Block-a-palooza progress

I joined up with the Blogger's Block-a-palooza quilt along that started last week.  It's 16 blocks in total, 2 a week from different bloggers.  I've never done a sampler quilt and haven't sewn many traditional quilt blocks in the past.  I guess they're just not really my style.  So, why am I doing this then?  I've been asking myself that question since I started.  I'm using fabrics from my stash, some of which I've had for over a decade, so it'll be good to get these made into something.  I also figure this will be a good way to practice my cutting and piecing skills on designs I wouldn't normally be using.  And it's always interesting to see how all the bloggers cut and piece their blocks as they go. 

This is the pile of fabrics I pulled from my stash to use for the blocks.  I'm mostly basing my blocks around the multicolored swirl print since I had 2 yards of it.
 

And my progress so far with links to the block's originator:

Block #1 from Quilt Dad

Block #2: from Oh, Fransson:

Block #3 from Sasikirana Handmade:

All three together:

I'm still not sure if I'm going to continue making these blocks or not.  I'm not really feeling the all the flying geese patterns.  I do like the way the second block came out though.  The flickr pool has a lot of different fabric choices going on, which is fascinating to see what other quilters are choosing to use in place of the Sunkissed line the blocks were designed for. 

Are you participating in the quilt along?  What do you think of the blocks so far?

Sliced Coins Quilt-Along

I joined up with Don't Call me Betsy's Sliced Coins Quilt-Along this week.  I've been needing a good excuse to make a new quilt, so this was perfect for me.  I'm not sure I'm going to be able to only work on a few parts every week though - once I get started, it's hard for me to put down a project!  This will be good for me, I'll be forced to work on other things around the house instead of locking myself in my sewing room for a week.

I'm using fabrics from my stash for this one, except for the solid.  My inspiration came from this set of pot holders I made for my friend's mom for Christmas.  (Hi L.C.!  Hope you're enjoying them!)

My friend picked out this fabric from my stash and I pulled the others to go with it.

I loved the way it came out and kept the pile of fabrics together with plans to make something in the future.  And the future is now!

I originally planned to use that off white solid for the sashing, but when I went to the store to get more, I decided against it.  I drove to another local shop and they had two versions of Robert Kaufman's quilter's linen print in straw and a darker beige.  Both looked great, but I went with the lighter one.

I've got the coins all cut out and ready to go.  I only cut 2", 3", 4", and 5" coins, all 10" wide (I'm making the lap-sized version.)  I had to go back and get more of the linen print to finish cutting the coins.  I cut out a total of 106 coins from the various prints and plan on using a lot of the extras for a pieced back.  I thought I had enough of the big leaf print for the backing, but I'm planning on using that for the binding instead.  I'm considering using a solid black for the back - will that be too bold?

coins cut and ready to go!

Can I wait till Friday to go on to the next step?  That's iffy, I'm a little excited about this one!  Check out what everyone else is doing in the Flickr Pool!

Garden pictoral

We've been enjoying 70 degree weather day after day here in L.A. which my garden is loving!  I wanted to share some photos with you all of what's blooming.  One of my nectarine trees is in full bloom and attracting all kinds of bugs - mostly it's covered in bees all day.

The calendulas I transplanted from my parkway way back in October are filling out nicely and some are starting to bloom. 

The purple flowers I received free from the Master Gardeners when I was at the SLOLA meeting the other weekend.  I love how the petals shimmer on this plant.  It's a pericallis magenta bicolor.

Now, if only the seeds I started last month would get going a little faster!  Several of my seeds didn't germinate at all, but the ones that did were transplanted into separate containers.  I've got black pansies, orange, pink, and white comsos, sweet alyssum, snow-in-summer, zinnias and heliopsis seedlings started.  I'm hoping to get these into the garden in the next few weeks if they bulk up a bit.

I even planted some sunflower seeds this week in the calendula triangle.  I saw some in full bloom in a garden a few miles away, so I figured why not plant them now!  Usually I'd wait until April or May (or forget all together like I did last year) so we'll see if these get going early this spring.

