A Sophisticate on Easy Street - Part 5

'Twas the day after Christmas, and all through the house, I was happily cutting and stitching and chatting with friends and family on the phone. I woke to find the electricity had gone out in the night. What was light rain and falling temps when I drove home last night had turned to snow, so I pulled on my robe and stepped out to take some pictures of the first one of the season. I let the dog in and then sneaked back to bed while the house warmed up.

Snow on Magnolia and Holly in backyard.

I'd cleared out part of the kitchen for Christmas Eve by piling things in my sewing room. First thing this morning I sorted and put that stuff away, instead of just moving the piles someplace else, which can be tempting when you have an entire house to yourself. Then I rewarded myself by cutting fabrics for week 5. Bonnie's purple is also my purple, but I have only one fabric, and I cut some 3 1/2" squares from that plum print to begin. Her blue is my green; I cut a pile of 2" squares with some scraps I had left over from an earlier week. Initial sewing and trimming showed me that my final pieces were just a few threads short of 3 1/2", so I cut the next set of plum fabric with the edge on the outside of my ruler line instead of hidden by the line. That worked perfectly, giving me the little extra width I needed. There's no real name for this shape, but it looks like a house to me. Given the time of year, I'm calling them "Up on the Rooftop" blocks. With only three greens it didn't seem worth trying to mix colors up within blocks so I stitched my Rooftop blocks with matching greens in the corners.

"Up on the Rooftop" blocks.

 My quilt won't be the scrap-happy one Bonnie's is, but I'm fine with that. I love my fabrics and colors, and look forward to seeing it all come together. One of the best things about quilting is watching something emerge from fabric, threads, and ideas. You can plan all you want, but the finished project is always at least a little surprising. I like that!

Playing with the pieces we've made so far.

An after-Christmas chat with DS on the phone got me to thinking about why I like quilting. A lot of the pleasure I get comes from remembering my Grandmothers' quilts. One of them enjoyed piecing simple patterns with a large variety of fabrics saved from sewing for her family. She pieced at home on her treadle machine or by hand, but quilted weekly with a group of women at church. The other Grandmother created applique quilts with realistic birds and flowers, reflecting her interests in art, garden design and bird-watching. She pieced and quilted them at home, controlling the results completely. Their quilts were different, like the women, but all of them are beautiful and special to their family.

Front yard snow.

Wasn't it the perfect day to be inside sewing and fortifying myself with hot tea and yummy Christmas leftovers?

This post is part of Bonnie Hunter's Week 5 Link-Up.

Cinnamon Roasted Pecans

I started making these nuts for Christmas several years ago.  We host a kind of open house on Christmas Day for our extended family, and I like to have lots of different finger foods available.  I don't remember where I found this recipe, but it is easy to make, foolproof, and addictive - what more could you want?!  They are great for a party or for gift-giving.  While pecans are expensive here, the rest of the ingredients are things that you'll likely have on hand, making it a pretty economical - and unique - gift.  I start buying the nuts before Thanksgiving, a bag or two each time I get groceries, so its not insanely expensive all at once.

I've modified the original recipe, and also tripled it.  If you don't want to make lots at once, feel free to cut the recipe by a third, but be aware that you may need to decrease the cooking time by 15 minutes or so.

Cinnamon Roasted Pecans

3 egg whites
1 T cold water
1 T vanilla
3 lbs pecan halves
1 1/2 c white sugar
1 1/2 c brown sugar
3/4 t salt
3 T cinnamon

1. Thoroughly grease two 9" x 13" glass pans.  Preheat the oven to 250* F.

2. In a very extremely large mixing bowl, combine egg whites, water and vanilla.  Whisk well, until foamy/frothy but not stiff.  Add nuts and toss until well coated.

