Miscellany

I found some quickie projects in blogland to get me motivated this morning. This is a cute headband tutorial. I stole one of Inspector Gadget's 2,000 T-shirts and hacked it up. He'll never miss it.

Or how about this tiny pincushion? You can find the tutorial right here.

I decided to make a mini out of my string blocks. It's supposed to be crooked. Really. I wanted to do spiral quilting, but I wimped out. My free motion foot mocks me.

One wonky house block made into a mini. I did try a little free motion quilting on this piece. I still stink at it, but I'm not going to let that stop me.

This laundry tag made me laugh. Ain't it the truth? I've been teaching Laundry 101 to college boy (ironing included). About time, huh? Inspector Gadget is getting the class next. If all goes well, I might be mowing the lawn and doing oil changes soon. Fun.

Look At My Garden Grow

Whew, I'm exhausted! I've been working out in the heat in my garden. Ha ha! Actually, it's my husband's garden. I'm not even allowed to look at these plants. I am a major plant killer. I don't like to look at gardening blogs for fear I'll kill something.

See that little basil plant in the lower right hand corner? Hubby rescued that from the trash. I buy grocery store plants for cooking and they die rather quickly. They start looking sickly as soon as I put them in my grocery cart. The other two plants are peppers, jalapeno and habanero. We've already harvested one jalapeno. I'm going to buy Inspector Gadget a tomato plant for our anniversary.

There's not a whole lot of sewing going on this week as I've been busy. This little pouch was fun to make. Zipper practice, baby! The lovely Beth at Love, Laugh, Quilt has a great tute. The pouch matches the tote I made a while back. Now if I could find a farmer's market nearby. Wait, I have a garden now.

I've always loved string blocks. This technique was fun to try. Have you tried making half square triangles by sewing all four sides and chopping on the diagonals? Works like a charm.

My single bowl of watercress salad from last night. I can't get anyone in this family to eat it. My mom made this salad all the time when the watercress was good. So simple, too. Watercress, good tomatoes, red onion and vinaigrette. Delicious!

This is where my husband thinks I get watercress. Down by the pond or out by the big lake. Now wouldn't that be handy? Anyone hungry for duck? I can hook you up.

Sunday Stash #28

I found this little sign somewhere in blogland. Not that I'd like to rule the world or anything, but I thought it was cute.

My friend Rene' gave me gorgeous fabrics and quilty earrings for my birthday. There are Kaffe Fassett charm squares too, but I'm already playing with those! I keep petting the ones above. Hopefully, I'll be brave enough to chop into them!

Free motion quilting practice on a 2.5" x 3.5" finished piece. I think I drank too much coffee that morning! ;) Happy Sunday!

Ticky Tacky

Little boxes, little boxes, do you know this song? Mine aren't made out of ticky tacky, but I did find some charm packs to chop up. Now I'm bored with them.

My new phone case. This one fits very snug. Super easy, too. Here's the pdf tutorial.

I tested a friend's pattern for a chair pad. This will come in handy on the hard chairs at Sew Day and the itchy chair in my studio. I'll let you know when the pattern is available for purchase.

A lovely swapper sent me this cute apron. The embroidered design is adorable. I shall only make meringues, white gravy and bread in this pristine, white apron.

My Doll Quilt Swap buddy Dotty's latest selvage creation.

Longest Day of the Year

Look at me! Another baby quilt finished! This one is so old I can't remember if I made the top or just added borders. The pieced backing is somewhat familiar and I had pre-cut strips leftover for binding, so I'm not entirely crazy. My bag o' bindings is almost empty! Two more to bind, and then maybe I'll get brave and count up the quilt tops that need to be quilted. I don't think I'm that brave.

Insalata caprese bruschetta. Instead of the big slabs of mozzarella I usually use for insalata caprese, I grated a much smaller amount of the cheese and toasted it on the bread. Add fresh tomatoes, capers, parsley, sea salt, pepper and drizzle the entire mess with good olive oil. Dinner is served! As much as I love cheese, I didn't miss the calories. It's bikini weather you know. Ha!

