snack saturday

Raspberry-Lemonade Pie

2-1/2 cups Graham Crumbs
1/2 cup Butter, melted
1-1/2 cups boiling water
1 pkg. (85 g) Lemon Jelly Powder(Jello)
125 g (1/2 of 250-g pkg.) brick cream cheese, softened
3/4 cup frozen lemonade concentrate, thawed
3 cups Whipped Topping
2 cups fresh raspberries


MIX graham crumbs and butter; press onto bottoms and up sides of 2 (9-inch) pie plates.

ADD boiling water to jelly powder in small bowl; stir 2 min. until completely dissolved. Cool 15 min. or just until jelly begins to set. Beat cream cheese in large bowl with mixer until creamy. Gradually beat in lemonade concentrate, then jelly until well blended. Gently stir in whipped topping and berries.

POUR into crusts. Refrigerate 1 pie 4 hours or until firm. Freeze remaining pie up to 1 week before thawing to serve.

customed

I've done two custom quilts in the past week. And have 7 more waiting to be done-eek. Funny how word gets out, especially in an area where not a lot of our longarmers do custom work anymore.

First up, was Hamels Back on the Farm quilt.



I had so much fun meandering, stippling, echoing and putting in wavy straight lines. I also piano keyed the borders(how much fun are piano keys? love them!) I also ended up using 17 different colors of thread as well!

I really love McKenna Ryan quilts; but there are sooooooo many pieces!



Next up was a quilt for Arlana. This is a jelly roll pattern and it was huge. The pattern called it a lap size; a 80X90 lap size. That is one BIG lap lol. Arlana asked if I could work the pattern Wildflower into the quilt. Here's what I came up with.



Wildflower in the center of the quilt and in the dark blue border. Than I ditched the whole thing. This ruler rocks for ditching; the Cavanaugh Crosshatch.



The hardest part was trying to decide what to do around the raw edge applique. I had originally thought of echoing the applique shapes but than I wasn't sure how to fill the rest of the border in. So I decided to piano key the border. It turned out awesome; you could hardly see the quilting; perfection!

I also did some quilting in the red borders. It's not supposed to be vine or anything; just needed to anchor it down. It was also quilted entirely with cotton thread.


Now I can't wait to make my own.

card friday

i feel boring

Boring because this has been the busiest July we have ever had at work. Because of that, I've ended up working 4 days/week the entire month. That is good and bad; it's good to be busy, but it's not good when you want to spend lots of time hanging out at home and being with your kids.

Saying that, I was looking yesterday at how much we still got to do as a family in July and was pretty impressed. I'm also impressed that I have quilted 12 customer quilts since returning from holidays on the 10th-wow. The other day at work, I went through the quilts we have in to be quilted and discovered that we are now booked until October and I took in my first 2 Christmas quilts already. eek!

What's funny is I wanted to spend this summer discovering/learning custom quilting. There are not a lot of quilters in our area that will do custom; it's time consuming and you don't really make money off of it. Instead, I have 6 quilts in for September that are all custom. And today I am finishing off the second custom quilt I've done in the past week. Both of which I will show you tomorrow.

Now back to being boring; this feeling has gone back to before summer started. I do love my job; I feel very blessed that I am able to work hours that I mostly set. And if I have a sick kid, I can bring them with me to work(many of you probably don't know that our quilting studio is at my parent's house. Mom and I have worked together for the past 4yrs and for the most part, it's been awesome. We truly get along fabulously). But I have been wanting to make some changes; changes that enable me to get to spend more time with my kids and fingers crossed that the changes I've made actually work lol.

Back in June, I did something a little crazy. I dyed my hair pink.



It's not the best picture but I like my hair in it. And I'm surprised I don't look as hot/sweaty/exhausted as I felt when the picture was taken during a family hike on Sunday.

Having pink hair is fun; the reactions I get from people are priceless. You can easily tell who doesn't like it; they don't comment on it AT ALL. And you can not miss that my hair is pink lol! Thanx to Cindy for keeping me pretty ;)

Now how about a quilt? That's what you've all come here for right? lol. I do have a few projects of mine on the go that I will probably be able to show you next week; I have been keeping busy with my own stuffs.

I've never seen this Poky Puppy fabric before; who remembers the book?



There's a funny story behind this quilt. When we got it, the fabric was a bit stinky. So we put it in a separate closet than where our customer quilts normally go. And we forgot about it until one day I went into this closet to get a bigger bag for another customer quilt when this one fell on me lol. Good thing too since it was the day before the customer was expected to come pick it up.



