All Tangled Up........

Well, it seems I have been bitten by the tangling (i.e. Zentangle) bug again.  Winter is a great time to spend hours with a pen and paper, creating thick callouses on my fingers, sometimes forgetting to come up for air.  Here is my trail of pics….

 

"Broken Dishes" and the pottery challenge Part 2

Our recent pottery challenge was a lot of fun.  It required me to study the tea cup I received, and be inspired designing a small quilt that symbolizes its origin and history, as well as please Sally the recipient.

The teacup was the last remaining piece in this set of English china.  I didn't need to be a major sleuth to know this meant a lot of broken pieces preceded this tiny delicate cup.  Ta-dah…I would use the "broken dishes" block in my design.  

Sally's grandmother was born in the Netherlands. I had no idea when her family came to the US, but I knew she was born in 1849....so I picked browns and creams in mid-19^th century reproductions, since I didn't have Dutch fabrics in my stash. 

I also researched the history of the "broken dishes" block. There are many details about its history, but to simplify, it exemplifies the early Americans packing up their possessions and heading west to settle in the new frontier. Their treacherous wagon travel meant lots of lost and damaged personal belongings, thus the broken dishes pattern emerged.  Its not a pinwheel though, rather a tiny little HST pieces in similar fabric designs signifying broken pieces of fine china, all in a compact little quilt would work great.

Sally liked her quilt, as did her mother, and the effort created around it.  If they liked it half as much as I enjoyed doing it, then I'm a happy quilter.  And thanks to the bee in Downers Grove for their inspiration!

I'm in love with my Niagara non-aerosol spray starch plus, with DURAfresh™

I don’t talk a lot about products on my site, but I found one I feel deserves a plug, especially for cost conscious quilters.

Most hard core quilters know the name BEST PRESS, a flake free spray starch product that comes in various fragrances like spring breeze and lavender. It works great but it’s pricey.  Sorry BEST PRESS, but it is.

There are tons of recipes on Pinterest to make your own starch. A few of my quilting BFF’s have tried them, with varied success.  The starch settles in the bottle, constantly requiring shaking or plugs up.  Not a deal breaker, it’s just kind of annoying. And it’s cloudy. And you have to add essential oils if you want it to smell nice.

I kept scouring the stores and finally found a starch that I believe stands up to Best Press…….Niagara non-aerosol spray starch plus, with DURAfresh™ fabric refreshment technology. Great marketing no? Anyway, its biodegradable, non-aerosol so it’s not killing the ozone layer, guaranteed not to flake, in a lovely light lavender fragrance…….and the 22 oz. bottle was $1.50 at my local Meijer store. It also comes in original fresh linen scent.

So I gave it a try.  It’s hard to see in the photos, but the small dark rose batik is thick and wrinkled, whereas the pink alligator print is super thin and flimsy.  For me, I want starch that forces stubborn wrinkles away, yet gives my limp fabrics substance without gunking (is that a word?) and flaking….you know what I mean.  Here’s the before and after…..stubborn wrinkles gone, flimsy fabric feels thick, I super saturated before pressing and there are no flakes, and the verdict is.......I think I’m in love. I know, get a life!

ALWAYS IN STITCHES Bee Pottery Challenge

Recently one of my bees decided to do a quilt challenge, largely inspired by a program presented by the All Hands Around bee from Downers Grove presented at our Big Red Quilters Guild program.  Their bee has been around for more than a quarter century! Doesn’t that sound so much older than say 25 years?!  This group does A LOT of challenges, and they don’t shy away from the tough ones.

Our bee decided to take baby steps first, and do something small and simple, a pottery challenge.  Everyone brought a favorite piece of pottery hidden so no one knew whose it was or what it looked like. Each participant picked their surprise, and opened so the group could see what each had to use for their inspiration.

Keeping it simple, we decided the size to be 12-24” on each size, so nothing smaller than 12” square, but not larger than 24”. It could be rectangle or oval, whatever shape seemed inspired by the pottery. We gave ourselves less than 2 months, before some of our snow birds left the winter. 

We had a blast, and here is a snapshot of what we did:

Missing - Nancy's quilt for Ines

A wool crazy quilt with blanket stitching made by Joan, inspired by Barb’s modern pottery tray

A charming applique pattern made by Sally, inspired by Joan’s mothers antique hobnail milk glass chicken dish, honoring her pie making skills

Quilt made by Ines, honoring Janice’s blue and white delft inspired dish

Quilt made by Janice, inspired by Nancy’s Dream Big dish

“Broken Dishes” quilt done in mid-1850’s reproduction fabrics commemorating Sally’s great grandmother born in 1849 in the Netherlands, her last remaining English china tea cup.

Keeping loved ones close at Christmas......

Each Christmas certain traditions seem to take a more important place in our home.  It might mean the placement of tree in our living room gets a premier spot, or how the manger is arranged and lite. It has more to do with my mood, and my inherent need for "changing things up". 

I have some treasures that are over 40 years old. At the end of the holiday I carefully clean, wrap and pack each one before putting them away....until next year. This is how they they become cherished treasurers, taking extra care of them. The following year they are ready to take a new place of prominence somewhere in our home.  This way, it seems we have new things. Changing things up is good. And I can confidently say "that old thing?" when someone asks if I bought something this year.  Not a chance!

