The Top is Complete!

The lap quilt top that I cut out this past Wednesday evening is finished.  I think that's a record!  It's not a big quilt, just 43" x 55," but that's quite large for a lap quilt.  It was intended as my contribution to our quilt guild's supply of lap quilts for the local long term care facility.

But I'm so delighted with it that I'd really prefer to keep it.  It would be nice in the second bedroom (tv/computer/sewing room) in our condo.  That would be so nice, and as long as I make another quilt to donate to the long term care, I'm in the clear with this.

I like it so much because of the cheerful colours.  Everything on the top except the narrow blue borders came directly out of my stash.  I don't think I could find another 48 6 1/2" beige squares in the stash.  The bindings will be the same bright blue.

That bright blue was actually bought for binding on the Delectable Mountains quilt (posts to come on that project), but I decided that with the cheddar yellow border a blue binding would be a little too outré.

This week I need to buy some backing to put this project together.

Then I can start cutting out squares for a replacement donor quilt!

That was Quick!

Wednesday morning I brought Dear Son #1 to the Calgary airport, after a great week-long visit.  Wednesday evening, starting about 7 p.m. I cut out squares for a lap quilt.  Our quilting guild plans to make new lap quilts for the local long-term care facility this coming winter.  Since I don't plan to be here for much of that time, I thought I should make my contribution this summer.

I cut out 48 6 1/2" squares of assorted beige fabrics from my stash.  Then I cut out 96 4" squares of nice, bright fabrics.  I drew a line diagonally across the 4" squares.

Thursday morning I sat down to begin sewing two 4" squares to opposite corners of the 6 1/2" squares, chain piecing, of course.  Often I will work on 10 or 12 blocks at a time, but this time I opted to chain piece all 48 squares.  Here they are in process.  A not so big pile of 6 1/2" beige squares and two piles of bright 4" squares.  The squares are being sewn to one corner of the beige along the diagonal lines.

Then I turn the pile around and similarly sew a 4" square to the opposite corner of the beige.








The next step is to sew a seam about 3/8" closer to the corner than the first seam.  That will give me "bonus" half square triangles with very little extra work.  They'll make a nice border.

Here's the finished pile of blocks, ready for the corners to be cut off.

 On the left, the piles of blocks ready to be pressed open.  On the right the "bonus" half square triangles.








 By 7 p.m. Thursday the blocks were finished and I laid them out on the living room floor.  This is just one option for layout.

I picked them up carefully, keeping the rows and the place of each block in the row all in order.  The rows were labeled, 1 through 6.

This morning I looked at them, having put them up on the design wall in the sewing room.  The design was nice, but somewhat static.

I rearranged them by turning every other row in the opposite direction.  This appeals to me much more.  It's actually the same design as the black and white background quilt I've been working on now and then for about a year.  That quilt is close to finished and I'll show it when it is complete.

This is the completed top, minus the borders.  A border suggestion is beginning on the left and on the right.  I think I will go with the tiny blue border and then the half square triangles flipped from side to side.

So this is the state of the quilt 48 hours after I started cutting it out.  What fun that was!
Size: (without borders) 36" x 48".

Skimpy Betty Crocker

I guess I have to apologize again, for the delays in the tutorial on Delectable Mountains.  I still have the sore throat, although I am improving greatly.  Thursday night was the first night since May 1 that I slept through the night without waking myself up with a coughing fit.  I promise I will get back to showing the process for Delectable Mountains very soon.

Right now I want to share what I discovered this morning about packaged cake mixes, specifically about Betty Crocker cake mixes.

We don't usually have cake or cookies on hand, but Dear Son #1 is visiting right now, so a few goodies are in order.  Today I decided to make a batch of cinnamon buns and then a chocolate/cherry cake.  I think I've posted the very simple recipe at some time previous, but here it is:

CHOCOLATE/CHERRY CAKE (like Black Forest Cake, only easy)

1 package of chocolate cake mix
2 eggs
2 teaspoons of Almond extract
1 can of cherry pie filling.

Mix these ingredients together and bake in a 9 x 13 pan.  Ice with chocolate icing (bought or homemade).