Quilted with Cotton.

wordless wednesday

now that was a long long day

Had a horribly long day at work today. It was fun but just looooooooooong. Came home, said goodnight to the little ones than off to get groceries. Now I can finally sit down for a few minutes and get the promised blog post up for you :)

I made this quilt, I would say roughly 3years ago. It sat in my to-be quilted closet since than. I knew I wanted some custom on it; I had purchased a chicken tracks pattern that I really wanted to put in the borders. What was holding me back was deciding if I should buttonhole around all the appliqued pieces.

Before we left on our holidays in June, I grabbed the quilt and decided I was quilting it. I ended up pulling the borders off and making them a little bigger to fit the chicken pattern and away I went.

I put the bird tracks in the borders; I do wish I had gone with a darker thread so they would have stood out. They do look really cute on the back though lol.



In the body of the quilt, I did a loopy meander; I love meander like this! And a geometrical design in the green check of the quilt. I'll be honest, I was going for a cross-hatch look when I put my ruler in the wrong spot and noticed too late. But I do love how it turned out.



After it was all said and done, I realized that I should have buttonholed the quilt. And that just got finished on Friday. As you can see, the binding still needs sewn down. And some black buttons add to the chickens eyes.

But after waiting 3yrs for it to get quilted, what's a few more days waiting for the last little touches? lol!

happy birthday mom

I meant to get Quilt Monday up early but with working today than having mom and dad here for dinner, cake and presents, I forgot. So here is the card I made for mom this year. And come back tomorrow for a quilt :)

calling all longarmers

I went through my pantographs and discovered that I had doubles of a few of them. Since they are used, I can't sell them at LongArm Supplies so I thought I would list them here.

Patterns are USED but still in good condition. Prices DO NOT include shipping and payment can be made by visa/mc/paypal; let me know in the comments.

Swirl by Norma Sharp. A 6inch double row. $8.00



Starry Night/Interlocking Feather Border by Sue Schmeiden. 2 - 5" designs per roll. This is BRAND NEW $10.00


Starburst by Jodi Beamish. 2 rows 13 ¾" (1 row 7 ") $8.00


Double Plume by Keryn Emmerson. 7" Wide Design $8.00


Chai Latte by Sue Pattern. 12" Wide Design. BRAND NEW $8.00


Crazy Puzzle by Dave Hudson. An 11inch row-$8.00.
I can't get the picture to show up but you can see it here.

snack saturday

Blueberry Shortcake

Ingredients
2 cups all-purpose flour
2 tbsp granulated sugar
3 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
zest from 1 lemon
1/2 cup cold unsalted butter, cut into cubes
3/4 cup half-and-half cream, plus 1 tbsp for brushing
2 tsp coarse or granulated sugar for sprinkling
3 125-g containers fresh blueberries
3 tbsp granulated sugar
1 cup whipping cream
1 tbsp granulated sugar
1/4 tsp cinnamon

Position oven rack so biscuits will sit in centre of oven. Preheat oven to 425F. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper.

To make biscuits, choose 1 of these methods:
-With Food Processor - Pulse flour, 2 tbsp sugar, baking powder, salt and zest in processor bowl until mixed. Add butter. Pulse until coarse crumbs form. Add 3/4 cup half-and-half cream, pulsing just until dough comes together. Dough will be moist and soft. Do not add more flour, as it may toughen biscuits.
-By Hand - Stir flour with 2 tbsp sugar, baking powder, salt and zest in a large bowl until blended. Using your fingers or a pastry blender , mix in butter until mixture forms coarse crumbs. Using a fork, gradually stir in 3/4 cup half-and-half cream, just until dough can be gathered into a ball. Dough will be moist and soft. Do not add more flour, as it may toughen biscuits.

Turn dough onto a lightly floured counter. Divide into 6. Gently pat each into a circle about 3/4 in. thick. Place biscuits on baking sheet at least 1 in. apart. Brush with 1 tbsp cream. Sprinkle with coarse sugar.
Bake until lightly golden, 12 to 14 min. Cool on a rack.

Place half of berries in a large bowl. Using a potato masher, lightly mash. Stir in remaining berries and 3 tbsp sugar. Let stand 30 min.
Pour whipping cream into large bowl. Add 1 tbsp sugar and cinnamon. Using electric mixer, beat until stiff peaks form when beaters are lifted.
Assemble by cutting biscuits in half horizontally and layering with berries and cream.

bloggy giveaway

Elizabeth over at Such a Sew and Sew is celebrating her 200th blog post with a fun giveaway.