3. In a separate bowl, combine sugars, salt and cinnamon.  Mix well.

4. Add 1/2 of the sugar mixture to the pecans.  Toss well to coat.  Add remaining sugar mixture.  Stir and toss well.

5. Divide the pecans between the two prepared pans.  Spread them out so that they are evenly distributed in the pans.

6. Bake at 250* for 1 1/2 hours, stirring every 30 minutes.  Pour nuts on to parchment paper lined cooling racks, and cool completely. 

Springtime on Easy Street - Part 3

Yes, I'm running behind at the moment.  This happens every year... Despite my best intentions, I just don't manage to keep up with the steps.  Finals were a priority, as I needed to get the best grades possible for admission to the RN program next year.  Plus, I had an admission exam for said RN program...  I'm so glad the studying is over for a few weeks! 

The other thing that slows my sewing progress is the fact that I "lose" my sewing area every Christmas.  You see, our living room is very long and narrow.  If the furniture is along the walls, it feels like a bowling alley!  We have  the furniture arranged so that it's comfortable and welcoming, but that left an area about five feet deep behind everything.  I claimed that as my sewing area!  I have a table and desk back there, a power outlet, and a light - so it's just about perfect!  During the holidays, though, we put the Christmas tree (a small live one in a pot) on my table.  That means my sewing machine has to move somewhere else...  Then I'm not as motivated, or I don't have a good place for it...  It's okay, though - I know I'm not the only one a little behind!  So here are some of my step 3 blocks, the shaded 4-patches.

I was really excited to get to use my pinks for this step.  I just love the way they play off the purples, and my neutrals have a calming effect on the vibrant colors.  I'm going to make sewing a priority tomorrow, and am planning on at least getting my steps 4 and 5 cut out, and a couple of each sewn up.

Did I mention I love my fabrics? :)

Knitting Projects

I learned to knit as a little girl, but didn't do much of it. Over the years I've tried a few times to make a sweater, but I don't think I ever finished one. I'd run into problems and not have anywhere to go for help. The world is very different now, with You-Tube and Ravelry, the ability to Google and use e-mail for help. So, drumroll please... Here's my first completed sweater, for my almost three-year-old Grandson, William.

From "The Big Books of  Kids' Knits" by Zoe Mellor

I made it size four, so it may be way too big, but he's tall for his age, with broad shoulders. I'm eager to see a picture of it on him so I'll know if it comes close to fitting.

My son requested a hat for mountain climbing, and I'm about half-way done with that. But I figure his head isn't growing, so it can take a bit more time. I've also almost finished a pullover for me -- just one sleeve to go. Unfortunately our weather has warmed up again here, so I may have to turn on the AC to have a chance to wear it.

A Sophisticate on Easy Street - Part 4

I'll admit that I wasn't thrilled when I saw we were doing Flying Geese again this week. I was getting a slightly later start -- Saturday morning -- as I'd worked all week knitting a sweater for my Grandson and finishing some other Christmas projects for out-of-towners, then wrapping and mailing everything Friday afternoon.  Thinking about those "geese", I decided to challenge myself to do a better job with that shape this week, and to make sure I enjoyed the process more. For me that meant not doing all the cutting and stitching assembly-line fashion. Instead I only cut out about 12 blocks at a time; then I pieced and attached them to the Week Two blocks before starting more. I enjoyed watching them come together and seeing my progress in finished units. Maybe it wasn't quite as efficient, but it was fun. I had all 64 Flying Geese units completed and joined with the others before the end of Saturday afternoon, and I think they look pretty good. I only have one plum fabric, but the large floral design gives it a lot of variety when it's pieced into blocks.

Love the way the colors look together!

