Plugging away ...!

 I've been in a funky mood. Covid is getting old ... It feels like Ground Hog day ... I'm so eager for some change ... but, looks like it may take quite some time to happen ... sigh!

In the mean time, I've been stitching away on that 1/2 inch hexagon quilt. There's something about emptying a spool of thread ... Ah, what an accomplishment! lol

 

I've been hand basting the hexagons. This allows me to use spools of thread that I have no idea why I bought ... A hot pink hand quilting thread ... what was I thinking! Oh well, all gone!

I've been thinking of ways to remove the hexagon papers without causing too much damage to the template, allowing me to re-use them multiple times. The smaller the template, the harder it is to remove. To facilitate the removal of the small template, I use a 1/8" hole puncher and punch a hole in the middle.

In the past, I used appliqué pins to secure the template as I basted, but I found that to be cumbersome, damaging and prickly! Now I use a glue stick, which minimized the damage to the template. The trick to using glue is not to apply too much. You only need a little bit for the fabric to stick. 

At first, I used a pair of hemostat to remove the template.

I could not master the art of removing the template without creasing it to death. I lived with it for a while until an uncommon tool popped into my mind ... a seafood pick.

It fits beautifully into the hole.

And the template pops right out.

With minimal damage to the template, making it reusable ... Voila!

So far, I have a nice little stack of blocks completed.

What have you been up to? 

Thanks for stopping by. Catch you all later! Cheers!

Quilting Mojo ...

 Well, I think I may have found a bit of my quilting mojo. Last Sunday I decided that I "should" work on a quilting UFO. Let's face it, I'm quite a scatter brain at the moment ... no sense starting a new project only to get distracted ... Squirrel!

I went searching in my UFO bin and pulled out an English Paper Piecing (EPP) project I had started way back in 2016. The Project is called Star Quilt and it's from the book Modern Vintage Gifts by Helen Philipps.

I used the fabric line Sew Cherry 2 by Lori Holts. Love Retro/Vintage fabrics!

Since the stars were all sewn, it was just a question of laying it out on the design wall and get stitching.

For me, the most annoying part about hand stitched a quilt is, how do I keep my project portable while maintaining the order of the blocks? I found that numbering flower pins works. I use a permanent marker to label the pins.

 I first started to use this method for machine piecing rows of blocks. The number with the arrow are the row indicators, as well as the direction I'll press the seams. The other numbers are for the blocks sequence. This method keeps me from having to walk to my design wall and grab one block at a time. I've been using this method for years and it has never failed me!

With each row in a separate bag ... I'm ready to be portable! lol 

The quilt top ... so far!

Thanks for stopping by my little corner in cyberspace. I do hope you find my quilting tips helpful!

Catch you all later ... Cheers!

How to block a hat ....

When I took the photo of the hat, it had not been blocked yet. I have been pondering how to block a hat when you do not own, nor want to own, a styrofoam head. I did think of a ball, but I don't own one the size of a human head ... 

I finally came up with a solution ... stuff it with towels ... 

Voici, the top of the hat

I first placed an open small towel and stuffed the other towels inside the cavity. The key is to get it nice and smooth.

The trick worked perfectly. It has now been delivered to the recipient ... just in time for his birthday. 

Here is the handsome, goofball modeling his birthday present LOL ....

I do hope you find the hat blocking trick useful. I would certainly enjoy hearing how you go about blocking a hat.

Thank you for stopping by my little corner in cyberspace! Cheers!

Vanilla Cranberry Scones ...!

I just love cranberry scones ... So I've been working on perfecting a recipe to give me a delicious Vanilla cranberry scone. It's been challenging, but I think I've got it!

THE RECIPE:

VANILLA CRANBERRY SCONES

2-3/4 cups Flour (I use King Arthur all purpose)

1/2 cup of Sugar

3/4 teaspoon salt (non iodized)

1 tablespoon baking powder

1/2 cup cold butter (one stick)

1/2 cup Cranberries (I use frozen)

2 large Eggs

2 Teaspoon Vanilla extract (I use Nielsen Massey)

1/2 cup of cream or milk

TOPPING

2 teaspoon of milk

Demerara sugar (crystal sugar)

Preheat the over at 425F - bake 20-25 minutes

TRICKS AND TOOLS:

I like to work with a "mise en place" which means to put everything in place. It is a technique I learned when I started baking bread from scratch. By having all of my ingredients in place, I don't have to worry about missing anything ... did I add the salt?

