week: 200 yards
Yarn Used year to Date: 200 yards
Yarn Added this Week: 0 yards
Yarn Added Year to Date: 0 yards
Net Used for 2013: 200 yards

To see more weekly stash reports, click over to Patchwork Times.

Treads -- they're done!

I finished Treads just in time to wear them on our bird-watching trip to the Klamath Basin National Wildlife Refuge last week. They're modeled here by Teenage Daughter because I was taking the picture.

 

I really can't get over these. They have fingers  and thumbs! They have lateral braids! They fit! (Are you getting the message that I'm more than a bit excited about these?) One is slightly baggier than the other, so I think I must've added an extra stitch somewhere, probably when I was doing one of the braids. There's a temporary increase there. Or maybe it was in the thumb gusset.

The pattern is Treads, a free download. The yarn is Wool-Ease, a acrylic blend with a little bit of wool in it. It's one of my favorite yarns, but if I'd known that I was going to wear them in actual freezing temperatures, I might've used real wool.

Now I've got to find something else exciting to cast on....I'd forgotten how much fun it is to work on something more ambitious than baby hats!

Let's Make Baby Quilts! {week 4}

How are your baby quilts coming along? I took all of the bright squares that were left after I sorted out the florals to make Sara and made Steve. Now I need to get moving and cut a bunch more squares for the next one.

 

I've got a giveaway for you this week! The nice folks at Purex Insiders sent me a bottle of Purex Baby to try out, along with some coupons to pass along to my readers.  

 

 

 

I always wash my baby quilts before donating them or giving them to friends and family. I assume that they'll be washed again before they come into contact with baby, but I want to make sure they're as clean as they can be before leaving my house.

 

Because I've got a history of awful skin problems, our usual detergent is pretty gentle. I'm very picky about what I wash my own clothes in, let alone the baby quilts. Purex baby is is hypoallergenic, dermatologist-tested and formulated to be extra gentle on baby's skin. Which I assume means it's safe for me, too!  It has a light, pleasant scent. And it's designed to work in HE machines as well as my beloved old top-loader.

Do you wash your baby quilts before sending them off? What other steps do you go through -- checking for loose threads? Stray pins? A cheerio that accidentally got quilted between the fabric and batting? (Yes, that actually did happen at my house, to a baby quilt I was making for my sister's newborn. I cut through the top layer to get it out, then appliqued a heart over the hole.)

Let's Make Baby Quilts Linky Party Rules:

I don't want to overwhelm everyone with a huge list of rules, but I do want this linky party to stay on the topic of baby quilts. They can be for donation, or for your own baby, or just because you think they're cute and want them in your sewing room, but they've got to be baby quilts. Link directly to your post or specific Flickr photo. Your post can be about a quilt that's finished, or in progress, or you can be writing about what you have planned, but it's got to be about baby quilts. While we're still gathering steam, you're welcome to link to baby quilt related posts that aren't brand new, but please don't submit the same post more than once. I'd love it if you linked back to my site, either with a text link or the Let's Make Baby Quilts! button.

I'll give two coupons to quilters who link up their baby quilts, and one to a commenter. And if you're in a contest-entering mood, Purex is holding a sweepstakes with three $500 winners and free baby detergent to 250 winners.

Meet Steve

After going through my box of  2 1/2" squares and pulling out all of the florals for Sara, I was left with a lot of brights and novelty prints. Those combined nicely to make this little quilt:

 

I did find my walking foot, so I was able to try the Continuous Curves from 31 Days of Walking Foot Quilting.  I've got mixed feelings about the results. It was quick and easy. I love the way it looks. But I really do prefer the way denser quilting feels.

 

I've had this Blue's Clues fabric in my stash for quite a while now, waiting for the right quilt to back with it. This is the one! Which makes the quilt's name an obvious choice...because Blue isn't a people name...

 
Be sure to come back tomorrow and link up to Let's Make Baby Quilts! I've got a great giveaway for you.