The rest of that day and Sunday I finished piecing the Shaded Four Patches from Week Three that I'd left while I finished my Christmas projects. I ended up using the too-large triangles I'd cut earlier just as they were and then trimming the finished blocks down to size. It took longer, but I was happier with my results. I pieced them in smaller batches, too, and enjoyed the process so much that after I finished those I did some more sewing. First I finished the Log Cabin background of a simple winter scene I making up. It's my "For When I Can't Get the Points to Match" Wall Hanging, where I rebel against the precise piecing required in most quilts that sometimes drives me crazy. For it I deliberately made the blocks uneven and mismatched the corners. :)  Next I'm going to applique a few free-form evergreens on it, then add embroidery and maybe some beads or other fun embellishments. Finally, I cut out and pieced some blocks for a blue and white quilt I've been thinking about doing for a long time. I've decided to use the Jacob's Ladder pattern, as it's a really simple block that gives an intricate look. It has the same white-on-white background fabrics that I got for this mystery quilt -- I love the way they contrast with the strong blues. So one project leads to another, even before the first is finished. And the quilting goes on...


This post is part of Bonnie Hunter's Mystery Quilt Week Four Link-Up.

Quilts in Shades of Gray

Whether you spell it gray or grey, it's not a color that gets used much in quilts. When Bonnie Hunter announced that she was using that particular color as a major player in her Easy Street mystery quilt, it made my daughter and I think. We realized neither of us had any gray fabrics on our stash, though I did find a small piece stuck in a box some time later. We both intended to make the mystery quilt and thought it would be fun to challenge ourselves by using the same gray fabric but choosing all the others differently. Since then I've noticed gray in quite a few quilts, and I've about decided it's sadly under appreciated.

Here are some quilts I've found that use gray. 

I love the colors against the barn! There's
gray in the quilt, too.
From: life on the selvage edge

Gray can be modern.
From: V and Co.

Gray can be young.
By Louise
From: lululollylegs

It can even be sweetly feminine.
From : oops-lah

Here gray sets off the many other colors used and
also keeps them from clashing.
From: material obsession

Nothing but gray, yet lovely!
By Yoko Saito
From: Be*mused

Finally, here's a very sophisticated use of gray.

By Tim Latimer
From: tim quilts

These quilts make me think I've been missing something by not using gray.

A Sophisticate on Easy Street - Part 3

I could call this post "A Comedy of Errors". I messed up cutting the strips (too narrow), messed up cutting the big triangles (too big), messed up sewing the little triangles to the squares (wrong edges) -- about the only thing I did right was cut the 2" squares! As I progressed, I also found the corner of the small square wasn't meeting up with the large triangle like it should. Normally I'd re-stitch them to make the pieces fit exactly, but that would have made the finished squares too small and caused problems later. So I took a break to think about my strategy.

Some of my wonky blocks. The colors are not a mistake; my green in Bonnie's  blue.

Now I could just show you pictures of my perfect blocks (I do have some), and leave out the details of my problems. But I can't be the only quilter who makes mistakes, measures incorrectly, and struggles with getting my seams in exactly the right place. Frankly, I'm tired of reading books and magazines that make quilting sound easy, that imply all you have to do is connect the dots and your results will be museum-worthy. I'm NOT talking about Bonnie's blog or books, or those of fellow mystery quilters. But there seems to be an implication in the professional quilting world that new rulers and rotary cutters and templates and programmable sewing machines and  You-Tube videos make quilting goof proof. But it's not. However you cut your fabric, it's still slips, bias edges still stretch and corners still slide. And I, for one, don't intend to pretend otherwise.

Sometimes everything works beautifully. Other times it doesn't. For those days I have a "three chances" rule. I'll try and fix a less-than-perfect block three times if I catch a problem soon enough. If it isn't right after the third try I stop and use it anyway. It didn't look like fixing these wonky blocks would work, since they'd come out too small if I did. So I decided to cut the rest of the big triangles slightly larger and then trim the finished blocks down to size. It's more work that way, but with only 64 total blocks to do all week, I knew I had time and that I'd ultimately be happier with the results. But every project and person is different.

So my message to anyone out there in Quiltville is the same one I keep telling myself -- "Let go of the desire for perfection. You don't have to win an award or create a quilt worthy of a museum. Just create the quilt that is in you today. Do the same tomorrow. And enjoy the process."