"Mise en place" simplifies things ... yea some of you might say ... but that just creates more dishes to wash. Yes, but well worth it. Besides, I have come to enjoy doing the dishes. My mom never asked any of us kids to help wash the dishes ... we were free to play. I asked her recently about this and she said "doing the dishes was my quiet time, a time for reflection" I get it!

A great tool to have for any recipe that requires cutting in fat is a pastry cutter.

Because we will be working with cold butter, you want a sturdy one. There are two types of pastry cutter, the one that looks like a whisk is actually used for cutting in soft fats. Never use that one with hard butter, you'll trash it.

After you've mixed your dry ingredients together (I use a whisk),  add the cold butter.

Once the butter is cut into small chunks, the fun part starts! lol

With your bare (clean) hands, find the chunks and smash/flatten each chunk of butter. They should all look like this:

This will create layers in your scone ... flakier scones.

Add the cranberries. I tend to purchase cranberries in season, wash and freeze them. By using frozen cranberries, they will not break down and colour your dough while you are mixing.

Now add the liquids ... mix. Do not over mix. The goal is NOT to develop the gluten strands.

On a lightly flour surface, work the batter lightly and create the desired shape. In my case, I use a scone dish so I shape my dough into a scone circle.

I use the underside of my scone dish to mark the size of my pieces.

Place the Scone Circle on the dough and gently press to create an indentation

Cut on the lines

Place the wedges in the scone dish. Baste the scones with milk and sprinkle with a form of sugar crystal.

Voila! Delicious scones!

I hope you enjoyed this post. Drop me a note and let me know!

Catch you all later! Cheers!

A date with Penelope!

Modern Building Block quilt top finished ... it was time to set a date with Penelope!

My original thought was to use the Good Vibration pantograph designed by Patricia Ritter...

But ... I could not get the curves to look good. The thickness of some of the seams caused my hopping foot to hop somewhere else ... yuck.

So, I did a bit of croaking and resorted to straight lines using my horizontal lock mechanism.

I spaced the rows 3/4 inches apart. It was actually harder than I thought.

In order to keep the lines spaced properly and evenly, I needed to quilt within approximately 12 inches max from the space bar. Otherwise, even though I had marked 3/4 inches from the last line, as I moved the machine head towards the other side of the quilt, the space became more one (1) inch apart. Not sure why that was. It certainly made the machine quilting take a bit more time to complete, especially with using the seam ripper! :o/

The quilt is now totally machine quilted and I do like how it looks.

What's new with you? What projects are you completing?

Catch you all later! Thanks for stopping by my little corner in cyberspace!

Cheers!

A little help from a notion ...!

Have you noticed that Blogger is no longer sending out e-mail notifications for comments posted on your blog? I researched the issue and according to my findings "Google is aware and working on it". OK, I sure hope they resolve the issue soon!

I want to share with you this notion that I found helpful when working with the BOM Peace & Unity. It is called Alphabetties by It's Sew Emma.

At times, especially when it comes to a block of the month, there are numerous pieces for the block construction that are labeled either numerically or alphabetically, sometimes both! This was the case with the Peace & Unity BOM and I found the Alphabetties quite useful.

I will admit that I do not use them often, but when I do, I'm glad I have them. There were lots of pieces to this 12 month program and the Alphabetties kept me organized.

Thanks for stopping by! Cheers!

Still on the UFO trail!

Now that the holiday celebrations have come to an end, I'm back on the UFO completion project. I am pleased to report that I have completed another wool project.

The pattern is called Old St. Nick by Lisa Bongean of Primitive Gatherings.  I purchased this kit back in 2009 from the Quilted Crow. This was before Fibre Junction invested in wool.  I wanted to see if it would be a medium I'd  enjoyed working with.

