warm up card

got to do some stamping last night. since its been a few weeks since i've stamped, i did a warm up card first. B loves this cupcake stamp. he has a birthday party to go to this afternoon so figured it would be a good warm up card to do. i realized after i stamped the cupcake that i should have stamped it first than punched out the square-would have guaranteed a straight stamp lol!

sorry for the crappy lighting in the pictures. with all this rain my sewing area is really lacking natural light resulting in blah pictures

blue sunshine

i quilted a quilt in paler colors for Hamels in the summer. i love the colors of this one.
Oriental Clouds quilting pattern by Keryn Emmerson

snack saturday

Banana-Sour Cream Cake

Ingredients
1 pkg. (2-layer size) yellow cake mix
3 eggs
1 cup mashed ripe bananas (about 3 bananas)
1 cup sour cream
1/4 cup oil
1 pkg. (250 g) Brick Cream Cheese, softened
1/2 cup butter, softened
4 cups icing sugar
1 cup walnut pieces, finely chopped

Directions
1 PREHEAT oven to 350°F. Grease and flour 13x9-inch baking pan; set aside. Beat cake mix, eggs, bananas, sour cream and oil in large bowl with electric mixer on low speed just until moistened, stopping frequently to scrape bottom and side of bowl. Beat on medium speed 2 min. Pour into prepared pan.
2 BAKE 35 min. or until wooden toothpick inserted in centre comes out clean. Cool completely.
3 BEAT cream cheese and butter in large bowl with electric mixer on medium speed until well blended. Gradually add sugar, beating well after each addition.
4 REMOVE cake from pan; cut crosswise in half. Place one cake half, top-side down, on large serving plate; spread top with frosting. Top with remaining cake half, top-side up. Frost top and sides of cake with remaining frosting. Carefully press walnuts into frosting on sides of cake. Store in refrigerator.

How to Neatly Frost the Cake
Freeze cake layers about 20 min. before frosting. This helps to set the crumbs on the cut edges of the cake layers so they don't pull up into the frosting. And don't worry if the frosting does not look perfect on the sides of the cake--the nuts will cover any imperfections.

card friday

taming tension

mom and i spent Tuesday afternoon working on my Liberty's thread tension issues. we set up 3 different bobbins to use with specific threads and i was set.

mom ended up going out while i was quilting. and wouldn't you know it, 15minutes after she left, i ran out of bobbin, tossed a new one in and the tension was nuts. and guess what? i fixed it by myself! woo hoo! and yes, the colors were/are really that bright!

quilting pattern, medium meander by Darlene Epp and a 28w auriful thread

wordless wednesday

tempting tuesday

comment on THIS post and have the chance to win your choice of any of the cards i posted on my blog in the month of September. good luck!

PammyB,am you are the winner! please email me your snail mail info and the card you would like. thanx for playing everyone

quilt monday

one of my absolute favorites

playing catch up

did you miss me?

got home Saturday night from Innovations just in time to see J open his birthday gifts(he turned 10 on the 22nd) and steal a piece of cake. i totally forgot to buy more candles so the poor kid ended up with a 1 and a 9(equals 10 right? lol!)

Innovations was great. i learned so much! have to admit that the vendor mall was soooo very tiny. i only bought a few piecing patterns. mom stocked up on bags of yummy threads(some of the colors are heavenly!) and longarm patterns. i didn't get allot of pictures but i had to take one of the hotel bathroom

Innovations Quilt Show 2007

i'm off to the show for the next few days. will be spending thursday and friday in classes all day. looking forward to learning new ideas and techniques to use on my longarm machine when i get home. have a great week!

wordless wednesday

fabric giveaway

check out Alisa's fabric giveaway at Busy Quilt Mom for your chance to win some great fabric

party x 2

september is our birthday month. both A and J have birthdays-10days apart. with A starting a new school this year, we decided to delay his birthday party. and with me going to be at Innovations this weekend, on J's birthday, we decided to have his party early.

so i made the invitations. my mojo was really lacking but hey, J liked them. we got them handed out last week and waited for the RSVPs to come in.