Here are a few of the good ones.

This post is part of Bonnie Hunter's Week Three Linky.

Springtime on Easy Street - Part 2

I haven't been able to do much on this step - Flying Geese - this week.  Between work, finals, and more work my time and energy have been pretty much gone.  I did get everything cut out, though, and managed to piece a few units just to make sure I had cut things correctly.  They're not perfect, but they're good enough.  I work this weekend, then have two more finals on Tuesday.  Wednesday is going to be my first absolutely free day in quite awhile, and I plan to spend it at my sewing machine!

I wish I could figure out how to take pictures that are true to color - my purples are much richer and more purple-y, and a lot less blue than they look here...

A Sophisticate on Easy Street - Part 2

I'd mentioned to Betsy that I was looking forward to working with some color this week, so I could see how my fabrics would look cut apart and sewn with the others. It turns out this week's color is... Purple! My color choices are quite different from Bonnie's, but her purple is my plum, so that makes this step extra clear. I only have one fabric for this color, which I think officially makes it a "Controlled Scrap" quilt. I would have been happy to use more fabrics, but between our two fabric stores and my stash I couldn't come up with another piece that matched enough for me, so it's all plum, all the way. That's OK, I really like this one, which is a companion piece from the same line as my inspiration fabric. (I didn't necessarily plan on having an inspiration fabric. I just saw it, fell in love, and said, "I want a quilt that looks like that." Voile, an inspiration fabric is born!)

Inspiration Fabric on Left, Fabric Used in Quilt on Right

If my calculations are correct I need 11-13 plum WOF strips 2" wide, depending on the actual WOF. (Ended up needing 10.) And I need just a tad over 26 24" strips of background, since most of these pieces are fat quarters. Will check with Betsy to see if her math agrees with mine. Since I don't have a cutting surface tall enough to cut fabric really comfortably I'll be splitting that step up. Otherwise, back trouble will plague me all day.

Got the strips cut with no problem. I appreciated Bonnie's heads-up for next week so we could at least cut the background strips while we had the fabrics out. It saved time, and I find there's often a bit of waste every time I have to pull a fabric out and prepare to cut from it again. I'm a bit nervous because I'm almost out of my white-on-whites now. If we need them again I may have to go shopping for a few more. (That would be a tragedy, wouldn't it? LOL) I haven't used these rulers before, but her video tutorial was clear and straightforward so I don't anticipate problems. I may have them, but at least I don't anticipate them.

After cutting out the plum triangles I realized my first mistake -- I'd made one and a half as many of those strips as I needed, and twice as many background strips, because I forgot to allow for the overlap you get when you use the triangle rulers to cut your shapes. It's a basic visualization mistake that I'm no too happy about. I'm afraid all those background strips will be wasted, and I'll definitely need more white-on-white fabric. Can't help wishing the directions came with an estimate of how much length you need to cut of the strips -- but it's my fault for not thinking clearly. At any rate, an hour with Jessica Fletcher and "Murder She Wrote" got almost all the triangles cut out.

A call from Betsy warned me to keep track of the smaller triangles so that a pair that is cut together is stitched into the same unit. Seems that makes the sewing more precise. I'll do my best to keep the sets organized and in order as I chain stitch them. I've never had great success getting flying geese sections into a quilt with all their points exactly right. I'm being as careful as I can, but I'm also trying to embrace the idea that quilts don't have to be perfect to be worth making. And I do like the way the plum fabric looks with the white-on-white background.

This post is part of Bonnie Hunter's Week Two linky: http://quiltville.blogspot.com/2012/12/mystery-monday-link-up-part-2.html.

Sewing Room - Mom

My Sewing Room is a work in progress. Formerly the Master Bed Room, it's located just off the Living Room downstairs. After DH died I moved to one of the upstairs bedrooms, and I'm very happy there. So I recently decided to make better use of the MBR by turning it into a sewing room. I kept the soft sage green paint on the walls. The flooring is laminate tiles, ideal for sweeping up stray threads or finding dropped pins. We had added cabinets along one wall years ago, and they're perfect for storing quilting and sewing stuff.