Isn't this thread catcher bag cute? Love the fabrics. Giveaway is open until Tuesday so hurry over.

card friday

twilight

In the spring, a friend approached me about quilting a quilt. She asked the cost and I gave her a ballpark figure. A few months went by and she asked again about the quilt. That's when I discovered she wanted me to MAKE a quilt, not just quilt it. That was a whole new ballgame.

I decided I could still do the quilt for what I had originally quoted her. When I've made quilts for friends in the past, I usually don't charge much more than the cost of materials etc and in this case, I thought I would make out okay since she had asked to have the quilt made in Twilight colors; red, white and black.

She wanted a picture of Edward in the center of the quilt. I thought the easiest way to do that was to get a t-shirt with his picture on it. She bought that and than I soon realized that the color scheme we had decided on would simply not work with the t-shirt. So the fabric hunt was on.

Sadly, this was when my friend told me she couldn't pay what we had agreed on; I was less than happy and as a result, the quilt sat unmade on my table for weeks.

This past weekend, I decided enough was enough and put the quilt together. Because of the limited budget, I was stuck on how creative I could get with the quilt. I decided to do a log cabin style around the t-shirt in the middle. For each border, the sizes would be different(top/bottom borders one size, sides another).

I interfaced the back of the t-shirt and started cutting.



I started with a 2inch black border around the t-shirt; I love how it frames it!



Of course Gizmo soon came to help.



No Gizmo, it is not for you!



I quilted it up yesterday and of course I used the Twilight panto!


I'm not 100% with how it turned out. I really lost money on this which makes me sad; I do feel like my friend took advantage of me(and yes, she knows I feel this way). I do feel that I did the best that I could with the limited budget that I was given.

More importantly, she loves it.

making room for some new

I've been doing some decluttering and have these quilt and stamping books for sale. All are in excellent, like new condition. Prices do not include shipping.


Glorious Rubber Stamping. like new condition $10


Easy Does It Quilts book. Excellent condition $5


505 Quilt Blocks. Like New Condition $15


Block Magic too.like new condition $10


Altered Books Workshop. like new condition $10


Romantic Quilts. Like new condition $15

wordless wednesday

better late than never

This year's teacher cards. I'm going to have to be careful handing these out at school now since B and M are about to start getting each other's teachers this year lol.

Love this Bella stamp; she's so cute!

Frolic

I absolutely adore this line of fabric; it is so bright and happy.

This adorable quilt is for Hamels Quilt Store.

I have really debated about making a picnic quilt for myself with this line. It's very tempting!

Quilted with Daises and Loops and my current favorite thread. I've put this thread on so many quilts lately; I love how summery it is!

quilt monday

Love love love how this turned out.


Quilted with Paisley Max.

home alone

This weekend was nothing like originally planned. I was supposed to be taking a custom quilting class this weekend. But sadly, my teachers sister is horribly sick and not expected to live and the class was cancelled. Jim had planned on taking off with the boys to go wilderness camping since I was going to be busy all weekend. Instead, I encouraged them to still go(a weekend home alone? yes please!) Oh wait, as #3 keeps reminding me, I'm not actually home alone. #3 likes camping like me, with showers, flush toilets and beds. So he stayed home with me too.

He and I went out to dinner on Friday(subway as he requested lol) Than I got pretty little flowers painted on my freshly manicured toes(I highly recommend not enlarging the picture. feet are simply not attractive!)


Saturday, a quick trip to the local garden store.



Than Bag Ladies descended for a sewing day.

Cindy and Jill arrived first.


Jill was working on a coin quilt and Cindy was starting a pretty quilt for her kitchen table.

Than Sarah.


I had told everyone I didn't want posed pictures and Sarah did this lol. She was working on a very cool raw-edge bag. I totally forgot to take a picture of the finished product so check her blog for it.



Sarah also brought us these neat thread boxes. Perfect timing since my other one was overflowing!



Than Andrea and Kim arrived.

Andrea was working on some applique


And Kim on some seasonal stitcheries.


I got an amazing amount of sewing done.
The binding on this.



I finished my pinwheels sampler.


I absolutely LOVE this quilt. Fingers crossed I can quilt it this week.

And finally did the custom quilt I was hired to make; it's being picked up on Wednesday lol.


She wanted a picture of Edward in the center of the quilt so this t-shirt gave it's life up for the quilt.

I wasn't sure how it was going to turn out due to a very limited budget my customer gave me but I think she'll like it. I'm quilting it up on Tuesday and will show you what I ended up doing than.

Today was spent working on some applique,



While lounging by the pool.



Tonight some moving watching. I never know who might show up ;)


But first, I'm hosting my Splurge group tonight and tomorrow off on a big city adventure with #3. And tomorrow come dinner, we'll all be home again.

I love summer.