This post is linked to to Finish it Up Friday, Can I get a Whoop Whoop?, Link a Finish Friday, and Freedom Fridays.

{what's cooking?} Chicken Vegetable Bake

I think this is starting to break me free of my cooking slump.

 

This week, Judy challenged us to use creamed corn. There's only one recipe I buy creamed corn for -- but that page, along with all of the other pages for things we actually want to make, has fallen out of the cookbook.

 

So, from memory, which may bear little or no resemblance to the published recipe (I haven't made it since we moved into this house seven years ago and I think the original called for turkey), here's my chicken and vegetable bake --

 

Combine one small can cream of celery soup, one small can cream of chicken soup, one can creamed corn, and two or three tablespoons Worcestershire sauce. Add two cans green beans and three or four cups cooked chicken (I used a Costco rotisserie chicken for this batch -- yum!)  If I hadn't been in a rush, I would have also added cooked carrots and celery. 

Spread the whole mess into a lasagna pan. Cover with foil and bake at 375 degrees for forty-five minutes.  While that's baking, mix one batch of Bisquick biscuits.  Remove the foil and dot biscuit mix onto the top. Bake another twenty minutes or so until the biscuits are done.  

This post is linked to  What's Cooking at Patchwork Times and WFMW at We are THAT Family.

THIS is fun!

Next time, I need to put something next to the blocks for scale. I don't think you can tell from the picture that this only measures 18x24"

There are 72 different fabrics in these twelve blocks. I want to see how far I can get without any duplicates. I don't think I'll run out of fabric choices before I start to lose track and make unintentional repeats. But that's okay. However it turns out, there's going to be a LOT of different fabric in it!

I've been sorting through scraps and I've got a whole pile of new-to-me fabrics to cut 1 1/2" strips from.  The extra length from those strips goes into the little shoe box for my Lego quilt. And if the pieces are big enough, I cut a couple of bow ties, too.

To see more design walls, head over to Patchwork Times.

plans for the week

I've got the top for this week's baby quilt done, and the backing fabric picked out. I even know where this fabric came from!   

 

If I can figure out which safe place I put my walking foot in, I'm going to try this quilting technique. Have you seen 31 Days of Walking Foot Quilting at Petit Design Co?! 

I've never loved my walking foot. After quilting circles on the blue barn raising baby quilt, I started to change my mind, just a little bit....and this series of tutorials might have me fully embracing the possibilities of the walking foot before long.

And that quilt I fell in love with, the one that made me want to quilt in a giant spiral and dig out my walking foot in the first place -- there's a tutorial! Rail fence blocks with half inch wide pieces -- do I even need to tell you how bady I want to do that?

Weekly Stash Report

Fabric Used this Week: 3 yards
Fabric Used year to Date: 12.25 yards
Added this Week: 0 yards
Added Year to Date: 10 yards
Net Used for 2012: 2.25 yards


Yarn Used this Week: 0 yards
Yarn Used year to Date: 0 yards
Yarn Added this Week: 0 yards
Yarn Added Year to Date: 0 yards
Net Added for 2013: 0 yards

To see more weekly stash reports, click over to Patchwork Times.

Heaven Preserve Us (A Home Crafting Mystery)

Look at the free Kindle title I just found on Amazon!  This sounds right up my alley. I haven't started reading yet, but if I wait to tell you about it until I'm done with the book, it might not be free anymore.  It's from the same publisher as Joanna Campbell Slan's Kiki Lowenstein Scap-N-Craft mysteries, so I'm expecting it to be a great read.

Heaven Preserve Us: A Home Crafting Mystery (A Home Crafting Mystery)

Wine jelly. Watermelon pickles. And a suicidal stalker? Great.

