Block Swap Part 2

A few days ago I received my blocks from my Facebook block swap. They are beautiful. I haven't decided what I'm going to do with the blocks yet but I have some ideas.

I need to get to work on my next block swap blocks. This time its going to be a 4 patch. The rules are that they are tone on tone, blue, yellow or green with white. I picked out some blues to use. I'm hoping that the blocks I get back in the swap will work with the blocks I got from the first round.

Back home

I am back home from my trip to Denver. Actually I have been back for a week but it took me awhile to catch up after coming back home.

I did go to two quilt ships in Arvada. Both were very nice. I planned on taking pictures of the shops but of course while I remembered to take my camera I did not realized that my husband left the memory card in the card reader when he last used it. So no pictures of the shops. I will show you some of the wonderful fabric I brought back.

The first shop we stopped at was Shared Threads. We were greeted by a very friendly Yorkie. My mom has 3 yorkies and a lhasa mix at home, so she felt right at home with the shop yorkie. The couple that owned the shop was friendly. They had lots of great fabric and books and had a great classroom plus 2 long arm quilting machines.

I was mainly looking for fabric for my Pansy quilt. So I was mostly looking for greens and yellows. I found some great stuff at Shared Threads.



After that we went to The Quilted Moose Quilt Shop in Olde Town Arvada. Olde Town Arvada is fun. It has a bunch of cool shops in the original center of Arvada. The shop was nice with great fabric and lots of great quilts on the walls. I found some nice fabric there also.


After that we wandered around the other shops on Olde Town Arvada. Paws N Play was still there. Its a pet boutique that my husband and I used to go to. We wandered through a spice shop, and a kintting shop. It was interesting to see how much that area has been restored and changed since I moved away.

Trip to Denver

I am back home in Arvada, CO visiting my mother. Why didn't I quilt when I lived here? I found all kinds of quilt shops on line. We are going to so see some tomorrow. I'll let you know what I find. I only moved to Georgia four years ago and its been 2 years since I've been home but its amazing how much stuff has changed. We drove by my high school and its about 4 times as big as it was when I attended. Where there used to be a field there are whole subdivisions and malls. Its strange to see so much new stuff but you turn a corner and still see a little fast food place that is 20 years old but still is in business.

Block Swap Blocks

Finished blocks for the block swap...almost. I have 5 blocks. 3 look good and the points are pretty close to matching. Two blocks didn't turn out so well though. Those are next to the sewing machine waiting for me to reverse sew and put back together.

Schnapps decided to help me take pictures. He was really interested in the wrist chord on the camera but wasn't so impressed with the flash as you can see from the irritated look on his face. Or maybe he just doesn't like the block.

Block Swap

I am participating in a block swap on a Facebook Quilt Guild group. I will make 5 6" nine patch variant blocks in blue and yellow. I'll post pictures of the blocks as I finish them. I have to get them done and delivered by Feb. 22 so I'll have to hurry. I'm so excited! I've never done a block exchange before.

Finished my stars quilt

I finally finished the binding on my stars baby quilt (its the one you see on the header of my blog). I started the quilt about 2 years ago as a gift for a good friend when I found out she was having a baby. The pattern is from Judy Martin's Knockout Blocks and Sampler Quilts. I had just finished the top when I found out my friend lost the baby. I felt so bad for her. After that I lost motivation to work on the quilt anymore.

I put the quilt away for over a year. Last summer I was starting to practice machine quilting and decided it was time to work on the quilt again. I kind of got carried away and its sort of over-stippled. So its a little stiffer than it probably should be which really isn't good for a baby quilt. I also realized it was over quilted part way through so I backed off a bit, which means its not evenly quilted all over. That's what happens when you are learning, right?

Even with all this quilt has going against it, I think it is the best looking quilt I've done so far. I really like the colors and the pattern. It might be good as a wall hanging.

Update: I changed my blog and the quilt is no longer on my header so here is a picture of the quilt.

Breakfast Pizza

One more really good recipe I've tried recently was Cooking Light's Breakfast Pizza. I didn't think to take any pictures of it, but it was really good and easy to make. It uses canned crescent rolls as the crust. I cheated and used regular sausage instead of turkey sausage, but I think it would have been just as good. I highly recommend it.

