Bread

I've been making bread lately; a lot of bread. I found this recipe on line and adapted it to my way, changed the ingredients a bit too. I made bread like this 30 years ago when I didn't have a good mixer or a bread machine. Now I have both and although I changed my method a bit (the kitchenaid can handle more flour than my old mixer could) the idea is the same.
In Gallup, New Mexico I went to the grocery store and purchased my souvenir of our stay there.

That's right, a 5 lb bag of flour. (I immediately saw in my mind some kind of wall hanging made using that flour sack) Now I've got to use this flour up so I can have the bag!

* I washed the bag and the bird faded terribly. My sister has the same bag, she washed it and it didn't fade. It must be the water alkalinity or acidy or something. I threw mine away.

Cookies

I made my favorite cookies Saturday. Unfortunately they were for a missionary meeting and we could only eat 1 each. Fortunately they have to be cooled in a log in the fridge soooo I made an extra log and this morning ..at 6a.m. I cooked just 8 of the cookies presumably for my son's lunch....Fortunately  he didn't count the cookies before I ate 2 of them. Unfortunately I forgot and left the leftover frosting out of the fridge overnight. Fortunately that made it soft enough to spread on the fragile cookies so I could make this;

Unfortunately image resizer would not work on this photo (never happened to me before) but that is fortunate for you since you can click on the picture and drool at the buttery goodness.
I used the recipe in my Cook's Illustrated magazine but I found it online for you here. I did not put the espresso powder in and I added chopped pecans and miniature chocolate chips. I used the frosting recipe from here that was left over from the last batch of cupcakes. These are fragile so I'm making a cardboard back to wrap with them to make it to school. Fancy they are not, 2 squares of cardboard cut from a spare shoe box. One used on each cookie and then wrapped in cellophane.

The deal is; if he does everything on his morning list without being reminded he gets them in his lunch....drat he did it.*
He makes the bread so he can have it in his lunch everyday. Actually he usually just takes the 2 sandwiches, if it is store bought bread he needs more food and will include a protein bar and applesauce. The apple in this picture? He's taking just for the surprise factor; it is pink in the middle;

 It is a Pink Pearl, a new apple at the store near us...at least new to us. The apple tasted good too.

The kids around him have noticed his homemade bread sandwich and commented about it...would like to taste it since they haven't ever had homemade bread....He thinks they will notice his odd apple too.

*note he did not want to take the cookies in his lunch, so I insisted that he hide them from me while I waited in the car. After school he went and got them, behind the filter on the air intake for the air conditioner!

Christmas Churn Dash Finished!

Almost finished, I still need to do the label. I have been waiting since I finished it Saturday for 3 people and the light to be right...this is as good as it is going to get for the next little bit. Here it is;

 Can you even see the quilting? After waiting for the right light?

 The back is pieced....of course; that's the best kind!

 The nutcracker fabric is so busy that the quilting doesn't show (I knew that but wanted the snowflakes anyway.). It looks good on the back though!

Feathers.

Each churn dash is quilted differently. Each nutcracker block is q

uilted with a different snowflake...not true I didn't have enough different snowflakes but did use 6? different ones.

Then I did a different binding; faux piping, with no hand work, binding. I followed a tutorial here, but pressed the seam toward the piping to create more fullness in the piping (otherwise it looks more like a faux flange) thus created a few more difficulties.  Notice that it takes a wider piece of fabric for the piping part than the binding part. MAKE sure that you do not have a lengthwise binding seam in a mitered corner! It is too bulky and I broke a needle on my first corner but the other 3 were not as difficult. My back binding does not look as neat as it should but this is not a quilt for a contest.

 It turned out bright and pretty and looks great on my blue and white Irish chain quilt.(Which is on my bed.)

houses and more houses

Last year was leap year and someone or many someones had the idea of piecing a tiny house a day  .... I did not do it but I started wondering today what happened and went looking around blogland. IF you like tiny things like I do check out the blog post. http://buildinghousesfromscraps.blogspot.com/
I wouldn't want to steal one of her pictures but there are several quilts there that are beautiful. Good work ladies!

Here are the houses I got in my exchange last year;

I had this wild idea of using them in the center of a bigger block...but am rethinking that. I really love the corner stone and sashing like so many of the quilts in the above blog. (that one you can see the edge to is pictured on this post.)