Thirty-something crafter extraordinaire Sophie Mae Reynolds makes preserves by day and answers a crisis center help referral line by night. What better way to help people while still keeping a low profile? But on her very first night, she gets a call from a man who is threatening suicide . . . and her. Angrily deeming the caller a crank, her boss, Philip Heaven, disconnects the line. Days later, Philip dies from a nasty case of botulism. Now, as a stalker singles out Sophie Mae, Philip's eerie last words keep coming back to haunt her: Threat. Meant it.

Stirring up the town with talk of murder by preserves, can Sophie Mae and her handsome boyfriend Detective Barr Ambrose spoil a mad murderer's poisonous plans?

This dangerously delicious second book in the Home Crafting Mystery series also includes recipes for preserves and beauty products!

trying not to lose the pieces

For the past couple of weeks, I've been using these little plastic containers from the Dollar Tree to keep track of my bow tie pieces and the 1 1/2" strips for my little bitty trip around the world blocks.

 

They're not large enough to hold many pieces, but I've got bigger project boxes for that. These are just the right size to keep pieces ready to sew when I've got a few minutes to sit down at the machine. They stack nicely. And they come in different  colors. Because one of these days I might remember which project is in which color box.

What do you use to keep your little pieces together?

Meet Emily

This one is Emily.

She would have been one of my quickest baby quilts ever, but I got a little bit carried away with the free motion quilting. The swirls I did on Quinn's green quilt last week were much looser than I wanted them to be. They would have been absolutely perfect for this quilt.

 

And they're what I planned to do until I started with the spirals between the birds and wound up doing  some of the tightest little spirals imaginable. I love the way it looks, but I'm thinking that the quilting made it just a little too stiff for a good baby quilt.

 

I'll see if it softens up in the wash. If not, it'll look really cute hanging on a wall. If I was going to wind up with an unusable baby quilt, I'm kind of glad it's this one -- I could enjoy having this one in my sewing room.

 

The birds are from the pattern I used for my Birds in the Air quilt. They're fused and machine zig zagged around the edges -- a lot quicker and easier than the Nancy Drew applique!

The back is the same blue fabric I used for the nine patches on the front.

 

This post is linked to to Let's Make Some Baby Quilts!,  Can I get a Whoop Whoop?, Link a Finish Friday, and Freedom Fridays.

Let's Make Baby Quilts! {week 3}

How are your baby quilts coming? Have you chosen a pattern? Cut some fabric?

 

It's been a busy week here -- I just barely managed to finish Emily. I might've gotten just a little bit carried away with my free motion quilting...

 

Let's Make Baby Quilts Linky Party Rules:

I don't want to overwhelm everyone with a huge list of rules, but I do want this linky party to stay on the topic of baby quilts. They can be for donation, or for your own baby, or just because you think they're cute and want them in your sewing room, but they've got to be baby quilts. Link directly to your post or specific Flickr photo. Your post can be about a quilt that's finished, or in progress, or you can be writing about what you have planned, but it's got to be about baby quilts. While we're still gathering steam, you're welcome to link to baby quilt related posts that aren't brand new, but please don't submit the same post more than once. I'd love it if you linked my site, either with a text link or the Let's Make Baby Quilts! button

the only ones I could find...

I love hand knit socks, especially if they've got fancy stitch patterns and texture.   Over the past decade, I've knit myself at least a dozen pairs, some with lace and cables.

But could I find a matching pair to take a picture of?

Not a chance. Because as much as I love knitting socks and admiring handknit socks, I don't wear them. It might have something to do with the fact that I don't wear shoes if I can avoid it.

This post is linked to Show Us Your Socks at Patchwork Times.

{yarn along} almost done

I am so close to having these done! All I need is a couple of hours of knitting time without distraction.  Those braids and fingers require just a little more concentration than I can muster up with the wild ones stampeding through the room.

 

I really want these done. They're the most ambitious thing I've cast on in forever, and they're coming out the way they should. And the weather has been so wickedly cold that I want to wear them the next time I leave the house. 