Pansy Quilt

I have been making Grandma's Pansy blocks from Bloomin' Beauties by Billie Lauder. I started them at a quilt guild work night earlier this summer. I made 21 blocks and started trying to figure out what I wanted the quilt to look like.

I had a picture in my head with the blocks on point and I wanted them to look like they were meandering through the quilt. I couldn't quite figure out how it would work. I started out laying all the blocks out on the floor (someday I'll have a design wall) and moving them around, but I couldn't get a good idea of how it would look.

I started working with Electric Quilt to play with some layouts. I found a pansy block that looks kind of similar to my blocks and played around for a long time. I'm still not sure I'm totally happy with the layout but right now I think the quilt is going to look something like this. I probably will do a several different greens since I already have a few different greens in the pansy blocks.


The best part about putting it into EQ is that now I can print out the rotary cutting instructions for the broken dishes blocks, and I know approximately how much more fabric I need. I'm pretty sure I don't have enough green in my stash, so I'm just going to have to go fabric shopping.

Steak, Spinich Mashed Potatoes, and Stuffed Tomatoes

Some good friends of ours came to visit the weekend after Christmas. I decided to try something new while they were here. I keep trying Rachel Ray recipes but haven't had a lot of success. They tend not to have much flavor. But I thought I'd try another one.

My friend Natalie was my assistant...which meant she did all the hard work and I figured out what we had to do next. Natalie was also nice enough to take pictures of the meal. I never think of taking pictures until after the meal is half gone and it doesn't look good anymore.

The first recipe we tried was Bacon, Spinach, and Cream Potatoes. The recipe was pretty easy. We pealed the potatoes and started them boiling, then sauteed the onion and bacon. Once the potatoes were done cooking Natalie mashed the potatoes with the onions, bacon, spinach, cream salt and pepper. Then we tried them. There was no flavor at all. Nat and I decided it needed cheese. So we shredded some sharp white cheddar and mixed it in. That helped a lot.

The final consensus on this dish was that the proportion of spinach to potatoes was a little too high, but 3 out of 4 of us liked it anyway. My dear hubby said you really couldn't call it mashed potatoes. There are a couple of things I'd do differently in the future. I'd use a little less spinach, and we all thought it would be good if the potatoes were scooped into a casserole dish and baked with a little more cheese on top (of course it would take more than 30 minutes then).

While the men-folk were out grilling the steaks we made Broiled Tomatoes with Cheese and Herbs adapted from another Rachel Ray recipe.

I threw bread, parsley, basil and Romano cheese in the food processor and chopped them up. I added a little olive oil and pulsed it a little more. I then stuffed the mixture into tomatoes that I cleaned out. I then broiled the tomatoes for a few minutes. I left out the olives because my husband is not always an olive fan. They are growing on him though.

I liked the tomatoes. I think I'd add a little more cheese and hopefully find flat leaf parsley instead of curly parsley. I'd also add about twice as much basil. The olives would have helped a lot also. Overall the final presentation of the tomatoes with the steaks looked nice.

The meal did take more than 30 minutes, however that worked out to be good because the grill took forever to heat up.

Quilting Vacation Day

Today is my birthday so I decided to take a vacation day and just stay home and quilt. I had grand plans to catch up on all the block of the months (blocks of the month? ...what is plural for block of the month?) for the quilt guild, and to finish the border on my Turning Twenty quilt, and to finish the binding on two quilts that I've recently finished quilting. Of course that didn't all happen but I did get some stuff done.


I added a border on my Turning Twenty quilt. I finished the top a few months ago but have taken forever to add the extra border on. The pattern gives yardage for an optional 6" border, but I ended up putting a 9" border on. Its now plenty big for our queen size guest bed upstairs and almost big enough for our King size bed. I will demo this pattern at our quilt guild meeting next week.

I did get one block done from the block of the month that our quilt guild is doing this year. The blocks are from Elenor Burn's Underground Railroad and I'm using civil war reproduction fabric. I got the Carpenter's Wheel done today. I of course had to start the block over once because I couldn't get the flying geese squares to be square, and the points on the center star didn't match.