The blocks hanging on the cabinet doors are part of an on-going series of sampler squares, where I try out new techniques or different features on my machine. Some day they may be a quilt. Right now I just love looking at them. Behind the doors on the left are my large pieces of fabric, some quilt books, and odds and ends that don't fit elsewhere. The drawers hold fabrics for particular quilts I haven't started yet, notions, hand sewing and embroidery needs, etc. The painting was done by my Grandmother, Vera Grutter, and is me as a child. The antique clock on the shelf was also hers, and the quilts piled below it were made by her and my other Grandmother, Louise Quiggle. So they are always with me when I sew, and that makes me very happy. The jars hold small scraps sorted by color. I love just looking at them and thinking about how I could use the colors. The storage on the right is ready to be rearranged to accommodate the yarns I've recently acquired for knitting and weaving.

Swinging left from the above picture you would see a tall, narrow window that isn't in the photo, and the new daybed. The door in the photo goes to the back deck, and the area in front of it is kind of my dumping ground for things I need to keep handy but haven't found a good place for yet.

The plastic bins store most of my fabric stash, lots of fat quarters. I cut on top of them. It's really too low, so I don't cut for long at one time, but I haven't decided how to arrange this part of the room better. I do like being able to move around three sides of my cutting table.

The daybed is new. One of my goals is to make a quilt and pillows for it this spring. Right now one end holds fabric and pieces for Bonnie Hunter's mystery quilt, while Christmas presents are collecting on the other. I plan on mounting rods on the walls for quilts and weavings in the near future.

Opposite the daybed I have my design area -- wall-mounted flannel that I can stick fabrics and squares to. Hanging there now is my "Little House on the Prairie" Triangle quilt. It's waiting to for me to make the back, then sandwich, tie and finish it with prairie points. Or do I put the prairie points on next? I'm not sure, I'll have to think about this...

I made the chair cover out of fabric from my stash. I love the sky blue color with the green walls, it makes me feel like I'm sewing in my garden! Betsy made the sewing machine cover some years ago. When she loaned me her machine, it came along for the ride. I love having three generations of family in my room. The sewing machine table backs up to the ironing board, so as I sew I look toward my pretty shelves, Grandmothers' quilts and jars of fabric scraps.

Some people have their spaces arranged so they never have to leave their chairs. It works very well for them, but I really like being forced to walk around the room as my sewing progresses. It keeps me from getting too stiff. I also find good lighting is more important as I get older, and I have a floor lamp with a goose neck attachment behind my sewing chair.

So that's my Sewing Room so far. It's lovely to have the space, and I plan to continue to enjoy it. But I'll be honest -- if I could chose I'd rather have the house full of people and be sewing on the tiny folding table I used for years. Still, we don't always get to chose the path our lives take, we can only do the best with what we have, and my sewing room is one way I'm trying to do that.

It's Fruitcake Time

This year I decided to make fruitcake. I blame Alton Brown for giving me the idea, as I recently picked up his first Good Eats cookbook, and it includes his Free Range fruitcake -- all dried fruits, doused in liberal quantities of rum. But the roots of my fruitcake experiment go further back. As a child I loved the TV special A Christmas Memory. We would go to Grandma's house, since she had a color TV, to watch Truman Capote's "evocative narrative focuse(d) on country life, friendship, and the joy of giving during the Christmas season." * Fruitcake figures largely in the sweet story of the happy holidays young Truman spent with an elderly, slightly batty cousin.

Years later my brother married a Southern girl, and her first Christmas brought our family portions of several types of fruitcake her family made every year. There were white ones, dark ones, densely alcoholic cakes and gently fruity types. I think I loved them all! Unfortunately, my SIL's relations with her family went downhill after she married my brother, and we never got to sample those lovely wares again.