Although I switched things up like usual, it all of a sudden occurred to me that a few things had prominence that hadn't been seen in my house for years.  A huge red poinsettia, an old manager, and a cookie press to make spritz cookies. These things hadn't been pulled out in a long time. I even pulled out a window wreath made from an old wire hanger strung with lights and wrapped with a banner of silk holly. 

All of a sudden it hit me. These were things my mother would have had out, things she cherished in her own holiday traditions, and things I may have thought tacky a time or two.  But not this year. 

Mom is gone. This is the first Christmas we won't laugh about her insisting she wear her fur coat and hat no matter how warm it was outside, her goofy Christmas earrings she insisted on wearing. I don't particularly like poinsettias but I bought myself a poinsettia because she loved them.....really loved them. She worked like crazy to keep them alive until next Christmas. Those craggy bare stems drove me nuts by July. Toss them out I'd say, but that was tyranny.  The old manger was covered with this grass like straw which made it impossible to really clean, which meant decades of dust embedded in the roof lines. But that dust might be of mom, so I'm okay with it this year.  I haven't made spritz cookies in years. She loved them. And I have her old German cookie recipe, and antique press so both came out this Christmas. Those rich sweet buttery cookies are really very good, and better a day or two later.  My homage to my mothers mad baking skills. 

So mom, you are close, in me cherishing the things you did.  Merry Christmas mom, you are greatly missed.

Southern Buttermilk Biscuits..........

Biscuits. Plain old ordinary Southern Buttermilk Biscuits, which in reality there is nothing ordinary about them, all deserving capital letters. So what makes biscuits so elusive, so daunting that the simplest bakery item scares bakers away? They have to be simple, since ‘back in the day’ when I was in middle school biscuits was the very first thing we made in ‘home ec’, short for home economics. They call it something else today.

What has remained elusive to me is finding that perfect flaky, buttery, sweet smelling recipe that allows the biscuits to puff up nearly tripling in size. I’ve tried tons of recipes over the years, but I think I may have finally found a keeper. So here it goes….

2 ½ cup self-rising flour (see note below)

1 stick (1/2 cup) frozen butter

1 cup ice cold buttermilk

Preheat oven to 475 degrees. Everything should be super cold, including the rolling pin as biscuits are much like pie crust, the more you handle it the tougher it will become. Begin by placing your self-rising flour in a large glass bowl, making a small well in the center. Next grate the frozen butter directly in the well using a hand held cheese grater. Add the buttermilk and stir approximately 15 times to incorporate being careful not to over mix. Turn dough onto a floured surface, and roll out with an ice cold rolling pin to roughly 1” thick. Fold dough onto itself and repeat a total of 5 times. The last time roll dough approximately ½” thick, then cut with a biscuit cutter, glass or other shape. Bake in a round or square pan 15 minutes at 475 degrees until golden brown on top.  A cast iron skillet also works great, plus the closer you place them together in the pan the higher they rise. Brush melted butter over the top and serve warm with honey and jams.

Note – substitute for self-rising flour – sift together 3 cup all-purpose flour, 4 ½ tsp baking powder and 1 ½ tsp salt, then measure out the 2 ½ cups you need for the recipe, and use the rest to dust your surface before rolling and cutting.

So give it a try, and see for yourself..........made from scratch, with whole ingredients, words you can pronounce, and no preservatives additives.

German Round Robin Project

Last year I had the pleasure of participating in what's called a ROUND ROBIN quilt project with a group of 8 ladies in the US, and 8 ladies in Germany. One person organized the project in each country. 

Each quilter created a center quilt block of our choice. We sent the block, a journal with our photo and biography, and a small handmade gift in a bulk package to a lady organizing in Germany. They in turn did the same process.  Then four names were drawn randomly and assigned to complete a "round". We kept it to four 8" borders each so the quilt would be a manageable size and we didn't end up with king size bed quilts.  Each quilter had six weeks to complete her border then she'd send it off to the next person.  We unveiled the quilt tops at our organizers beach house on a lovely summer evening with Paella and homemade fresh blueberry ice cream for dinner. The finished tops were then boxed up and sent on their way to Germany.

Then we waited for our quilts to arrive. You may recall me posting about a year ago.......part of our package arrived with 3 quilt tops and the other 5 were missing. Our organizer did everything beyond humanly possible working with Germany, the postal service, their lost and found, posting on lost/found online quilt sites, everything short of the FBI/CIA...but nothing turned up.  Everyone was devastated.  All their work, the investment, the creativity....gone. And to think five quilts landed somewhere.....we only hope they were put to good use.

I was one of the fortunate ones to receive a top back. I wanted to be excited yet sensitive to those that lost theirs.  I felt survivor’s guilt. I set my quilt aside for quite some time.

As the year anniversary approached I knew I needed to finish it. I wasn't respecting all the work they did, or the work we did on theirs. These beautiful quilts take a lot of time and energy, and my incomplete top was likely making our German friends feel worse than they already did.

I decide to machine quilt the top myself so I dug it out and got busy.   I shared it at show and tell at our Gate Crashers Retreat, along with the emotional journey that went with it. I'm so glad I finished it.  And I love it, and will cherish it.