At the time, I was torn with the idea of using a fusible on wool.  I've never been a fusible kind of gal and wanted to stay away from the stuff.

In the UFO project bag was one Santa robe with glue on it. Probably an attempt to have the pieces stick to the wool.

Obviously a failed attempt, as I broke down and used Steam-a-Seam 2 Lite on the other four Santa's robes and arms!

It is actually the first time I worked on a wool project that had so many small pieces.

When I work with small pieces, I use one strand of DMC or Cosmo floss. I find that the size 12 Valdani pearl cotton is much to large and tends to rip up the pieces.

For the trees, I didn't like the wool the Quilted Crow had included, so I changed it to what you see.  Both green wools are from Primitive Gatherings! They do have gorgeous hand dyed wool!

Another photo with a decorations!

Thank you for stopping by my little corner in cyberspace! Catch you all later! Cheers!

Wool tutorial - Silent night-Holy Night

I thought I would share some of the techniques I learned while attempting to finish the wool project Silent Night-Holy Night.

In order to stitch the word exactly as written by the pattern designer Jan Speed (It was nicely written), I used a water soluble stabilizer called Transfer-Eze.

Photocopied the pattern on the sheet, stuck it on the wool piece and stitched. Once completed, I rinsed it off and let the wool piece dry. Voila! Perfect word transfer!

The skinny pole (less than an 1/8 of an inch) that the snowman is holding was held back by Clover applique pins (my favourites). I worked from the front, making sure the skinny pole was straight and pinned from the back.

This is what it looks like from the front.

I did an X stitch to hold it in place.

There you have it, a couple of techniques for working with challenging patterns.

Catch you all later!

Flying geese quilt .... in flight!

As you know from the prior post, I'm presently working on the 1,700 pieced flying geese quilt and thought I would blog a bit more about how I organized this project.

As you can imagine, having 5,100 pieces to sew together can be quite daunting! By organizing the pieces accordingly (see prior post) it makes this quilt quite manageable.

For this quilt, I decided that it was best to use a bin to organize my bags, this way I am less likely to lose anything.

When the quilting mood hits me (ok, I'm in a perpetual quilting mood) I grab a bag of each and the piecing starts.

For this quilt, I'm using the tool - Sew Straight ... It's perfect for this method of piecing flying geese!

I love that tool!

If you own the Angler 2, it is pretty much the same thing except that you do not have a valuable installation piece that you can lose! The Sew Straight lines up directly on your machine and it comes with great instructions.

Voila! One hundred (100) flying geese pieced!

Time to trim .....

And before you know it, you've just pieced and trimmed 100 flying geese! I now have a mere 1,600 more to go! lol

Thanks for stopping by my little corner in cyber space! Happy quilting!

Scrap quilting .... cutting one, two, three quilts at a time!

I am presently working on the flying geese quilt I mentioned back on March 23, 2017. The goal of that quilt was to use up my 1930's scraps.

So, I started by pulling out my bin of 1930's scraps and began cutting.

It took me quite some time to clean that bin out because, as I was cutting for the flying geese project, the thought occurred to me that I could make a bag of one (1) inch squares from the left over scraps for another 1930's project that I'm interested in making ... Isn't this how every quilter's mind works?

Because of the number of pieces I needed for the flying geese quilt, it became apparent that scraps were not going to do it. I needed to cut into my stash .... resulting in more scraps! So much for wanting to reduce my scrap load!

To make this project less daunting to piece, I created 17 bags of 100 rectangles and 17 bags of 200 squares. This way, when I'm ready to stitch out the blocks, I can grab a package of each and voila, I'm on my piecing way!

Once I had cut up the 5,100 pieces of fabric I needed for this quilt ... being in the cutting zone ... why not start cutting for another project?

So, I pulled out my Lori Holt stash .... Such happy fabrics!

And started cutting for a pattern from her Scrappy Project Planner - Happy Trails Quilt

BTW, this is such a great planner! It is so happy and as you know I'm all about happy! lol

So there you have it! A piece of how my mind works .... hum ..... I am all over the place! SQUIRREL!

Catch you later!