So here it is, Christmas 2012 approaching. My loving husband, who hated even the thought of fruitcake, has been gone for several years. (Hopefully St. Peter didn't meet him at the gates with a sample of Heavenly Manna stuffed with artificially green candied cherries and lemon peel. LOL) I felt I needed some fun new holiday traditions. Fruitcake seemed perfect, especially when I found out both my kids inherited my enjoyment of it.

That's how I found myself over Thanksgiving having a Fruitcake Bake-a-Thon. I made two loaves of a white one with no alcohol, only orange juice. It holds the most typical mix of candied fruits. I made what turned out to be three loaves of Alton Brown's lovely offering. After soaking the dried fruit overnight in rum, (I chose Sailor Jerry's Spiced variety), you then simmer it on the stove while melting in the butter and brown sugar. AMAZING! I wish I could have a pot on the stove everyday, it smelled so spicy and rich. 

My third recipe is called Stephen's Dark, and is a take-off on the old Joy of Cooking recipe. Since my Joy fell apart years ago and somehow never got replaced, I'm using Stephen's version for what should have been two loaves but ended up more one and a half. It has a mix of dried and candied fruit. You put alcohol inside, (I used Marsala, since I had it on hand), and then as it bakes you pour more whiskey over it every 15 minutes. I don't drink, so I had to seek help from others before shopping for the alcohol, and for this step I bought Jim Beam Black. They man at my local liquor store had clearly fielded Christmas baking questions before, and made me feel right at home. 

As soon as the fruitcakes come from the oven you douse them with the chosen liquid, and let them cool in the pan. Then you douse them again, remove from the pan, and wrap them in cheesecloth which has also been soaked in the alcohol or juice. I'll admit I wrapped them first, then poured the liquid over until they were soaked. It seemed easier and a lot less messy. The cakes now reside in sealed plastic bags, and get re-doused every few days. (I'm may run out of rum before Christmas.) I think the alcohol keeps them from molding, but I also read you can refrigerate them after a week or two, so I may do that just to be sure.

I can already tell you these lovelies are good, as one of the Free Range cakes was smaller than the rest, and I decided to try a bite before wrapping it up...     Did you know a tiny wedge of fruitcake is great with a cup of hot tea in the morning? Or in the afternoon? Or just before bed? And it got better everyday, even without the extra rum. Yum.

I think part of what makes them so good is quality ingredients. I used lovely dried Turkish apricots, flavorful dried tart cherries, and some organic figs, among many other fruits. I purchased almost everything fresh, mostly from Whole Foods. The cake part is pretty much a pound cake, and I used real, fresh butter. Shortly before Christmas, sections of these cakes are going out to the kids, and we will be enjoying and making notes for changes or improvements for next year. Should be, as the man on TV says,  "Good Eats".


*Wikipedia "A Christmas Memory"
**You can watch a newer version of  A Christmas Memory on Netflix. You-Tube has portions (in b&w) of the version I grew up with, starring Geraldine Page, and narrated by Capote himself. The short story is also available on the web.

A Sophisticate on Easy Street - Part 1

A couple of phone calls with Betsy the morning the first step was released established that we needed to cut twenty Width-of-Fabric strips in our mutual gray. Then, since most of our background fabrics are in fat quarters, we could cut the longer gray strips in half and match them with the lighter fabrics to piece. Clear as mud, right? My background fabrics are all white on white, Betsy's are cream. Both look great with the gray. I had two white-on-white fabrics that were 1/2 yard cuts. So I used them full length and for half of the strips. One is the stripe you can clearly see in the above picture upper right, the other is a more mottled and seen center square, lower left end. The rest of my strips came from my assorted fat quarters.
I'm not the world's most accurate quilter, so I took my time and carefully cut my fabrics strips. After sewing them together I pressed the seams flat, as I've read that helps to set them. I then proceeded to cut the strips into 2" pieces. After cutting 200, I suddenly realized I'd forgotten to go back and press the seams to one side. So I spent almost an hour ironing those little pieces open, seams pressed toward the gray end. :(
Despite that setback, I finished all my squares on Sunday. The corners meet nicely in the center, and on the back they swirl very prettily. 400 four-patches now reside, labelled, in a large baggie, waiting for the next big reveal. In the meantime, I think I'll go knit some socks...

