That Was Fun!

And hectic, and exhausting… but most of all FUN!

I returned home earlier this past week from Massachusetts where I had the opportunity to work the 10th Anniversary of the Massachusetts Quilt Shop Hop at Southampton Quilts!

I realized as I made my way north that this was my first road trip since I busted up my knee in February.  It was so good to be ‘on the road’ again – I love to travel and especially love to get in the car and drive.  (Yes I went to Hawaii this summer to hug on a new grandbaby… but I didn’t have to drive to get there so it doesn’t count as a ‘road trip’.)

I am quite happy to report that my knee handled the weekend very well!  Yes it was a little tired but overall I was very pleased that all my hard work to get my knee and legs stronger paid off… well that and those medical compression stockings I recently bought.  I never thought I’d say I loved anything that resembled panty hose on steroids – but I love these things!  I had practically no swelling in my knee after being at the shop for some really long days! 

I cannot tell you how much I enjoyed seeing so many quilty friends up there!  It did my heart and soul good to see each and everyone of them – I truly feel blessed to know them.

I so miss everyone from the shop – the owners Nancy and Maureen, and the other teachers Beth, Pam, and Dale.  Each of these ladies are so creative and bring their unique style to the quilting craft – but even more important is that they are all just wonderful folks!  And I don’t want to miss mentioning Gail (a long time shop customer, quilty friend and new shop hop recruit).  She survived working on Friday (always the busiest day) and showed up again on Saturday for more!  LOL

It was also great to spend some time with my kids… I haven’t seen them since they came down here in the Spring – so I was overdue for some hugs!

OK – so what else is going on…

I found a lovely large paisley to make another 4 Patch Stacked Posie…. mmmm pretty!

I’m going to be making (with my neighbor and sister) Sauerkraut on Monday.  I’ll see if I can remember to take some pictures of the process.  In 6 – 8 weeks it will be ready to can.

Oh – I don’t know about you but I have to work a bit to try new things.  In my mind pumpkin belongs in pie.  Coconut milk isn’t anything I would have considered as an ingredient.  But my daughter last spring made a delicious soup – with pumpkin, chicken, coconut milk and curry as the main ingredients.  I’ve had this soup on my mind recently – been craving it actually.  I’ve looked at several recipes and they all use a variety of things so I figured I could just wing it.  So I threw a couple chicken breasts, a quart of chicken broth, chopped onion, and some pumpkin puree in the crock pot yesterday morning.  When I got home later I added the coconut milk and went to add the spices.  I had NO curry powder… none, zip, nadda!  How can I have pumpkin curry soup without curry?  LOL  So I added a little of this, that, and the other in there and came out with an acceptable tasting concoction for dinner.  Curry is on my grocery list.

And because I’m all about sharing the things I learn along the way…

…the problem with using a low sodium chicken broth is that it does not have enough salt in it!! 

Fabric Identification

The fabric I’m using for the new 4 Patch Stacked Posie is a new collection called Peony Tales by Betty Wang for South Sea Imports. 

The focus fabric is on the right – the border print I’ll use for the border is on the left.

The pink and green I’ve used in the blocks is also from the collection.  All the blocks are done and I’ll begin assembly tonight after dinner… I’ll update later if I get anything accomplished.

Hot Water to Soup in 20 minutes… and other stuff

Sunday morning I got up to a dry (and very cold – brrrrr) house.  (Enough of these single digits - Spring can’t come soon enough.)  The humidifier was in need of cleaning so I unplugged it on Saturday morning as I headed out the door for an all day workshop.  By the time I got home Saturday evening I was too tired to mess with cleaning the humidifier… so late Sunday morning I put a large pot of water on the stove to simmer.  The Engineer had already headed out to his woodshop so he didn’t know I was just using a lazygirls method of boosting the humidity in the house.

Well … he didn’t know until 11 AM when he came in after finishing up his project.  “Are you making soup for lunch?” was his question – which had caught me off guard because I forgot about the simmering pot.  He wanted to know if we were having lunch before or after he got his shower?  LOL  I told him to go get his shower and I’d rustle up some lunch. 

Since I had a pot of hot water all ready… I threw a spoon of chicken soup base and about 3 cups of dehydrated scalloped potatoes in.  I had a ham steak in the freezer – so I pulled that out, cut it up, cooked it in a pan and then deglazed with some of the broth and dumped it all in the pot with some dehydrated onion and some pepper.  Everything simmered for 20 minutes until the potatoes were done.  I chopped at the potatoes with my spoon to break them up some and then added 2 cups of light cream.  At that point - we called it lunch.  We were slurping our soup by 11:30.

After the pot had cooled off I packaged the rest of it up for his lunches… I think I have the freezer pretty well stocked now.  I didn’t take a picture Sunday but here is a picture from a couple weeks ago when I packaged up a bunch of beef vegetable soup in containers for the freezer.  I bought these microwave containers at a restaurant store last year.  I had to buy a case but have shared them with my daughter and son to freeze leftovers for lunches.  My husband use to take the freezer tape label off – but I told him to leave it as the writing washes out in the dishwasher and I just remark it.

The serving size is perfect – he has soup or other leftovers for lunch every day.