Happy gardening!

More, um, pillows

I have more pillows to share.  Shocker, right?!  I'm joining in some of the quilt alongs, so I'll have other things to show soon that aren't pillows.  Yay!

I made this first pillow a week or so ago.  Since then, I've seen several diamond pillows on other blogs - we must all be on the same wavelength.  I made mine with Kona Espresso sashing.  I still haven't decided if I like it or not.  It's a little bold for my tastes.  The sashing was an interesting experience though, trying to get it to all line up. 

I'm still using my layer cake, so I used 2.5" diamonds for these.  I got two from each 2.5 x 10" strip.  I used the leftover triangles in the scrappy pot holders over the weekend.

I also tried a version of the orange pillow I made for my sister in the green colorway.  I think I like it better in the orange, but this green looks nice with the other pillows.

And last, I did a second version of my lattice pillow using the 3" squares and triangles I had leftover from the 3.5" squares version.  I actually like this one better.  I put a narrow border around the whole piece and did three rows of quilting down the sashing.  I also used a few of the scraps for the envelope edge on the back of the pillow.

Who wants some pillows?  I seem to be drowning in them!

Linking up with Fabric Tuesday!

Scrappy Potholders

After making so many pillows this last month (I've made a few more that I'll post soon) I ended up with a large pile of miscellaneous scraps.  I'm not good with scraps.  I don't know what to do with them.  In the past, I would've tossed them in the compost bin, but since I only bought one layer cake of Central Park by Kate Spain, I couldn't bear to throw any of them away!  This is the pile I started with:

I thought about making some mug rugs, but I didn't see myself using them.  I'd planned on making a few things for the kitchen, so I went with some scrappy potholders.  This was mentally challenging for me.  I like straight lines and uniform pieces.  I made myself just go with the flow and grab pieces randomly and sew them together whichever way they wanted to go.  After a few seams, I started to really enjoy this random process!  I didn't bother straightening any cuts until I got toward the end and added some of the larger scraps. 

I was surprised at how many scraps just the tops alone used up.

I grabbed a larger scrap of Kona Espresso to finish piecing the backs.

I only had a couple of triangular-ish shaped pieces left after that and was about to toss the rest after pinning the quilt sandwiches together.  Then the large expanse of dark brown on this back bothered me.

Raw edge applique to the rescue!  I had some scraps of Heat-n-Bond that I attached to the rest of the leftover fabric scraps.  My original thought was to stitch a few leaves on a tree branch, but once I put the shapes down, they looked like petals.  I went with flowers instead.

And here they are all quilted and bound!

It felt good to get out of my normal sewing habits and do some free form piecing.  But I'm also happy to not have a pile of scraps in my way any longer!  What do you all do with your scraps?

Linking up with Fabric Tuesday!

Chicken Alarm

For the last four months or so, my three chickens have been pretty quiet.  They would nap most of the day, or preen their new feathers, pecking lightly in the dirt. 

This was a lovely reprieve from the last year of them squawking at the crack of dawn to be let out of their coop and singing their egg song for any number of reasons, often not related to egg laying whatsoever.  That all changed today.  As soon as the sun barely started making an appearance, the squawking began.  Loudly. 

Now, normally, I enjoy the sounds of my chickens, but they haven't laid any eggs since the beginning of December, and as much as I love them for their composting abilities and their bug eating talents, I miss having fresh eggs around.  They even spent an hour singing their egg song this morning, so I'm hoping they're close to laying again!  Even though they were singing for Betty (my one permanently non-laying hen,) I still have hope. 

Nighttime

But until they start laying for real, I'd like a snooze button for my chicken alarm please!

Triple Layer Cheesecake

After a hectic and busy week, this weekend was simply wonderful.  The sun was out, it was a lovely 75 degrees, and I baked tasty desserts.  Saturday, I made my first ever cheesecake and my first ever red velvet cake.  The red velvet cake just tasted like any old cake (yummy cake, though!) but the cheesecake - oh my.  It was not only delicious and decadent, but it looked great too!  I was tasked with making cakes for my friend's birthday party so I immediately searched through recipes on Tasty Kitchen.  On the front page was a triple layer cheesecake as one of the featured recipes.  It was perfect for what I wanted to make.