This post is linked to Easy Street Monday Link-Up #1!

Springtime On Easy Street - Part 1

Even though this week's Easy Street step was pretty simple - 4 patches  - I actually learned a new technique!  I've heard about spinning seams, but had never attempted it before.  If I have a lot of bulk at intersecting seams, I usually just iron them open.  On Friday, though, I decided that this would be as good a time as any to see if I could manage to figure how to get the seams to spin.  To my surprise, it really wasn't that difficult, and it didn't take any more time than pressing all of the seams open would have.  All of my centers match up beautifully, and the backs of my units look great, too!

The "spun seams":

My 200 4 patches:

Now I'm off to work on Christmas presents!

This post has been linked to the Easy Street Monday Link-Up #1!

A Sophisticate on Easy Street -- Fabric Selections

This is my first time making one of Bonnie Hunter's mystery quilts, so the entire process is a bit of a mystery to me. My daughter has been urging me to join her for several years, but I never felt organized enough, or de-stressed enough, to tackle it. Earlier this year she practically FORCED me to start sewing again, and it felt good. So I agreed to join the challenge, and here I am.
After brainstorming possible color combinations, we finally went fabric shopping. My only clear plan was to use fabrics from my stash. First we chose our fabric-in-common, a lovely gray that we both agreed we wouldn't normally pick. Then my stash busting plan took a left turn when I fell in love with a deep plum, teal and cream print. Dramatic and sophisticated, it required colors I couldn't be sure I had at home. So I bought fabric -- the all over inspiration print and a coordinating plum to start. The hunt began for suitable teals, which proved elusive. (Turns out I did have a few at home to mix in.)
Those of you making the quilt will realize that I needed a fourth color. Olive green seemed a good choice, and it was hard to find, too. I bought a large amount of one batik print, and added a couple of others from my stash. For the background we decided white-on-white prints were necessary to provide the proper pop of color.
In the end I had one gray for the constant, one plum, four teal and three olive fabrics. Not exactly the scrappy explosion I'd expected, but I'm quite happy with my colors and it will be fun to see how they interact as the quilt unfolds. Just to make things more confusing, I'm using my blues for Bonnie's greens and my greens for her blues -- got that? (I labelled them all and am counting on Betsy to keep me straight.)

Happy Thanksgiving!

Mom is busy making three kinds of fruitcakes.

I'm making sweet potato casserole, green bean casserole, and praline pumpkin cheesecake.

Have a wonderful day full of friends, family, and food - and don't forget to take a moment to count your blessings.  No matter how bad things are (and we've been there over the past several years), there is still something to be thankful for. 

Psalm 107:1 "Give thanks to the Lord, for He is good; His love endures forever." 

And, if that doesn't work for you, at least you can be thankful that I'm not making the turkey this year!

Springtime on Easy Street - Fabric Selections

If you haven't already checked out Bonnie Hunter's new mystery quilt Easy Street, you really should!  I was undecided about my color choices for quite awhile.  While I love the purples and grey that Bonnie's using, I wasn't as convinced about the lime greens and aqua/turquoises, nor the black on white prints.  For awhile, I planned on using a slight variation on her colors - apple greens and sky blues, with my neutrals to be determined later.  But I really felt that it needed some rose, too.  I debated switching out the purples for a deep rose, but purple is one of my favorite colors, and I've never used it in a quilt!  It wasn't until the morning that Mom and I were going to the fabric stores (an hour away!) that I finally settled on colors, and a theme.