 

This week's book has been The Cat, The Quilt and The Corpse, first in the Cats in Trouble mystery series.  I don't think I'm enough of a cat person to really appreciate this one. The main character earns her living making cat quilts, but except for some of her quilts, not to mention her stolen cat, turning up in the victim's house, there's no vicarious quilting to be had here. There is a lot of detail about her cats. 

For more fun projects to drool over, check out On the Needles at Patchwork Times and Work in Progress Wednesdays at Tami's Amis. 

{what's cooking?} spinach ricotta spread

Have you seen Judy's newest idea over at Patchwork Times? Every week, she's going to challenge us to work with a new ingredient.

I think I've mentioned that cooking isn't my strong suit. But this week is spinach -- and I do have a spinach recipe in my limited arsenal!

Spinach Ricotta Spread

Ingredients:

1 16 ounce bag frozen spinach
16 ounces ricotta cheese
8 ounces pork sausage (spicy is best)

Thoroughly cook the sausage.  Boil the spinach until cooked, then drain thoroughly. You want to get out as much of the water as humanly possible -- I squeeze it out through a clean kitchen towel or thick layer of paper towels.  Mix the spinach, sausage, and ricotta cheese. Depending on how salty your sausage is, add salt and pepper to taste.

The original recipe, which I've adjusted so many times over the years that I can barely remember what it was, called for you to stuff the filling into a hollowed out loaf of French bread and bake it. Which was seriously yummy. But the kids and I use it as a spread on flour tortillas.

The proportions vary depending on who's eating and what kind of mood I'm in. Hubby was having lunch with us yesterday and he and Teenage Daughter don't like sausage, so I cut back on that. If I'm trying to be good, I  use more spinach and less cheese.

This post is linked to  What's Cooking at Patchwork Times and WFMW at We are THAT Family.

this is why...

This quilt is a perfect example of why I don't make quilts for my own children.  It never works out.  There was the sock monkey quilt I made for Alex, which is so ugly I think we'd both agree that it isn't worth hanging onto.  There was the dinosaur quilt I made for Quinn, which he told me I should give to Grandma...

 

And there's this one, which I made for Quinn because for years everything for that boy had to be all green all the time.  And now he likes black. The story does have a happy ending -- now that it's done, he's happily claimed it as his own and is sleeping under it every night. With other covers on top.

 

It's too big to spread out and get a picture of the whole thing. (Do all of the other quilters have bigger houses?)

This is from before I got the binding on, but it does show off the whole quilt in better lighting.  In real life, the blocks blend together and you have to look hard and count squares to see where one begins and the next one ends.

The backing is a  clearance fabric from Connecting Threads. I love how  gently busy it is -- this'll hide damage and stains and ink pen!

 

 

 

Now I'm wondering if I have scraps to make a black postage stamp quilt.  For me, because I'm not making any more quilts for these boys.  Can't picture it? Take a look at what Carly at Citrus Sugar did with blacks for the background of her Punisher quilt!

 

This post is linked to Finish it up Friday at Crazy Mom Quilts. 

the scrap quilts

In addition to the baby quilts, I'm planning for 2013 to be the year of the big ambitious scap quilts. I've had the year of the scrappy baby quilt, the year I made more quilts than I knew what do to with, and the year of knitting big flat things that didn't have to fit anyone.  The past two years haven't had fun trends for me to discover after the fact.

 

This year, I'm planning ahead and tackling the big scrap quilts on my wish list.

 

There's Little Trips, which I jumped into without any planning at all.

 

And the Lego quilt, which I jumped into as soon as I saw the tutorial. This is about a quarter of the blocks I'll need to make it 60x60"

 

I've got about half the cheddar bowties I'll need to make that one 60x60" -- plus the pieced border because even though I'm not into borders, Bonnie's looked so amazing I'm going to follow her lead.

 

And Santa Fe String Star, which seems to have completely stalled out. I need two hundred (I think) of the string pieced diamonds. I've made...nine.

 

And I've got a growing list of other scrap quilts I want to start as soon as I've made more progress on these. To see more design walls, head over to Patchwork Times.