Blue suede Elvis selvage. Hope gave me this awesome selvage. It came from Graceland. I love how selvages tell a story.

I used this retro gingham and daisy cotton canvas to make a a small shoulder bag. The wonderful tutorial from Lime Gardenias is really adorable and includes an apple applique and a clever pocket for a library card on the strap. I just wanted to try the pocket and French seams! ;)

I helped college boy assemble his new fixed gear bike. I loved the typo on the shipping box. I'm afraid to ride the thing. No brakes, no coasting, teeny tiny seat, and you can ride in reverse. I'll stick to my regular bike until they get me a three wheeler with a basket.

Friday Finishes

Scrap busting again. I stumbled across this great tutorial and whipped up a new potholder.

I can't even remember when I pieced this small quilt. I had it quilted by a longarm quilter and finally finished the binding and label this week.

And another finish! This coin quilt was probably made the first year I started quilting. Before I sewed, I collected fabric. I know. Crazy. I've always loved old linens and vintage textiles. The quilt has some interesting vintage cotton prints mixed with newer fabrics. There's even some tie-dyed fabric my daughter and I made. It too went off for longarm quilting and sat around waiting for me to bind it. Procrastinate much? I have three more to bind.

Friday Favorites

1. Milk and Cookies, 2. Rug Mug Swap, 3. shshsh house #1, 4. shshsh-house#2, 5. Pop Flower Quilt - detail, 6. Madras Picnic Quilt, 7. plain spoken quilt, 8. November Ringo Pie block for Anna, 9. Wonky Strips quilt, 10. D"4"P, 11. _DSC1978xxx, 12. _DSC1811, 13. Mini, 14. Ingrid Press Festival Of Quilts 2009, NEC Birmingham, 15. selvage tote, 16. I couldn't be more pleased

Randomly pulled images from my Flickr Favorites made into a mosaic with the Big Huge Labs Mosaic Maker. What a talented bunch you all are! Thank you for the inspiration.

On another note, Blogger has this neat interface called dynamic viewing options. You can view Blogspot blogs in five different schemes. I like this sidebar version. The mosaic version would be a neat one for inspiration from your favorite blogs.

I need another craft book like I need another hole in my head, but I'm finding it hard to resist the wonderful hype for this book.

What to do, what to do?

Should I play with selvages?

Finish some WIPs?

Or bake a pie? I made this three-berry pie yesterday, so we probably don't need another pie in the house.

Sunday Stash #27

Also known as the birthday stash, since I don't really need to be buying any fabric, thank you very much.

Mental note to do something with batiks soon. I have some cool ones. That red on the left is a batik.

I did get a block sewn this weekend. Tutorial by Freshly Pieced.  I had hoped to get more sewing in, but I went to the mall with my teenagers, did 7,000 loads of laundry, cooked, and lounged by the pool.

Mr. Beer Chicken before he went on the grill. Isn't he dapper? This cooking technique is fail proof. I love it. I made soup from the leftovers, because soup is always good when it's 94 degrees out.

Happy Friday!

Did you see this hilarious Dad waving to his teenage son on the school bus every morning for an entire year? I bet the kids on the bus couldn't help but have a great day with a funny start like that! Go Dad!

I shipped off eight AAQI quilts this week. Four I made, three Yumi made, and one a doll quilt swapper made. How's that for productivity?! And speaking of productivity, AAQI awarded a $60,000 research grant this week! You can read the article here. How about them apples? A bunch of talented quilters and their little quilts are helping corral this awful disease. Makes me want to make more. They really are fun to whip up.

In fact, the June auction ends today and you can always buy others on the ongoing Quilts for Sale page.

Have a great weekend. I'm getting my chores done today so I can goof off more than usual. ;)

Housekeeping

I found some sewing time this week and made another portfolio cover. You can find the awesome tutorial from The Cottage Home right here. I used a tacky plastic portfolio to make it sturdy. There are plenty of pockets to store other stuff.

My Fridge Food is a neat site where you check off what you have in your cupboards and fridge and it will come up with recipes for you to whip up. Nutritional information is also provided if you're into crazy stuff like that. I like to play Survivor Island here at home and put off the grocery store as long as I can. My fridge was so bare a couple of days ago that everyone was commenting on it. I finally broke down and shopped when I took poured a glass of rotten milk and took a big swig. I will never again make fun of people who smell food before they eat it.