Enough of that – here are a couple pictures from my Buggy Barn Hearts Workshop this weekend for a group of Jersey Girls.  There are 3 sisters, one daughter and a friend.  They came out last year for a 4 Patch Stacked Posie workshop.

From left to right the fabric combinations are – vintage fabrics, green-brown-creams, 30’s, blue-brown-cream, and the pink-brown-cream I had used as my sample.  None of the blocks have been trimmed yet – there will be 2 other sets with fabrics all switched around.

There are lots of pieces parts to keep track of as you can see by their tables.  We had a good day – everyone got a complete set of blocks done and started working on the others.  Although it’s bitter cold outside - at least they had clear weather to head home in this year – last year when they headed home we had flurries here and they drove into 6 inches of snow at their homes in southern NJ.

Last but not least… this is where I’m headed with the 4 Patch Stacked Posies.  I’ll get a picture of the fabric and post it when I get back into the shop.  I can’t even tell you who makes it… but it’s a pretty grouping.

Enough sitting around this morning… places to go and things to do!

Can You Guess What’s Up Next?

If you guess a 4 Patch Stacked Posie – you’d be right!

The 4 blocks above are the 4 options I have in making one block. 

Now that I have all the blocks done – a total of 33… I’ll have to decide how I want to set this.  I would have 36 blocks had I been paying attention when I made my first cut at 3” rather than 3.5“… I’ll work them in if I can – or use them as a teaching point… LOL

I’ll have to spend some time with EQ this weekend and see what I can come up with…

Progress this week...

It's always nice to be able to draw a line through some items on your UFO list.  This is a quilt I started fairly recently - Oct 08 -  A 4 Patch Stacked Posie with 4 sizes of squares set on point using one of the Posh fabrics and a yellow fusions as background.  As it is it measures 78 x 94.  I still need to add a 3 or 4 inch border of the background fabric - but it's fine for now for display at the shop.

I also finished this one that has been around for awhile - another 4 Patch Stacked Posie I started in Jan 07 but only completed 9 of the blocks - enough to use as a sample for classes.

I actually found another 1.5 yards of the Hoffman Vintage Garden floral online and have ordered it...  I'd like to use this on my king size bed - so I'll put on a black border to frame this and then add the floral to make the whole thing big enough.

 

A fruitful week - considering I'm still tired - but I'm getting better each day.

I also ran into the knitting shop - she had stuff on sale and figured it was a good time to pick something else up.  I bought 2 of the sock weight yarns and smaller double pointed needles to use with the toe up pattern I'm taking a class on.  I started this last night and hope to get this sock knitted up to the heal part over the weekend.

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On Monday our class continues and we will turn the heal - this denim looking blue DK weight sock is all ready to go back to class.

I won't be buying any more sock yarn until I get these done... I figure once I know what I'm doing it will probably go along pretty quickly.  Probably should have taken a beginners class... I laughed inside my head when the shop owner said something about gauge... and I just stood there and smiled because I haven't got a clue... not even a hint. 

I see a beginners class in my future...

Sunday's progress - 4 Patch Stacked Posies

Today I headed out to Piece by Piece Quilt Shop in Ephrata, PA for their Pre-Game Extravaganza.  Open sew time, great snacks and a healthy discount off all notions! Just look at all this classroom space!  What you can't see is the 3 other sewing tables on the other side of those cutting tables in the middle - there were 9 sewing tables set up.  We certainly could have shared but didn't need to... nice space!

On the left side of the doorway that I was taking the pictures from is the design wall.

I started this 4 Patch Stacked Posie (4PSP) project last October during a trip up to Maine.  I've made several Posie quilts and used different settings so I wanted to try something different.  (The slide show over in my side bar has pictures of other posie blocks/quilts made by me, my friends, family and students.)  At first I was going to just make big blocks... but decided to play around with EQ6 for awhile and came up with this design layout using 4 different size 4PSP blocks.  I cut and pieced all the 4PSP's and was able to add the yellow sashing to about 3/4's of them before running out of that fabric.  As a part of that October trip I was in MA to work at my old shop in MA - Southampton Quilts during their Annual Shop Hop weekend... so I was able to get more of the yellow fusion fabric to finish the project.  And that is where this project ended - until this week.

  After figuring out just what I had been thinking back in Oct. (not an easy task to be sure) I was able to finish the sashing on the remaining blocks earlier this week.  My small design wall just wasn't up to the job - I only laid out the center and stitched those blocks into diagonal rows.  I pulled out my block tags and took them with me to the shop today.

 

Yes - now we're talking!  That's a design wall - I was only using half of it too.  Although I did suggest to the shop owner Nancy that she could raise the roof because I could use another foot here.  Her husbands suggestion later when he came by... "make smaller quilts!"  LOL  No sympathy there... LOL

It was very nice to have the space to lay the blocks out and then to step back to see if everything stayed balanced.  Some blocks are heavy and others are light... and I'm just silly enough to need to try and keep them balanced.

The blocks are now connected into rows - I need to figure out my setting triangles and get them cut tomorrow so I can finish the rows and sew them together.  I see lots of pinning in my future. 

And then I'll finish the log cabin posies I started a long time ago.  Here's an EQ version of the block with the fabrics I scanned... this will be finished this week too.  I've got 9 blocks finished and 27 to go.  I'm going to make sure this will fit on my King Size Bed... it's going to be pretty!