A CUTE QUILT

I just finished making a quilt for some friends of mine.  They gave me the materials and the pattern.  It's flannel, very good quality material.  I think it's just really cute!

It's really fun to make a quilt with material and pattern picked out by someone else.  It takes you to a place you wouldn't ordinarily go.  This was a simple quilt and should have been finished in a day or two, BUT -- at first I thought the polka dots in the sashing and borders would be too busy, so I was going to substitute a white fabric.  That was fine with them, but there was no white flannel available locally.  I ordered online from a supplier just an hour's drive from here.  It took 2 days short of two weeks for the fabric to arrive!

Then when I did start using the plain white for the sashing I realized it wasn't the right choice.  It was just too bland.  So then I went back to the polka dots, and now I think that it's just right.

A DOUGH SAVE

We are looking forward to a visit from #2 son and his #2 daughter starting tomorrow.  There are things to get ready: bedrooms, bathroom, food--I just put together 14 burgers for the freezer, not that we'll eat that many, but we were out and I like to make a big batch.  Time to bake a few loaves of bread and buns to go with the burgers.

This morning I loaded the ingredients into the breadmaker for two loaves of bread.  Because I had just ground the wheat I could make 75% whole wheat loaves.  Two hours later the dough was ready to be formed into loaves and set aside for a second rising.  I made the loaves, put them in the loaf pans and put the pans in a slightly warm oven. Usually about 45 minutes is plenty for the dough to lift above the rim of the pan.  Usually I set the timer so I don't forget.

This morning I did not set the timer.  I went into the sewing and worked on a small quilt I'm making for some friends.  Completely forget about the dough rising.  By the time I remembered it has risen, fallen, and formed a rather tough skin.  What to do?  First I thought I'd just simply bake it, but you know what?  I don't think that bread would have been edible.  So I picked off the tough skin that had formed, reworked the dough and cut out 11 hamburg buns and 1 small extra.  After about 20 minutes they were ready to go into the oven.

They look fine.  But as the saying goes, The proof of the (pudding) bun is in the eating.  We shall see!

LANDSCAPE

Our landscape is at its best in July.  Here are a few photos:
This first is a glimpse of the Rose Mallow blooming profusely outside the solar space window.  The solar space is an area at ground level in the front which was formerly open space beneath a balcony.  We enclosed it with clear glass windows and use it two ways: to overwinter plants where they will be as cool as possible without freezing and as a wonderful place to sit and read on summer afternoons and evenings.

This little fountain is right outside the solar space and we like to hear the water splashing as we relax and read.

In between the house and the road is our front landscape, something Jim just loves to look at.  No wonder he never wants to leave this place!  Now we are turned away from the house, looking toward the road.

This is a little romantic bench along a gravel path.  To the left you can see a small part of one of his favourite trees: a weeping birch.

Here we are looking down the same path toward the house but much closer to the road.

This tall columnar blue spruce is just south of the shelter belt at the north end of the landscape.

This is one of the three Burr Oak trees on the north end of the front yard.  The other two are behind this one.  Burr Oak is the only oak that will grow in the area.

And this is a beautiful Linden tree near the house.  Linden trees have very straight trunks and seem to have flowers at the ends of the leaf clusters in summer.  This tree split in two and we bolted it back together through the trunk.  It has now grown over the split and is growing around the bolts and the plates that hold it together.

Behind it, almost like a feather crown is the top of a Brandon Elm that towers over the garage and house.  Last year we could hear a branch scraping over the roof in windy weather.  Our helper, Craig, climbed the tree with a chain saw and cut off the offending branch.

This was just a little jaunt through the landscape.  Hope you enjoyed it!

PARSLEY & PINWHEELS

There are several potted plants on the back patio: lots of pots of flowers but also four pots of veggies and herbs--Sweet Million tomatoes, lettuce, kale and parsley.  Yesterday I harvested the parsley.

I cut just about half the parsley in the pot which was quite a bit, washed it several times and pulled the leaf bunches off the stems.

Spread the parsley on a baking sheet and put it in the oven at 170º and let it dry for about an hour and a half.  This shows the parsley before drying.

 

When it was dry I put it in a jar for the cupboard.  A nice full jar of somewhat crumbled parsley to use this winter in soups, stews, and sometimes (with butter) on boiled potatoes.

 

In June I did a "demo day" at the LQS showing how to create a Disappearing Four Patch in which all the seams "nested."  It was fun and well received.  With the fabric that was left over and a meter of beige for the background I made a lap quilt using the pattern Pinwheels.  This is also a pattern for which I created a technique that insures "Practically Perfect Pinwheels.  This quilt will be displayed in the LQS (our local drugstore which has an excellent fabric section) as a preview of a "demo day" in September, showing my technique for creating practically perfect pinwheels.  (Nothing is ever perfectly perfect!)

This quilt did not turn out as well as I would have liked.  The background beige did not set off the pinwheel colours as well as a black background, which was used on the second Disappearing Four Patch quilt.  Also, the batik border, which echoes the colours of the pinwheels very, very well, does not blend well with the pinwheel fabrics.  It is just too different a fabric design from that of the pinwheels.