I rarely make any desserts, so this was quite an adventure for me.  I even bought myself a 9" spring-form pan.  I figure I can use it to make fancy fruit desserts in the summer time in the future.  Any way, I started preparing this cheesecake.  I bought chocolate graham crackers for the crust since I didn't know how to use the Oreo's. (Do you scrape out the white stuff or not?)  So, I crushed the graham crackers in my food processor, mixed it with melted butter and pressed it into the bottom of my new pan.  Into the (still shiny and new and wonderful) oven to bake for 10 minutes.  I prepped the three layers - peanut butter, milk chocolate, and white chocolate while the crust was baking.  All easy peasy.  I put the peanut butter layer in, then the milk chocolate layer, then just as I was about to add the white chocolate layer, I realized I forgot to grease the pan.  PANIC!  Ooops.  At this point, it's too late anyway, and I just hoped for the best.  The top layer went on and the whole thing went into the oven for an hour.  More panicking as I looked at the interwebs researching what to do if you forget to grease a pan for a cheesecake.  The horror stories!!!  All these other things can happen when making cheesecake - the cake cracks, the cake sinks, the whole crust sticks to the pan... so I'm thinking the worst is going to happen.  And I don't have enough time to bake another one if this fails!  An hour passed and I pulled the cheesecake out of the oven.  It's a nice golden color on the top - I guess that's what it's supposed to look like.  What do I know, I've never made a cheesecake and I rarely ever eat them!  It cooled for 10 minutes, I ran a knife around the sides of the pan, then let it cool for another hour.  More panicking as the time passed.  I ran the knife around the edge one more time for good measure, and took off the outer ring.  Success!  So far at least.  That came off easily and the cake looked good. 

Into the fridge it went, and I was off to the SLOLA (Seed Library of Los Angeles) meeting for a few hours.  It was our second meeting and there are so many exciting things happening!  I'm on the database committee and that's what I was working on most of last week and the reason I didn't get to blog much.  If you're local to L.A. and you're interested in having a secure and diverse supply of local vegetable seeds, please join us!  You can check out the happenings on the SLOLA blog.

Back home to finish the cake.  Making the topping was so easy and fun and made the cake look so cool!  I melted the chips in a bowl instead of in the bag, then scooped the melted chips into the bag for piping. And this was the result!

It came out perfectly in the end!  The crust didn't stick to the pan at all, the cake didn't crack and it didn't sink either.  What a relief!  The cake was so rich though.  We cut it into about 20 pieces and even then, those pieces were being shared by two people.  I would love to make this cheesecake again, but with some lighter and healthier ingredients.  If you want to make an amazingly delicious and fancy looking cheesecake - make this one! 

Link to the Tasty Kitchen version in a 4" pan
Link to the baker's blog (this includes a link to the 9" version)

Central Park Rainbows

One of my very good friends asked me to make some cheery pillows for her with some of the Central Park by Kate Spain fabrics I bought a few weeks back.   I thought I'd try out a couple of new designs since I'm already in crazy pillow sewing mode (see here and here.) 

The first one is a stacked coin pattern. 

I think I initially picked out about 20 of the fabrics from the layer cake to use.  My methodology was to cut 2"x10" pieces of each, then I stitched them all together in rainbow order along the 10" sides.  I cut the long piece into two 5" wide strips.  I thought I was going to have the colors going all the way to the edges of the pillow, with white sashing between the three columns, but it seemed a little overwhelming.  So I unpicked several of the seams and went with a centered design instead.  The finished pillow is for a 20" square pillow form and these were the final cuts:

(21) 2" x 5" patterned fabrics
(2)  2" x 11" white sashing between the rainbow panels
(2)  2.5" x 11" white side borders
(2)  5.5" x 20.5" white top and bottom borders

For the second pillow, I wanted to use a lot of the same fabrics, but this time, in a brick pattern.