friday night, J asks why the date was wrong on the invitations. turns out i had put sunday's date, not saturday's-ack! so we called the kids we had numbers for, got them changed to sunday but there were 3 kids we couldn't get ahold of.

so we had the party on saturday. and yesterday lol!

quilt monday

can you tell i love these sheep quilt pattern? i've made about 5 of these-i just love them!

i'm a fishing widow

Jim LOVES to fish and we have some rivers close by that offer some of the best salmon fishing in the country. he was out this morning at 5am and home in time for breakfast than took off with my dad around dinner time tonight. at least we won't go hungry this winter lol

edited to add that when Jim went fishing tonight, he was pulling in a fish when the hook pulled free. Jim ended up getting hit right below the nose with the weight. it cut him up pretty good and is really swollen and bruised. he won't let me take a picture though lol!

snack saturday

Layered Pumpkin Loaf

Ingredients
1 cup canned pumpkin
1 cup plus 2 Tbsp. granulated sugar, divided
1/2 cup firmly packed brown sugar
4 egg whites, divided
1/2 cup skim milk
1/4 cup canola oil
2 cups flour
2-1/2 tsp.Baking Powder
2 tsp. pumpkin pie spice
1/4 tsp. salt
1 pkg. (250 g) Light Brick Cream Cheese Spread, softened

Directions
1 PREHEAT oven to 350ºF. Grease a nonstick 9x5-inch loaf pan; set aside. Mix pumpkin, 1 cup granulated sugar, the brown sugar, 3 of the egg whites, milk and oil in large bowl. Add flour, baking powder, pie spice and salt; stir just until moistened. Set aside. Beat cream cheese spread, remaining 2 Tbsp. granulated sugar and the remaining egg white with wire whisk until well blended.
2 SPOON half of the pumpkin batter into prepared pan; spoon cream cheese mixture evenly over the batter. Cover with remaining pumpkin batter.
3 BAKE 1 hour to 1 hour 5 min. or until wooden toothpick inserted in centre comes out clean. Run knife or thin spatula around edges of pan to loosen bread; cool in pan on wire rack 10 min. Remove bread from pan to wire rack; cool completely.

How to Store Bread
Wrap cooled bread in foil or plastic wrap. Store in refrigerator up to 4 days.

looking for suggestions and ideas

i bought these panels earlier in the summer(there are two of each) with the idea of making them into a larger quilt. i'm thinking of just cutting out each square and adding different sized borders to even the whole thing out. is that right? i need a pattern here, i just can't wing this lol!!


also, i'm looking for a pattern like this-the bottom right corner, circle on square. this is a picture of a HQ16 machine(i've checked their site and couldn't find the pattern there either. if you have any ideas, please let me know!

card friday

roosters

as you know, i LOVE roosters/chickens. i was in Hamels the other day and saw this panel(came with a sunflower panel as well)

i had no idea how to quilt this. i didn't want to make it into a pillow, so i figured that i could outline quilt the rooster than each individual square. i'm pretty pleased with how its turning out

happy 12th birthday A

wordless wednesday

oh man

i did a baaaaaaaad thing today. had a customer quilt to do today. loaded up and was off and running. finished the first row and realized i had forgotten to change my needle before i started(can you see where this is going?)

got the needle changed, was just getting into the second row and Libby made this horrible sound and stopped dead-totally turned off. the needle had fallen out. i was able to change the fuse(figured that out lol) everything looked good so i figured i would do a test run. and the needle got stuck(i was able to move the hand wheel and get it out) i assume from reading my manual that i've warped the timing. uggggggh. Jim has offered to go over with me tomorrow and attempt to fix the timing but he's not going near Lois. not that i don't trust him, but dad has fixed mom's timing before and i figure Jim and i could possibly make the problem worse-insert a giant sigh here.

ugly ugly ugly

i wanted to make a special first birthday card. i had the idea of cutting the card into the shape of a number 1 but when i went to cut it, i realized i need to have the card fold along the side of the number, not just at the bottom. if i had had longer than 5minutes to make the card, i would have been able to take the time and do it but i didn't. so came up with this thing instead lol!