 

Ah well!  I will consider that a learning experience.  When I look at this completed quilt I get another idea about how to make this.  What about making "Hourglass" blocks and alternating the direction?  That would put the difficult intersection where the four points come together outside the blocks.  Maybe I'll try a few blocks that way and see how successful that approach is.

THE KALE HARVEST

About the end of April I seeded a package of kale into a big pot for on the patio.  Today I harvested a good amount of lovely, small leaves.  How did we want to use this kale?

I looked in my few cookbooks but didn't find a recipe that appealed, so I made up my own version.  In a 12" teflon frying pan I put about a teaspoon of Sesame oil and a good hunk of butter.  When it was melted and hot I added 2 cloves of garlic crushed and about 1/4 cup of chopped onion.  I shredded a large carrot in the Cusinart and added that.  When that had sautéed for a bit I added the washed and stemmed kale.  Add a good shake of "Vegetable Seasonings" and some raisins.  Sauté until the kale is wilted and serve.  It was delicious!  I'll do that again some time.

Now I wish I had taken pictures of the process, but maybe next time the kale is ready to be cut I can remember.

Just got back from a week in Fort St. John, B.C., a visit to our younger daughter's family that included our grandson's grade 12 graduation.  He plans to take his first year of college there and then transfer somewhere that has a good accounting program.  We had a very good time with them, in spite of almost continuous rain, low temperatures and dark skies. I flew there and back with WestJet for just under $300, flights of just 1-1/2 hours--SO much easier that a 10 hour drive!

A REALLY BIG QUILT

About 15 years ago I made a large quilt, a duvet really, for us to use in the winter.  I was able to purchase 13 ounce polyester batting at a Fabricland in Edmonton.  For the top and backing I used two king-sized white sheets.  The plan was to machine quilt this together, but it was just too puffy to sew on the machine, so I hand stitched it on my Qsnap frame.  That worked well, and it was wonderfully warm and light.

It has a line of stitching every 6" across.  That was enough to hold the batting in place.

Last winter we needed to use our summer light weight quilt with it because over the years with many washings, it had become quite thin.

The summer weight quilt I had made around that time also, with a 3 ounce polyester batting.  That is still the quilt we sleep under in warm weather.  Over the years this quilt has also thinned out considerably, making it comfortable even in quite warm weather.

Last year I was given some bolts of material that weren't suitable to use in quilting because of a continuing problem of the fabric dye "bleeding."  I took two of those fabrics, cut them as long as wide, about 115" (they are quilt backing fabrics) and sandwiched them with two (!) High Loft King-sized batts.  This is destined to be our new winter duvet.

The plan was to sew "knots" at 8 inch intervals to keep the layers together.  I hoped to do this on the Q'nique, but the Q'nique didn't cooperate with that plan.  Well, I thought, let's try hand stitching this.  There were a few "false" starts with this, but now, finally, I have a method that works:

That's a curved upholstery needle that pokes nicely back up through the fabric, and that's a cone of very strong brown upholstery thread.  Here's how nice a little "tie up" looks:

This is in contrast to the machine stitching:

And the hand stitching with the light beige upholstery thread.

I think I've hit my stride with this, as it is spread over the dining room table and is reasonably comfortable to handle this way.  The rest of this project shouldn't take too long!

The "Practically Perfect Pinwheels" blocks are all complete.  They just need to be sewed together, borders added, sandwiched, quilted and bound.  This will be a nice-sized lap quilt to donate either here or in AZ.

In the meantime I have two very good books to recommend:  Bonhoeffer by Erich Metaxas and A Higher Loyalty, truth, lies and leadership by James Comey.  The first is an excellent detailed biography of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the Protestant pastor and theologian who was executed by the Nazis just a few days before the end of the Second World War.  The second, by James Comey, is just out, a defence of his actions as head of the FBI and a searing look into Donald Trump's "style" of leadership.  Scary stuff!!!  Comey is obviously opinionated (he says so himself) but also seems to be honest and insightful.  I heartily recommend both books.

PRACTICALLY PERFECT PINWHEELS

Several years ago I made a queen-sized quilt of patches and pinwheels.  I struggled with the pinwheels and I mean really struggled!  When that quilt was finished I promised myself that I would never make pinwheels again.  But that quilt is pretty nice.  It’s the quilt that covers our bed here during the day.  We don’t sleep under it’s too heavy.

But then one of the members of our quilting club brought a pinwheel block that she had made according to the directions on the Missouri Star Quilt blog.  It was very nice BUT all the outside seams were on the bias.  That didn’t look so good to me.  I decided to try to make up a method which I liked.  After a few tries I did succeed in finding a reliable way to make a pinwheel block that had the bias seams on the inside, and the points almost always turned out well.

With the left over material from a recent quilt another pinwheel quilt is taking shape on the design wall.

Well, this was an experiment.  I typed the entry on my new iPad, took a photo of the pinwheels with my iPad, but was unable to move the photo to the blog entry.  That's stumping me.  There surely is a way to do that, but I haven't found it yet.  So I took a photo with my camera, downloaded it to my laptop and finished the post that way.  I'd like to be able to do all that with the iPad, as it would be much less hassle when travelling.

Maybe when I visit our daughter and son-in-law, he can show me how to do this!