I have been making bread, about 2 small loaves each time and I made it almost every day last week, I missed Saturday and Sunday. I started the beginning of December and hadn't bought a loaf since until Saturday. Yesterday I said I didn't think I would make it anymore since it made such a mess. Every slice leaves crumbs on the counter, and I'm not exactly the neatest cook!. The counter had flour on it all week, well it was cleaned up a couple of times but every time I made bread there was more flour on the counter (The mixer would send it up since I was too impatient to put the flour in slowly). After I went to bed Roger and Jeffrey cleaned up my bread making area and left a note saying they loved homemade bread, so started another 2 loaves this afternoon.

Dream week

The week of Halloween was fabulous. I'd call it a Quilt Dream Week.

• Monday I met with 3 friends; Beth, Jackie and Lisa and we had lunch together and then went to 'the Painted Pony', a fairly close quilt shop.There I picked up fabric for one of my quilt kits. It is such a delight to have 'conferencing' available when choosing fabric for a quilt. I'll post about my 'kit' soon.
• Tuesday I met with Lisa on a spur of the moment run to Robyn Pandolf's warehouse sale. Robyn was in Houston for Quilt Festival and decided to sell her fabric that had been put in storage when she left for Singapore. I got fabric for the quilt kit that I blogged about yesterday.
• Wednesday I got to ride into Houston with other quilters for Quilt Festival preview night and view quilts....and shop, I bought some yarn.
• Thursday I rode to quilt festival with Mary and Lisa. Fun, fun, and pain (from walking so many hours). When I got home the package of fat quarters I had won from Fort Worth Fabric Studio had come. Free fabric! Great autumn fabrics Free! I had entered a give-away on Carolyn's blog and was totally shocked when I won.

A couple of years ago I had played on EQ7 and designed an autumn quilt. (Here's my 'Electric Quilt')

I have some new fabric for it now! Thank-you Carolyn and Fort Worth Fabric Studio.

• Friday I got to go to Quilt Festival again, did I mention free parking? My friend's husband works nearby and let us park at his work. The all day parking was jacked up for Quilt Festival to $20 per day. On Friday I saw the 'Seasons' exhibit. There was a notice that no photos were allowed. Later I found one of my favorites was posted by the artist on her web site. Here. (You have to scroll down to her October posting about Tranquility/Wild Iris quilt; for some reason I cannot link to the exact post.) I just found all the quilts on the SAQA site. Most of the quilt in the exhibit were fabulous.(Scroll down to 'Canopy,' my favorite in the exhibit)

Then to top the week off I got to sit in the car and knit for 6 hrs on Saturday.
Pretty nice week!

Mitered binding

I've done 90 degree corners for years on my binding. I willingly agreed to bind my daughter's quilt that had hexagon shapes on the edge of the quilt knowing it would be challenging. Not so much difficult as it just tedious. Angela counted the miters 2 nights ago; 256 outer points on her king size quilt, she did not count inside corners but I'm assuming the number is about the same. It takes 20 minutes to do the machine work on 7 miters.... That's about 12.5 hours of machine stitching.I'm spacing it out over 3 days. We moved the sewing machine to the dining room table so I wouldn't be hidden away in the sewing room. And I have the whole table to hold the weight of the quilt...very important, since it is so heavy.
I watched a few tutes about mitering and this one is good about the inside corner. Then this one about the outside corner.

 Here you can see the binding started....I'm about 14 done. The only thing I added to the above tutorials is to

 stay stitch the quilt, all the way around with a small stitch a scant 1/4" in from the edge. Then when I clip the seam I clip almost to the stay-stitching. I did not want to be guessing where to stop and start the stitching. Looking on the backside, since the front side is hidden by the binding, I insert a pin at the 1/4" mark made by the stay-stitching through to the sewing side of the binding, then repin it on the front side and then stitch it to the pin. (You can see the water soluble marking on the front that I used when quilting to know not to quilt where the binding would be. That mark did no good at the binding stage since I could not see it from either side.

