Sew-Day Tomorrow

It's like bunnies, the way guilds are multiplying in my life these days.

Y'all know how much I love my usual guild-that-is-not-a-guild. I've been with that one for about six years now. Actually started talking to people about four years ago. (That's the "i" word thing that we won't talk about at the moment.) Now they're my peeps. My main quilty squeezes. No one will ever replace them.

But a few months ago, I decided to go ahead and join a second guild. The second one is the big guild in the region--maybe something like 400 members? They've been around since the dawn of time, too--they're one of the oldest/longest running guilds in the country. However, they meet on a weekday. In the morning. Urgh. So really, I can pretty much never make meetings. But they do have good speakers and classes and such, so being a member means that if I can plan far enough in advance, I might be able to periodically take a vacation day and attend something. Meanwhile, I keep up through the newsletter and news groups. While I'm technically a member of that one, it's hard to feel like a member when I'll probably only be physically present maybe once or twice a year.

This week, a bit on a whim, I joined a third guild. This one doesn't have meetings, from what I've been told. They just do sew-days on a Friday and Saturday once a month. And, as it turns out, of the 30-ish people in that guild, about 10 of them are also in my Main Quilty Squeeze Guild. Always a bit easier for this i-word-person to join a group where I already know a third of the people. My thought process is that when I'm back to work in a few weeks, between my MQS Guild's sew days and this new one's sew days (never scheduled on the same weekend), I should be able to make one or the other every month. All the more opportunity to "go get my quilty on" on a regular basis.

New Guild has their sew days tomorrow and Saturday, so I'm getting my thoughts and supplies together about what I'll be bringing with me to do. Hence, this:

Remember the self-mitered receiving blanket from yesterday's post? I went back to the sale at Joann's this afternoon to pick up a bunch more fabrics and will be cutting the sets of 30" and 40" squares tomorrow. I'm planning on using this as a project to teach some of the women I've been volunteering with how to use a sewing machine. It's really perfect. All they have to learn to do is find the middle, pin, sew in a straight line,  mark a line, cut on that line, then sew a zig-zag stitch. Easy Peasy. And, what's more important, they end up with usable receiving blankets for all the many babies being born into their community!

I lost track. I think those three hangers of fabrics add up to about 15 receiving blankets or so. I had them all sorted out as to which ones were pairs when I was stacking the bolts in my cart, but then the woman doing the cutting kept flipping my piles back and forth, mixing the sets up. I decided I'd better take care of sorting them back out again as soon as I got home before I completely forgot what my original intentions were. There are a couple that I'm questioning, but ultimately I ended up with even sets so it's good enough for horseshoes.

I haven't decided yet what else I'll work on tomorrow. Here is my usual criteria for a sew-day (different from a retreat since I'm there for shorter periods of time):

• No machine quilting. I only do that on my regular set-up at home.
• Nothing that requires intense concentration. Who can concentrate with a cast of thousands?
• Nothing that requires a lot of parts. Hate packing it all just for a few hours.

I still have some hexies to mark, so those will probably come with me, then I may just bring my scrap bins and work on cutting everything to usable sizes. That's the kind of tedious work that's nice to do while I can be entertained by everyone else!

Donation Quilt Wednesday--Receiving Blankets

I wanna make me a bunch of these! How cute and easy are they?! Thanks to Missouri Star Quilt Company for this idea--great for donating to hospitals, women's shelters, clothing cupboards, and so forth. (As always, check with the intended recipient organization first to make sure there are no special requirements.)



I thought this looked like so much fun I picked up some flannel on sale at Joann's ($2.79 a yard! and a coupon on top of that!) and made one myself. It works! (Not terribly keen on the decorative stitch I chose for the finishing touch--it worked well on the sample but I didn't like it in the end. Next time I'll just do a zig-zag, I think.)

And here's the fabric I've got to make a second, more boy-like one.

Notes:
1. Make sure you bring the measurements with you when you go to buy the fabric. Oops. Since I made these on a whim, I stopped at Joann's while running other errands and didn't have the ability to double-check the measurements. I had in my head 20" and 30". Nope. That would be 30" and 40". Fortunately, while I'd only intended to buy a yard of each of the four fabrics, one in each pairing I'd picked up was the last of the bolt so I got a few extra inches. Bingo. Saved by happenstance.