UFOs

UnFinished Objects, have been on my list the past few days and i made some headway today. i cut this quilt out in July(housewarming gift)i made two(i love roosters) i finally got the gift one completed(mine is pinned and ready to get quilted) i also finished the last of the 3 birdhouse quilts i completed in JULY lol!!!

quilt monday

i loved this quilt when i first saw it. but while making it, not so much. i made this a few years ago and really struggled with the triangles(okay, i still do lol!) and i forced myself to finish it

baby showers and birthday parties

had a very busy saturday-a baby shower to go to and B had a birthday party to attend. tomorrow we have a 1st and 3rd party AND B has a party for his best friend-a very busy weekend!

here's the quilt and card i made for the baby shower today


quilt was quilted with a varigated KingTut thread in blue/orange/green. Oriental Illusions quilting pattern by Norma Sharp

snack saturday

a perfect fall dessert. plan on making this for dessert tomorrow


Apple-Pear Crumble Pie

Ingredients
3/4 cup crushed Vanilla Wafers (about 24 wafers)
1/4 cup firmly packed brown sugar
1/4 cup butter, melted
125 g (1/2 of 250-g pkg.) Brick Cream Cheese, softened
1 frozen deep-dish pie shell (1/2 of 350-g pkg.), thawed
2 large baking apples, peeled, sliced
1 large fresh pear, peeled, sliced
1/3 cup granulated sugar
1/4 cup flour
1/2 tsp. ground cinnamon
1-1/4 cups thawed Whipped Topping

Directions
1 PREHEAT oven to 375ºF. Mix wafer crumbs, brown sugar and butter until well blended; set aside.
2 SPREAD cream cheese carefully onto bottom of pie shell; sprinkle with half of the crumb mixture. Set aside. Combine fruit in large bowl. Add granulated sugar, flour and cinnamon; toss to coat. Spoon over crumb layer in pie shell; sprinkle with remaining crumb mixture.
3 BAKE 45 min. or until fruit is tender and pie shell is lightly browned, covering loosely with foil after 25 min. if necessary to prevent crust from overbrowning. Cool on wire rack. Serve topped with the whipped topping. Store any leftover pie in refrigerator.

Food Facts
For best results, prepare using baking apples such as Golden Delicious, McIntosh or Empire.

Substitute
Substitute ground ginger for the ground cinnamon.

card friday

this is a special card. my parents are celebrating their 40th wedding anniversary on Sunday. dad surprised mom with a cruise to Alaska; they left this afternoon. mom called as they were heading under the Lion's Gate Bridge at Stanley Park. their cabin(stateroom lol) has a balcony, a living room and a bedroom. can't wait to see pictures when they get home next week!

third times a charm

this is the third Safe Haven quilt i've done in as many weeks. have to admit that i like this one the most. the customer picked the pattern Ground Cover by Keryn Emmerson. i wasn't too sure of the pattern at first, i thought it was too much for the quilt but i'm glad now that she picked it, it is stunning!

i'm not thrilled with the lighting in the first picture, i'll have to take another one before she picks it up tonight

where i work

have had people wondering about where i work so here are some pictures. originally, this was mom's quilting studio. we sold premade quilts. than last September, mom bought longarm supplies and that took over lol. we sell patterns and threads and accessories, mostly for longarm quilting machines, but have some things for home quilters/sewers as well. you can see our racks of threads throughout out the pictures. also mom's millennium machine


so here is all our goodies-pattern wall. peeking on the left of the pictures is our wall of thread
books and more threads

my liberty machine is upstairs at mom and dad's. there was just no way we could fit it in the quilting studio. luckily for me, the upstairs of the house used to have a suite so Libby is located in what used to be the kitchen

i have a great view

quick and cute

wordless wednesday

back to school

yay! except i'm in need of a nap and its not even 10am yet lol!

this is the latest quilt i did for Hamels. love this fabric line

i used a new Keryn Emmerson pattern, Erin for the quilting