Watermelon Sorbet

I got involved with Pinterest several months ago and actually have tried some of the recipes found there. This week my son, 15yo, decided to try one. Watermelon Sorbet. Andrew does not like watermelon (how this is possible is beyond me.) So he made watermelon sorbet, found here. (He left out the chocolate chips-the one's we had were not vegan.)

 Everyone liked this. Although Watermelon is easier (and tastes better) but this was a great experiment that Andrew loved.

So did Dad.

Chicken foot rest

Every BODY needs one of these to put their feet up on.

But first sell the silver spoon you were born eating out of.

Coloring pages

What do you do when you need a nap but know you better not take one? Scan Pinterest? I colored a couple of quilts today in EQ7. Here is my Texas flag with borders.

Then I did these 2 9-patch.....

My son got to see the Brandenburg Gate in Germany today...

Earth day

Jeffrey has been talking about making his own deodorant for months. Saturday I found a recipe on line, here, and we did it. Really easy and he is very proud of himself. He also started using baking soda for his toothpaste again....

But added drops of peppermint oil to it. About 8 drops made it very strongly peppermint scented; it still tastes like baking soda though.

muffalata

In 2007 our daughter flew from Los Angeles and met me and her little brothers in Denver. While in Denver we drove up to Echo Lake with more cousins and 2 of my sisters. Melissa made sandwiches for our picnic and today Grandma asked for the recipe. We found a picure of the creation also.
If you look real close you can see the sandwich in front of my Dad. Then notice the pile of olives on my Mother's plate...turns out that she likes olives, just not mixed with other foods, so she pulls them out and eats them by themselves. Verna fixed the jars of watermelon to eat. It looks like there were some peanut butter and jelly sandwiches there too. Here's the link to the recipe she used.
Here's a picture of the cute kids that went;

Ok, it's not a great picture, but at least the 2 that are looking at the camera are cute....It's the best picture of the lot!
2 parents, 3 daughters, 6 grandchildren, and1 great-grandchild went on this excersion. (I'm one of the daughters).

You CAN quilt that out!

Some people can write a song about anything! Here's a song about long arm quilters. Totally Cool.

design ---floor

I've lost my design wall. It is usually a double wide piece of flannel that I clamp up to put quilts on...It was taken down before Christmas and I haven't seen it for almost 3 months. :(
so I'm making due with the floor. Due to winter storms and class being canceled I had a week to put on border #3 and border #4. (I misunderstood the directions, I was supposed to have #3 on for the second class.) Since half of my family was gone Friday night and Saturday I got a lot of sewing done. Here is the 4th border; a checkerboard. 3 sets are sewn. Now I'm trying to decided on the coping strip...the fabric between the 2 borders. I have narrowed it down to 3 stripes.

1. A yellow-on the right.
2. A darker green and pink on the left and the
3. medium tone green on the top.

I need advice. My husband is color blind and so no advice there. Which do you think looks the best?


This is what I'm fixing for Roger and I for dinner....the boys don't care for salads so I'm not sure what they are having yet. So I've got to make a run to the grocery store before my exercise class.
Then I get to go listen to Julie Silber talk about and show 'Maverick Quilts.' You can go here and see a few.

If you have a minute or 2 (or 200) go look at some of the other design walls over at Judy's blog.

edit: I finally chose the yellow; since 1. I liked it. (I thought the paler green would be the best choice but the yellow did interesting things and that was fine too.) 2. It was my husband's favorite. On to the sewing; due to massive amounts of foot changing; seam size changing I've taken 1 1/2 hours to pick apart 2 of the borders, now I will sew them back together and try to get them to the right size. One was smaller than the side border by 1.5 inches.

IF

IF we are taking a road trip. IF I will be in the car for hours, days, what seems like years, I will NEED a knitting project. I have found quilting almost impossible in a moving car, crocheting is also difficult for me, but knitting I can do. So I just found a project that would be easy...only problem is I do not need potholders....So IF you need a simple knitting project go to the purl bee and check out their potholders, only DO NOT MAKE A WHITE POTHOLDER! Dark colors are best since they get dirty. (Ask me how I know.)

New Year Noodle Soup

Since going Ve-gan I've had to try a few new recipes. This one was a winner. I found it over here.
I did not have the fancy beans mentioned; I used cans. One each of garbonzo, pinto, and white cannelonni--I think, but they were white and smallish. I like the whole wheat angel hair spaghetti and we did not add sour cream.