2. It's flannel. Yikes. Flannel is hard to work with in the best of circumstances. In this case, you're sewing something smaller to something bigger, which involved a lot of smoodging around to get things to line up under the presser foot, so that was kind of a pain. Ultimately, it didn't turn out to be that big a deal when all was said and done. The miters still worked well.

3. The video could have used a little more detail in the "sewing everything together" section. Since you sew from the center out on all the sides, that means one seam you sew with one side up, then you have to flip it over with the other side up to get it under the presser foot correctly. Which affects how you pin or mark things. It wasn't a huge deal but took me a couple of sides to figure out how to do best, and it was still a lot of flipping around. If I'd thought ahead, I could have done four seams on one side, then flipped and done the other four on the other side. I didn't think ahead. I suppose you could try just sewing straight down one side without going center out, but with flannel as stretchy as it is, I'd think you'd risk not having things line up in the end.

4. Ten minutes? I don't think so. The first one took me about an hour. It took me ten minutes just to get the cutting done because my cutting table isn't set up well to do a 40" square. However, I think the second one will take me significantly less time, and if I were to do a bunch of them, I could probably get it down to under half an hour. I still don't buy 10 minutes. Still n' all, half an hour isn't bad either! And this could be a good project for a group to do in assembly line fashion--some folks cutting, some folks pinning, others sewing, etc. You could knock out a bunch in a few hours.

So I've now got a receiving blanket ready to donate. I'm hoping to knock out the second one today, as well as make progress on my other projects.

Have you ever made these? Leave a comment!

Slow Quilt Monday--I Think I Can

When my son was about going on 3 years old, we went through an entire summer of reading The Little Engine that Could every single night--sometimes two or three times a night. He had it memorized within the first couple of nights. Even though he couldn't read yet, he knew when we tried to speed things up on the umpteenth time through the story by skipping words here and there. He'd call us on it. "No, mommy, you missed a part!" (Sigh. Flip back a page, start again.)

At 21, he's now a very confident guy who thinks he can do pretty much anything he can set his mind to. Can I attribute my son's confidence to his early passion for Watty Piper's story of the little train engine that believed itself up the steep hill? Probably not entirely. But something in his little 30-month-old brain recognized that there was something to that story that he could relate to. Or that there was something to that story that he needed to remember for later life.

I've been reading a lot about creativity these last few weeks, and really, it all boils down to one salient point: If you think you can, you will. Yes, you may need to learn a new technique to be able to adequately execute that vision in your head. But there's nothing keeping you from learning that technique. Yes, you may have a few disastrous starts to a project before ending up with something at least closely approximating what's in your head. But who cares? It's only fabric. I've been reading about a number of great artists and novelists who were all angsty with fear every time they started out creating, and who were positive that what they were creating was just every sort of wrong through the whole process. But they kept thinking they could. And so they did.

What's the difference between me and the man or woman who created that gorgeous quilt I'm admiring in the show? Simply this: They thought they could. So they did.

This week, I think you should find a copy of The Little Engine that Could. Remember what it feels like to think you can.

A Little Bit about a Lot of Nothing

Random thoughts on a Sunday.

Here's what I'm reading:

The Brutal Telling, by Louise Penny. This is #5 in the Inspector Armand Gamache series. I just started them a few months ago and am trying to slow myself down--she's just started work on book #9, if I recall (I follow her blog), so I'm pacing myself. Love these books. I enjoy the characters, the storylines, the writing. Best mysteries I've read in a long time.



Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World that Can't Stop Talking, by Susan Cain. I'm finding this book entertaining. Cain's a good writer--you have to love nonfiction that keeps you coming back for more as much as a good story does.




Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life, by Anne Lamott. I read this book several years ago and got a lot out of it the first time. I'm getting as much out of it, if not more, the second time around. I've read several of Anne Lamott's books, although none of her fiction. She's earthy, funny, and wise. This book of advice for writers is full of her typical self-deprecating humor and sometimes pointed jabs; note that it's not about being published--it's about writing for the sake of writing. Great stuff.