I noticed on the cake mix box the following: "NEW Bake Times."  That's kind of strange, I thought.  Could they have changed the ingredients so that it bakes faster?  I finished mixing the batter and put it into the pan, and noticed: THERE IS QUITE A BIT LESS BATTER THAN THERE USED TO BE! So this is one of those sneaky things that food manufacturers (that's an oxymoron, isn't it?) use to get more money for the same product.  Charge the same amount, but put less in the box!

I looked at another cake mix in the cupboard, a Duncan Hines mix.  The ingredients in that box weight 515 grams.  The ingredients in the Betty Crocker weigh 432 grams.  Shame on you, Betty Crocker!

Then I read the list of ingredients: "enriched wheat flour, sugar and/or golden sugar, corn syrup, cocoa, baking soda, corn starch, modified corn starch, soybean and/or cottonseed oil, shortening (so far, nothing terribly objectionable), propylene glycol mono esters of fatty acids, monoglycerides, carob powder (fine), monocalcium phosphate, salt (o.k.), sodium aluminum phosphate, dicalcium phosphate, sodium stearoyl-2-lactylate, xanthan gum, cellulose gum, artificial flavour, citric acid.  Do we actually know what those things are? Do we really want to ingest them?!!!

And then, in bold print, as a warning: CONTAINS WHEAT (Quelle surprise!!), MAY CONTAIN MILK INGREDIENTS (!!!)  Oooh, be careful, little mouth, what you eat!

I know--there are people who are allergic to milk ingredients, but I doubt they would be using a cake mix without checking the ingredients.  On the other hand, could all these chemical additives be at least partly responsible for, among other things, obesity and increasing problems with allergies and food intolerances?

By the by, did you know that there is actually only a very small percentage of the population that is truly allergic or sensitive to gluten?  All these gluten-free products are a marketing device (read scam).  Ridiculous are the products that never did contain gluten that are now advertised as "gluten free."

That's my rant for the week!

I guess I have to look up my old chocolate cake recipe, all normal, ordinary ingredients.  A little bit more work, but definitely a better cake than what I'm getting today! 

AAARRRGGGHHH!!!!!

This was the view out our bedroom window when I raise the shades this morning!

I've been incapacitated since Wednesday with a horrendous sore throat.  I'm on the road to recovery now, and hope to get back to posting the Delectable Mountains tomorrow.  I've discovered that we're missing a photo of one of the steps, and will get that out tomorrow (hopefully)

Second Part of Delectable Mountains

STEP SIX: Stack the separated blocks on top of each other at your pressing table.  I like to take two together and spritz the seam with a mist before pressing the seam flat.  Then open the block and press the seam toward the dark fabric.  I like to do this on the right side, sliding the side of the iron over the seam from light to dark.

STEP SEVEN:  Take the pressed blocks back to your cutting board and square them up to an exact 8" square.  An 8" Bias Square Ruler is a great help for this step.  I like to put my Quilter's Cut 'n Press on top of my 24" x 36" cutting board.  Using this I can trim the right hand side and the top side of the block, turn the Cut 'n Press 180º and trim the other two sides.

STEP EIGHT:  Take the two matching blocks and lay them directly on top of each other, right sides facing, and LIGHT ON TOP OF DARK.  I like to always put the dark half of the top square on the bottom right.  Starting from the left edge, cut the two blocks into 2" strips.  There will be four sets of 2" strips for each block.

STEP NINE: Pick up each set of strips and separate them, laying the bottom strip right side up in a top row and the top strip right side up in a bottom row.  You will have four strips on top and four strips on bottom.  Now take strip #2 and put it face down on strip #1; take strip #4 and put it face down on strip #3.  Do the same to the bottom row.  In this photo strip #4 is lifted away from strip #3 on the top row to illustrate that they are right sides together.  Pick up strips 1/2 and place them on top of 3/4, then place that pile on top of 1/2 of the bottom row, and place all on top of 3/4 of the bottom row.  You now have two blocks cut into strips and set into sewing order.