The first night I LOVED it. The second night I added more spaghetti and another can of beans and it lost it's great taste. The boys still thought it was great and I ate a bowl but the first night it was fabulous.

Chorus

One last Christmas post.
I saw this in December but I bet my Mother hasn't so I'm sharing it as a link; if you like the Hallelujah Chorus go here.

Here's another one that's pretty cool.

Here's a different song with dancers.

baking

So far we have not done a lot of adventurous wheat free and dairy free cooking, but we've done some. With them leaving Sunday we will be out of time soon.

• Angela has done 'rolls.' More like biscuits but pretty good.
• Reed made Kale Chips. I haven't been brave enough to try them yet. Okay, I finally tried it and let's see if I could have tasted the honey it might have been better....tasted a bit like ...kale.
  
• I made vanilla wafers (that's what the boys asked for) and they are delicious.
• Italian Almond Macaroons are in the oven; an easy cookie once the skins are off the almonds; buying them with no skins doubles the price of the almonds and Andrew is very talented at getting the skins off.
• Cinnamon non-stars are ready to mix. They are one of my favorite cookies but I don't make them often since I have never figured out how to get them in the shape of a star. (Also an egg white cookie). This recipe looks very like the recipe I use from Joy of Cooking. I may use it this time except I really don't want to even try to get the stars this late at night...just dropping them from a spoon is okay with me this year.
  
• Tomorrow we are trying our hand at pita bread and
  
• crepes

I plan on getting to bed before midnight tonight. Everyone else just left to go to bed and I have the Cinnamon cookies to finish baking.

The Quilt Pattern Magazine

Do you like to win prizes? Do you like quilt patterns? Do you get the 'After Christmas Blues'? Do you need something to look forward to? I've got just the thing;

January; birth of a new magazine

January is bringing us a new quilt magazine! It will be delivered directly to your computer. You will not have to pay for mailing or even printing of patterns that you are not interested in. The price is right; $11.95 for a full year of the magazine.

If you want to claim your prize when you win I must have a way to contact you. Please include your e-mail address.

• That's less than $1.00 per magazine!
• That's one magazine a month plus an extra. A Baker's dozen.
  
• That breaks down to at least 65 patterns and
  
• 13- 26 articles about quilting.

An online pattern magazine is a great idea because;

• storage of patterns just got easier...on your computer
• since you don't have to store the magazine it will free up shelf space for...more fabric!
• without space limitations in the magazine each template will not be overlapping other patterns so it will be easier to get
• it is a 'greener' solution; subscribers will only print a pattern when they are ready to use it

to win a year's subscription;

Go look at their web-site and then come back and comment about the magazine on this post. In January I will draw one name and then that person will get a subscription for all of next year. If you go here and visit each of these blogs you can enter many more times and up your chances of winning. There will be one blog to visit each day for the rest of the month.

If you want to go ahead and subscribe if/when you win your full year's subscription will be returned to you. It's a win-win situation.

Winding Ways

I love the pattern 'Winding Ways' My grandmother made one a long time ago, about 1925.
Then my mother made one in 2008.
So if I follow the pattern I have until 2091 to make mine..I'll be...137 years old. Maybe I can't wait that long.
I recently found a new blog and found a blue and white 'Winding Ways' quilt. You'll need to scroll down to the last quilt in the post. Then squint a bit and I think you will see a 'Winding Ways' done with a slightly different shape.

Wish list quilts

I have Debra Wagner's book; 'All Quilt Blocks are not Square' Ironically the 2 quilts I really want to be working on are square. I think Tyler and Tyson, my grandsons, really NEED the tessellated Capital T for their bed quilts.... Then the 'Candy Swirls' just screams at me; 'make me, make me, I'll give you a real headache.' At least I would be an expert at curved piecing when I finished if I didn't throw it through a wall. I saw the same pattern in a magazine with instructions to applique the pieces down, that's cheating! Not really but the challenge of the curved pieces is what interests me.

The book also has 'Stars and Bars' (the cover quilt) AND an 'Orange Peel' that is a triangle instead of a square.

All of the above are on my wish list; instead I'm sewing the I-spy blocks and working on a customers project.