And get ready for an upcoming episode on my podcast about some quilt design books I've been reading: A Fabric Journey: An Inside Look at the Quilts of Ruth McDowell; Transitions: Unlocking the Creative Quilter Within, by Andrea Balosky; Journey of an Art Quilter: Creative Strategies and Techniques, by Barbara Olson; and probably others by the time I get around to recording that episode. I'll also be talking at more length about my experience with The Artist's Way by Julia Cameron.

What I'm watching:
Modern Family, The Amazing Race, The Voice, American Idol (although I could skip that one pretty easily), The Bob Newhart Show (the original one, being shown on Hallmark Channel); just started watching Cranford on DVD from Netflix, but not sure it's grabbing me yet. Have some Masterpiece Classic DVDs of the Jane Austen persuasion that I'll be watching this week too, as my husband has a lot of evening commitments for work. And yes, I confess to watching Hoarding: Buried Alive. I don't understand why or try to explain it, but there it is. On the Great Courses front, I've finished Museum Masterpieces: the Louvre--which was wonderful, by the way. Now I'm working on From Monet to Van Gogh: A History of Impressionism. I hit a great sale in their catalogue a couple of weeks ago and picked up three new lecture series so I'm ready to go. Now that my daughter has gone back to college after her spring break, I get a lot more control over the TV again.

What I'm working on this week:

My still-unnamed funky landscape






The next border on my medallion challenge--it's supposed to be 6" finished, and somehow involve stars and/or pinwheels. I'm still pondering.






Remember "Fortune?" I'd intended to do the quilting myself but have decided I really want to move onto other projects now, so Fortune is making it's way to my wonderful long-arm quilter tomorrow. I'm sure it won't take long--just a basic overall pantograph, since this is a donation quilt. Not sure where I'm donating it yet, although I have an idea. I just need to do some asking first.




And it's time for me to start working on my paint chip challenge for my guild. It's due next month. Not that I'm waiting until the last minute or anything...

So that's where we're at as we look at the week ahead. What are you planning on reading, watching, or working on this week?

Food Friday--Homemade Pizza

I own a breadmaker. Do I ever use it to make bread? Uh, no. Let's name it a pizza-dough-maker and call it a day. Once every couple of weeks I make us homemade pizza. When it's just my husband and I home alone, I will make two personal sized pizzas and we each make whatever we want. Note: I'm much more creative than he is. He's happy with tomato sauce (and plenty of it), mozzarella cheese, and pepperoni. I lean towards a white sauce, spinach, caramelized onions, and goat cheese. But we'll keep it simple for this blog post.

I've adapted a bread machine pizza dough recipe I found on the Internet a little bit. Then I'm going to share with you three sauce recipes--I've tried them all, and they're all tasty!

Although the pizza dough recipe is made for a breadmaker, check out this link for some tips for how to make a bread machine recipe by hand instead: http://www.stretcher.com/stories/00/000117n.cfm.

Here we go:
Pizza Dough in Bread Machine
(Adapted from Allrecipes.com)

Ingredients

• 3/4 cup water
• 1 tablespoon vegetable oil
• 1 teaspoon lemon juice
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1 tablespoon white sugar
• 1 tablespoon dry milk powder
• 2 1/4 cups bread flour
• 1 teaspoon active dry yeast
• Optional: approximately 1 tablespoon Italian Seasoning or mix of dried oregano, basil, thyme, etc., if desired, to taste
• Optional: grated parmesan or romano cheese for crust
  

If desired, make an olive oil mixture to brush on the crust before baking: olive oil, garlic powder, dried oregano or Italian seasoning, grated parmesan, or whatever seasonings you like.

Directions

1. Place ingredients in the pan of the bread machine in the order recommended by the manufacturer. Select dough cycle. Press start.

2. Remove dough from pan after rise cycle. Roll to 14-16". Allow to rest several times in the process of rolling--this will help it get to the desired size more easily.

3. Place in lightly sprayed pizza pan and allow to rise a few minutes.

4. Brush with plain olive oil. Poke holes in dough with a fork to prevent bubbles from forming. (Remember to also poke the edge of the crust.)

5. Bake in preheated oven at approximately 400 to 425 degrees for about 8-10 minutes, until slightly browned.

6. Optional: Sprinkle parmesan or romano cheese on crust after first baking, then bake again for a couple of minutes to melt the cheese, then add toppings.