Here are eleven sets of strips lined up ready to be sewed into blocks.  Next time I will show the sewing and pressing order for these sets.

NOTE: The rest of this tutorial was finally published on August 18.  Sorry about that delay!

Delectable Mountains Tutorial

 There are several illustrated steps on how to make a Delectable Mountains quilt.  Here are the first five.

FIRST STEP:  Cut an equal amount of
8 3/4" light squares and 8 3/4" dark squares.  For a 42" x 60" quilt you will need 32 light and 32 darks.  The quilt I made this week is totally scrappy.  I hauled out all my boxes of scraps, not yardage, and spread them on the sewing room floor to facilitate finding enough acceptable fabrics for this quilt.


STEP TWO: With a fine point permanent marker, a Frixion pen, or a pencil, draw a line diagonally on the wrong side of each light square.

STEP THREE: Choose which lights and darks will be paired.  Layer them in a stack and take them to the sewing machine.  Carefully line the light on top of the dark, right sides together.  Stitch a scant quarter inch to the left of the drawn diagonal line.

STEP FOUR: Continue stitching a quarter inch to the left of the diagonals, chaining the squares together.

When you reach the end of your stack (I did ten at a time), lift the presser foot and turn the squares, and stitch back in the same manner on the other side of the diagonal line.

Cut the chained squares apart.

STEP FIVE: On your cutting table, cut the squares apart along the diagonal line.  Each pair of light/dark squares has now become two blocks.

It would be possible to chain stitch all of the squares in one session, but I prefer to do about ten at a time, and then do the rest of the steps.  That keeps me up and moving around more often.



Tomorrow I will post the next five illustrated steps.  (Maybe this is enough to keep you busy until then?)

NOTE: The rest of the tutorial was finally posted on August 18.  Sorry about that delay!

Show and Tell Time

 Tuesday evening our quilt club had its final meeting for this season.  We have a
quilt show and invite lots of friends and "future quilters."  We bring the quilted things we made the past year and each member brings some snack goodies to share.  I desperately wanted to finish the huge quilt I've been working on and sewed until 4:30 p.m. to try to finish it.  Here you see that monster having the final borders sewed on.  That's as far as I got!  The borders still need to be quilted, and the binding needs to be applied.  But I was satisfied that it looked much the way it will when those few tasks as completed.

Getting that far gave me "permission" to dive into a new project.  I've been wanting to start making some "Delectable Mountains" blocks, debating whether to stick with a certain colour scheme, or to make it completely scrappy.  Scrappy won the day and that's why all these bins of fabric are spread out on the sewing room floor.

Wednesday morning I chose fabrics and cut out 32 light 8 1/2" blocks and 32 dark 8 1/2" blocks.  Another day I'll picture and explain the steps in making a Delectable Mountains quilt, but for now, here's the result of two days of cutting and sewing:

This will become a lap quilt, measuring 48" by 60".  I won't add borders, as that is already very large for a lap quilt.  The finished quilt will serve as a sample when I teach how to make this block in our next season, both here and in Arizona.

I'm happy with the way it's turning out.  Nice and bright and cheerful.  I'm almost half way through making blocks.  When they are all completed, I will shift them around to find a balance in colours.

In the meantime I've revived D.S. #2's sock project.  I had finished one and was working on the second when I had to stop knitting because of the pain of a "trigger finger."  That has now healed, thanks to an injection and some physiotherapy.

The finished sock is on the left, quite a bit shorter than the second sock.  The yarn came in a single 100 gram hank, so it was a little hard to know when to stop knitting the first sock and begin the second.  Two 50 gram balls actually are easier to manage.  I tried to create that division by weighing the yarn at the beginning, but that didn't work out.

This morning I "unknit" the ribbing on the first sock and will now use up the remaining yarn to "equalize" the length of the two socks.

This is a particularly nice yarn, a Berroco Ultra Alpaca Fine, 50% Peruvian Wool, 20% Super Fine Alpaca and 30% nylon.  I'm using 2.5 mm needles, so this sock has more stitches than usual, a finer gauge than I usually use for socks.  But it's just lovely yarn, and I think these socks will be a real comfort to wear.