I thought this pillow top was going to take a long time to sew with all the skinny sashing, but it ended up being fairly quick.  The best part?  No corners or rows to match!  I started with my pile of scraps from the first pillow and just cut 2" wide strips from several of the fabrics.  The lengths were already varied since I've used so much of these pieces for other pillows so far.  I laid the pieces out on my cutting mat and kept adding fabrics until I had a big enough assortment for the pillow top.  I went with 3/4" finished sashing (1 1/4" cut) for all of the inner white areas, with a slightly wider outer border.

I'm shipping these off to Portland this week - sending my friend a bit of springtime sunshine in a box!  

Linking up with Fabric Tuesday!

Herbed Flat Bread and a Swiss Chard Recipe

It has been a few months since I've tried any new recipes.  I've been making my usual rotations of lasagna, risotto, tacos, sandwiches, soups, and pizzas, but this weekend I was missing having something new for dinner.  I have a giant list of recipes bookmarked in my web browser that I haven't tried yet, so the one I picked was Swiss Chard with Beets, Goat Cheese and Raisins from Epicurious.  Wow.  It was so delicious with all the different flavors and textures! 

I halved the recipe and it still made a good 6 servings.  I was able to use swiss chard, beets and beet greens, green onions, limes, and a cayenne pepper from my garden.  I substituted sunflower seeds for the pine nuts - much less expensive and gives it the same small crunch and extra protein.

I paired this dish with the another experiment for the weekend.  I was working on a sourdough taste test with daily bread baking.  I made a second batch of dough last Wednesday after making the baguettes, and I put the kneaded dough in a bowl with a lid and placed it in the refrigerator.  Friday night, I pulled a couple of hunks of dough off and baked two dinner rolls with our meal.  The taste was nice - a little of the sour tang - but still more on the French bread side of things.  Saturday night, I wanted to redeem myself from the first attempt at making a cheesy herbed flat bread.  About 2 hours before dinner, I pulled the dough out and made two rounds out of it to bring it to room temperature.  An hour later, I flattened and pulled the dough into ovals about 1/2" thick and placed them on parchment paper on a baking sheet. 

I let these rise for half an hour while working on the swiss chard dish.  Just before baking, I sprinkled a mixture of chopped fresh herbs - parsley, oregano, thyme, green onion - onto the dough and added a thin layer of freshly grated asiago cheese.  I baked them along side the beets that were already roasting in the oven at 450 degrees for about twenty minutes.  Oh my.  So good!  And without all the mess of making the dough on the same day!

Try this with your favorite basic bread recipe!  Or even a pizza dough recipe.  I'd love to hear about your favorite bread making techniques!

Bloggers Pillow Party: January

Since I've been making all these pillows the last two weeks, when Anna at Noodlehead posted about the Blogger's Pillow Party that Stitched in Color is having each month, I figured I needed to enter!  My favorite pillow so far?  This one!

I posted about it last week when I was finishing up my sister's pillows.  I'd been sitting at my computer in the kitchen that morning, thinking about different ideas for other pillows, when I refocused my eyes and saw what I wanted to make.  I'd been half staring out the window and my brain tuned in to the trellis on the fence.

That was it!  I pretty much jumped up and ran to the sewing room to sketch out the pillow and get measurements.  I went with a 3" finished square and 1.5" finished sashing.  I picked out twelve fabrics from Kate Spain's Central Park layer cake for this pillow, cutting 2 squares of each - one for the center, then one cut in half diagonally for around the edges.  I'm keeping the other half square triangles for a future, yet-undetermined, project.  The top came together easily and I ended up loving this pillow more than I thought I would! 

It's living on my couch at the moment, since that's where I will see it most often, but it also goes with my bedroom, too, so it'll probably move between the two spots depending on how many more pillows I make!

If you've made a pillow recently, link up with the Blogger's Pillow Party!