7. Top with sauce and desired toppings, brush crust with olive oil or olive oil mixture, then bake again until toppings are at desired doneness. Brush crust with olive oil as soon as it's out of the oven if desired.

And now, onto the sauces!

Parmesan Sauce (not low fat!)
(Learned at cooking class at the New York Wine and Culinary Center)

Ingredients:

• 1 clove garlic, minced
• 2 tablespoons olive oil
• 1/2 pint heavy cream
• 1/2 cup grated parmesan cheese, or to taste
• salt and pepper, to taste

Directions:

1. In a large skillet, heat oil over medium-high heat and saute garlic until softened but not brown.

2. Add cream and heat until foaming. Add parmesan, salt, and pepper to taste. Turn down heat and heat until thickened to desired consistency. Use over fettucini or pizza.

Simple Margherita Sauce

• 1 can San Marzano Tomatoes
• Salt and pepper to taste

Directions:

1. Open can and remove several tomatoes to lessen volume and set aside. Using immersion blender, puree remaining tomatoes in can (or pour tomatoes into blender). Give removed tomatoes a rough chop and return to can. Salt and pepper to taste; use cold over pizza. (Freeze into 2 cup portions for other pizzas, or use as a base for spaghetti sauce.)


Susan's Pizza Sauce
(From History Quilter Susan--who gave me permission to post this!)

Ingredients:

• 1 28oz can diced tomatoes
• 1 tsp sugar
• 1 tsp garlic powder
• 2 tbl olive oil
• 1 tsp Kosher salt
• 1 tsp pepper
• 1 tsp oregano (add at end)

Directions:

Add all ingredients above (except oregano) to saucepan and let simmer about 20 minutes at the minimum. Puree to your desired consistency or keep it chunky. Add 1 tsp oregano just before you are ready to make your pizza. Makes about 1 1/2 cups - easily doubled/tripled.

(I made Susan's sauce for the first time tonight--thanks so much for sending it to me, Susan! We loved it!)

Guest Blogger on SeamedUp

Hey, podquilters! I'm the guest blogger this week on SeamedUp. Check it out--and while you're there, be sure to check out their plans for National Quilting Day on Saturday!
http://seamedup.blogspot.com/2012/03/stranger-danger-guest-post-by-sandy.html

Progress! One Finish, a WIP, and a Challenge (O My)

Yesterday was a banner day here in the "Quilting...for the Rest of Us" quilt studio. (Ooh, doesn't that sound all sorts of official?)

First, I started out with a little mini-project that I'd volunteered for last week. If you're following my Fabri-Sabbatical blog, you'll know I spend Wednesday afternoons with the Women's Learning Club, which is a group of recent arrivals to the U.S. from Burma. Last Wednesday, a couple of women from our church brought some fleece, hearts cut out of fabric, and embroidery threads to make baby blankets that will be donated. This is a project they've been doing with various groups for a few weeks, so we thought it would be fun to include our group as well, and in the process, teach a fast and inexpensive way to make extra blankets for your family if you should need them.

The women organizing the event decided it would take too long to do a blanket-stitch around the outer edge by hand, so they were taking them home to do by machine. I volunteered to take one as well, so I decided to knock that out first. It turned out OK, although I still prefer doing it by hand. It took about twenty minutes to sew, and then another twenty minutes to get all the fleece lint out of my machine.

One of our group had embroidered the heart onto this one, and she taught me how to do the chain stitch as she was doing it. My chain stitch doesn't look nearly as good as hers yet!

That project done, I moved on to my funky landscape quilt in progress.

This...

...became this.


Everything is just stuck down with glue stick at this stage, so I may still move some things around. I'm playing with perspective and balance and such. And I'm still working on getting the fern-y things to look more like ferns and less like Seussian birds. Quilting will help that a lot, though.

Haven't decided yet what's going in the center section. I'm going to live with it for a bit to see what comes to me.

Then I turned to my guild medallion challenge. The dang thing is due tonight, so I really wanted to get it done. And I did! (Only three more borders to go until the challenge is done. I'll find out tonight what the next border is supposed to be.)

Shazam!