What I have been working on

I am almost completed with this semester just need to go to class on Monday then do the final on Wednesday and go to class on Thursday to pick up my final project. I have been following along with several quilt alongs and this weekend I was actually able to work on one of them and the link to this quilt along is here Globetrotting-2014-mystery-bom-by-Pat-Sloan I am really loving how it is going together. I have managed to figure out the key element to how to get my quilt blocks to come out to the right measurements.

all of these blocks came out to be 10.5" X 10.5". The key element is of course to cut them straight and to sew straight. The cutting is not as hard now that I have my new cutting table and cutting tools. I will have to take pictures of them all and post those later.

The other thing that I have been up to is working on recipes, I created a recipe for stuffed mushrooms and actually typed it all up and last night had my daughter test it out and both her and my husband say that it came out great. I enjoy the creative process but am bad on the recording process so this is the first time that I have been able have a recipe duplicated without me there to do it with them.

The other thing I have been up to is crocheting I have been working on a curtain for my kitchen window out of a natural ecru colored thread and when I get to the point where their actually looking like curtains rather than just motifs I will post a picture of that.

Today I am going to cut out another block from a quilt along  this one is called the Aurifil Quilt along and it can be found here Aurifil designers-of-the-month and I am going to start with May and work backwards.

I am becoming slightly comfortable with the idea that I can do this quilting thing. But you know it is always just a day to day thing.

Bird House

I have an extreme love of birds I don't really care what kind nor do I care whether or not their real. I have been working on a project and today I completed one of them. This project has been hanging around since last year but I just hadn't figured out how I wanted to put it together and I have bought several different items to complete it. Not sure if it is exactly how I want it but I do know that it looks ok.

 

Let me know what you all think is there something I should add?

Sewing Machine Riser

Well we made the plunge have listed our sewing/embroidery machine riser on eBay for sale. To get a nice view of the riser you can look at it on the eBay listing link here:

Handmade wooden Embroidery Machine Rise

This is a great little riser and it is definitely quite sturdy. I have one just like this and it works great. It is built solidly and has a nice smooth finish on it. Love it.

Bad posting habits

I have been very busy with classes and volunteering and getting stuff done around the house, so I haven't really been able to post much. But I have been busy cooking as well and I made two new dishes for me and I thought they looked and tasted really good so I thought that I would post about them.

I love to cook now cooking can get routine but it is up to you to change it up and you can experiment as well that is what I love about cooking. You can cook the same dish over and over and yet if you experiment it will come out differently each time. Now there is a drawback to this technique if you are like me you don't always pay attention to what you change so if it is really really good you may have just had a once in a life time experience. Now I do this often so I have now gotten my husband and daughter to help me with preparing certain dishes so that they can document what I do and then I go back and redo it this time using measurements. Now this is what happened with my stuffed mushrooms, lol now my husband calls these food porn and my daughter says num num and she is 20 soooooo I guess that is good, myself I don't like the feel of mushrooms in my mouth so its a no go for me but the stuffing is to die for lol.

 

And there they are. Now I also ran across a souffle recipe that I had to try as well it is a Bacon and Cheese souffle now I have never made a souffle before however, this one came out great so I typed up the recipe for that at as well. 

And that is my cooked souffle it was really good even reheated my husband liked it.

I do have the recipes typed up so if anyone wants them just let me know and I will send them to you. I don't know how to add them here other wise I would. I suppose I could type up a special post for each one and add them that way. I will have to think about it though. Now it is time to go.

Okay so I attempted the little star quilt and obviously I have a problem with geometric shapes. I starched my fabric and I took my time in cutting out the 10 X 10 squares. The instructions were very clear and yet some how it must have been the little quilting fairies decided that I was not to have a star quilt but rather a diamond quilt. Twas quite distressing that it did not turn out the way I wanted and yet I still rather like it. So here are my pictures

this is my fabric choice beautiful reds and a nice creamy background with a red backing.

 Here are my ribbon choices, which I am going to decide on which one I wish to use in adding some flair and personality that is me into the blanket.

 My 16 cut 10" X 10" squares.

 My 10" X 10" squares sewn and cut to be the 1/2 and 1/2 print and background fabric.

 My 10" X 10" squares pressed and ready to join. This by the way is where I began to veer sharply from the star design that I was attempting to capture and it became definitely a diamond.

And here is my windmill diamond top completed you know I failed geometry in school, but I must say this looks kind of cool. And I have plenty of stash I believe that I can attempt again tomorrow for the star.

Sewing and Passing it on

I found my next quilt design that I want to try it has the star design and seems to be fairly simple to do. My biggest desire is to learn how to get my points straight and to line the rows up evenly. Of course that all means that if I cut straight and I sew in a straight line then it should be pretty simple to do right. Anyhow, after class tomorrow I am going to attempt this quilt. I think I will actually take pictures before cutting, after cutting and as I sew them together. This design is fairly simple and I think I will be able to bring it alive with some additional design thoughts that I have. I now have enough machines with decorative stitches to be able to really bring out some practice with this. At least that is my hope.

The site that I found the tutorial on for the blanket is here:

http://www.makeithandmade.com/2013/09/big-star-baby-blanket.html

Now this is Palak's blanket  that she made but to give a quick idea, the colors I have chosen are red and cream. I will take pictures and let you all know how it works out.

I have about four weeks left of classes and next term I am taking a sewing class and two child development classes so I should have fun.

Oh ya I forgot

Ok so everyone knows that I have an embroidery machine, a sewing machine, well two sewing machines actually and a serger. I have constantly been trying to figure out how I want to set them all up in a less messy way. Soooooooooooo I talked with my husband and he has begun to build me a sewing and cutting table. Well of course than I had to complicate things and add a new machine. Yep, he suggested that I post a picture of all of them and title it do you think he will notice. Well of course I really don't make big purchases like this without talking to him. And yes all my machines are Singers. I now have a second embroidery machine and before anyone asks yes this one is slightly different than the other one I have it does heirloom and endless embroidery and though I could explain what that is I will instead show you a picture of what it is to make it easier to understand why I wanted a second machine. However, here is a picture of my machines.

There they are all of my machines. As the new sewing table gets built I will eventually post pictures of those. We have been slowing finishing up the flooring and molding in the living room and I am loving how it is coming together. But it is a work in progress something is always getting changed around.

So now for examples of what heirloom embroidery and endless embroidery are. The first photo below is the endless embroidery, the last photo is the heirloom embroidery. I find it fascinating how much thread and time is saved when doing this work by machine. If I were to take this project on to do all by hand it could take up to a full year to complete a project.

 I still enjoy hand embroidery in fact I have a project that can only be done the way I want it if I do it by hand. The dimensions of the project do not allow me to do it on my machine without multi-hooping that means to hoop it more than once to put it on my machine. But the design itself is not one that has been created for a machine it is a design that I have done before only this one is for me and it is much larger.

If I had to choose two objects to take with me on an extended deserted island it would be my hand embroidery and The Tolkien books, I think that I would be quite content creating the images of Tolkein's world in thread and fabric.