Between the greens, blues, and purples the fabrics felt like spring - something that will be rather elusive here for awhile.  Everything is so brown and grey until mid-March or early April.  The bright colors made me happy, but it still didn't feel quite right.  I realized that my real hangup was the blue, and I still really wanted rose.  It's not that I don't like blue, it just wasn't inspiring me for this project.

What I finally settled on was spring greens, rosy pinks, and dark purples - along with the grey fabric that Mom and I are both utilizing.  I also chose cream-on-cream prints rather than black on white, as the creams felt calmer to me.  My fabrics feel like a spring garden now, and they make me smile just to look at them! 

I'm going to call my quilt "Springtime on Easy Street".  It's a little obvious, I know, but it just fits.  I don't have much of a fabric stash, so I did buy the majority of the fabric.  I got quarter-yard cuts and made sure that I had a nice range of tones and shades within each color - Mom was a big help there!  I did have a purple, a couple of pinks, and a few neutrals in my stash that I pulled in, too.  I am so pleased with my fabric choices.  I think that working with them this winter will be so much fun!

This Blog is Bonnie Hunter's Fault...

I have been an avid follower of Bonnie Hunter's Quiltville for several years now.  Two years ago, I participated in her annual mystery quilt - that year it was Roll, Roll, Cotton Boll, and I loved it!  The quilt is not finished yet (I was in nursing school at the time, and got bogged down with all of the monotonous string piecing!), but I love it, and it is definitely not going to stay a UFO for much longer.  Last year, I did not make Orca Bay, as the stress of a new job was just too much for me.  This year, however, I'm all in!

I was so excited when Bonnie announced this year's quilt - Easy Street!  I enjoyed the challenge of Cotton Boll, but really don't have the time for something quite that intricate, so the fact that she says it's going to be simpler is perfect for me!!

Mom has started quilting again this year, after a long hiatus, so we have decided to tackle the mystery together - sort of!  We each want our own quilt, and have different ideas for what we'd like, so we're making our own quilts, but we've added a twist.  In Bonnie's fabric requirements, she suggest one "constant" fabric (everything else is scrappy).  For our quilts, Mom and I have decided to use the same constant fabric, but pick our own colors/themes from there.  After spending quite a bit of time in several fabric shops - and Olive Garden, but I digress - on one very fun day, we also decided to go with a gray.  If my kitchen table wasn't covered up with groceries for Thanksgiving, I'd try to get a better photo, but this will have to do for now... lol!

This fabric will be the unifier between our quilts.  I'm really excited about the mystery quilt, and having a common fabric between the two of our quilts is going to be so much fun!  We ended up starting this blog so that we could post weekly updates of our progress on the mystery quilt, and also participate in Bonnie's weekly linky parties.  So thanks, Bonnie, for giving Mom and me several new things to do together! 

Oh, and the first clue is up this Friday!  Can you tell I'm excited?! 

A bit More About Us

First, thanks to Betsy for quickly getting this set up. I really like the look! The idea for this blog came up while we were riding in the car discussing our quilting "challenge" and the need to have a place to post pictures of our progress. "We could share the same blog" one of us said. "It could be called "Something - MAD" for Mother And Daughter." (I think that was her idea.) Unfortunately "Our Mad World " was taken, so we brainstormed some through e-mail and "Our MAD-e World" was born. It's our way of keeping in touch with each other - and you, too.

Welcome to our world.

Welcome to Our Made World!

At the moment, Mom and I live pretty close to each other.  We try to get together once or twice a week, and enjoy sharing our current hobbies obsessions.  So far, we cook, sew, quilt, knit/crochet, and read voraciously.  Now Mom's added weaving and dying, and I've begun spinning!  Along with all of this, we've decided to tackle a new quilt together-yet-separately (more on that to come), and realized that it would help so much to have a blog to share our progress with each other. 

Here it is, then, our Mother-and-Daughter eWorld!