Speaking of crazy stuff, The Krazy Coupon Lady is a great place to find deals on food, toiletries, and a myriad of other things. I'm hooked. I saved over $25 using manufacturer coupons on my last grocery run.

I forgot to post about the soup I made from the leftover crab. It has everything but the kitchen sink in it. Crab, onion, celery, carrot, red peppers, tomatoes, garbanzo beans, brown rice, coconut milk, crab and chicken broth. I thought it needed something else. Maybe curry. Or some other type of heat. Or lime. Sometimes those kitchen sink soups work, sometimes they need some work.

I was getting ready to toss/donate this hideous green homespun, but I decided to try my hand at garment sewing. No worries, clothing manufacturers, I am not cut out for sewing clothes. And considering the time and brain effort involved, I'd be better off shopping at Neiman Marcus or Sax.

Gary Larson is one of my favorite cartoonists. I was crushed when he retired The Far Side. I love his wacky sense of humor. I'm cleaning out files and ran across a folder of comics I clipped when I worked at the newspaper in the 1980s. Sheep dip, anyone?

Pummelvision

One of the blogs I read is Wendolonia. I have no idea how I stumbled across her blog, but she makes the cutest bento box lunches for her adorable little boys. Today she introduced me to Pummelvision. With Pummelvision you can make a spiffy video from your photos. Try it, it's fun!

Here's the one I made of my miniature quilts.



It's Monday again. Those weekends fly by. I did get some chillin' and grillin' time in over the weekend. Have you ever had a savory watermelon salad? I tossed watermelon chunks, onions, black olives, queso fresco, lime juice, olive oil, salt and pepper together and chilled everything for a good half hour. It was really good. My inspiration for the salad was from this recipe that uses feta cheese. I didn't have feta, but I bet that would be wonderful too. Or bleu cheese.

Two blah-ish miniatures are done. I did some free motion quilting around the Dresden Plate. Feed dogs up, baby! It really works much better for me.

I made these half square triangles with the trimmings from the Friendship block. It's mug rug size.

This paper piece pattern has been hanging out on my desk for a while. I skipped the lake activities yesterdays and got a little sewing in. Hope your weekend was fun!

Throwback

I'm screwed. I knew it a couple of weeks ago when I was in Publix and saw these little numbers.

Yep, there they are in all their original 1970s glory. Even the original packaging. Taco-flavored Doritos. The original flavor I munched all through junior high and high school when I weighed 80 lbs. and could eat anything. Bags were purchased on early morning trips to Cocoa Beach to watch my boyfriend surf sleep on the beach. These chips were served at awkward boy-girl pool parties, available in the junk food lunch line at school and eaten by everyone I knew.

Funny story sideline here, my friend Jane had a Nutty Bar and a Coke for lunch every day of junior high. She's been on Crestor since she was 20. I guess that's not really funny, but she sure is. Anyhoo, I loved the Taco-flavored Doritos. When Frito Lay quit making them, I quit eating Doritos.

Until I had kids. You can't deprive children of Doritos. It's just wrong. [Hush, Jamie Oliver, they eat veggies too]. My kids ate all the funky new flavors. Buffalo Chicken Wing and Bleu Cheese, Pizza, Cool Ranch, Beer and Pretzel, Sushi, etc. Just kidding about the sushi flavor. That would be odd. Like the seaweed snack Yumi sent me from Japan. It tasted much like sushi Doritos. While all these new flavors were imaginative, they just didn't grab me like those Taco babies. It was a good thing. A junky snack I could avoid. Until now.

On a husband-inflicted trip to Wally World, I made him buy me groceries and a bag of Taco Doritos. Heaven. They're just like I remember. The sodium content has to be off the charts. My feet will be even fatter than ever tomorrow. But for now, I'm going to don some bell bottoms, mess with my shag and gather my roller skates. There's a skating rink nearby and I plan on skating until it's 1999. Or at least until curfew.