I also recently finished the second block from another block of the month quilt I'm working on. This one is hand applique. The quilt is from Storybook Quilts and is called Woodland Spirits.

Pictures from Georgia Dog Gym

A couple of weeks ago we went to a Tricks for Treats class at the Georgia Dog Gym. It was a great class and we took two of our dogs. We learned how to teach our dogs tricks like shake, wave, high five, weaving through your legs, crawl, speaking, and many others.

Later that day a photographer, Beth Mitchell, took pictures of our dogs. I just saw the pictures today and there are two of our Golden Retriever, Reboot that are really good.

Reboot had eye cancer a few months ago and had to have one eye removed so I was really happy that she got these to pictures with his good eye.

Check out more of Beth's Pictures at Beth Mitchell Photography

Tuesday with Moron

My friend is part of the Tuesdays with Dorrie blog. Every week she bakes a recipe from a cookbook. Someone in the group picks the recipe for the week and on Tuesday she discusses her results. I'm not that good a baker so welcome to the first edition of Tuesday with Moron.

Hello, my name is Karen, and I will be your moron today.

We have a pot luck tomorrow at work and I decided to make dinner rolls and cranberry sauce. I left work late, had a really long day and still had to go to the store to pick up stuff. By the time I got home I was already completely brain fried. While I was at it I decided to make some cranberry pistachio scones also....cause I really needed more stuff to do tonight.

I started the rolls first since they would take the longest. I started following the recipe and realized that it was only going to make a dozen rolls and I need more like 30 roles. So while the first batch was rising I started another double batch. I let both batches rise for an hour, punched it down and then started looking for my muffin tin. No muffin tin here. No problem, I'll just bake them on baking sheets and hopefully I can make a nice round ball. Easier said than done when the dough is pretty sticky. I finally got 3 sheets of rolls done and let them rise. Once I started putting them in the oven with the egg wash they were browning unevenly and looked really white and pasty in a lot of places. I tried one and it had no flavor. So I basted them in melted butter and popped them back in the oven for a few minutes to get a little more even browning. They taste better and look a little better. So much for cooking light. The inside of the rolls aren't at all light and fluffy they are a little grainy and heavy. I can not get yeast rolls or breads to come out light and fluffy ever.

While the rolls were rising I started the cranberry sauce. This went well except that I let it boil over. I know better than to walk away from the stove while bringing something to a boil but I do it every time. Burnt sugary syrup all over the burner. This is going to be a joy to clean.

Now to start the scones ... (this is where it gets good)
First I forgot buttermilk so I had to make it... 1 tbsp vinegar and fill up to a cup with milk and let sit 5 minutes. Easy enough...I have a cup of buttermilk.

While the milk was curdling I cut butter into the flour. So far so good. Then I added the rest of the wet ingredients to the buttermilk and added all the wet ingredients, dried cranberries, and pistachios to the flour. I looked at the dough and it was really runny like cake batter. I looked back at the recipe and I needed 1/3 of a cup of buttermilk... I used the whole cup...Did I mention I was brain fried?

I hate the thought of throwing this all away so I decided to try to salvage it...I have enough butttermilk in there for a triple batch so I mixed enough butter and flour for a double batch in yet another bowl. Looking back I now realize I forgot to add the extra baking powder and salt too.

I mixed the flour/butter into the existing dough and realized I only had enough sugar and honey in there for 1 batch. What the heck I'll mix it in now...it can't get any worse.

The recipe says to pat the dough out into a disk and to then cut it into wedges and bake it..how do you cut cake batter into wedges? So I made one big disky kind of thing and tried baking it and then cut it after it started baking and being a kind of solid thing. I also made what look like drop biscuits with the rest of the stuff. The cranberry pistachio drop biscuits taste ok...they look ugly but I have breakfast for awhile.

This has been Tuesdays with Moron.

ASCII's first agility trial

Here are some photos from ASCII's first Agility trial. ASCII is our 18 month old Standard Poodle.

Hello!

I have resisted starting a blog because I'm kinda boring. Most of my posts will probably be about two subjects....Quilting and dogs.