So, I made Liam a crown for his big day. Finished it about 15 minutes before the party was supposed to start. It looks cute in the photos and he wore it for a little while, so overall I was pleased. Basically, it’s a simple pieced front and solid back with low loft cotton batting between and a 1″ bit of elastic in the back encased in the lower binding. The fabric is 100% cotton fat quarters from WalMart, $1 each and just too cute. I may need to may a quilt or something with the leftovers. 

Anyway, back to the crown. First, I pieced the front by sewing the pieces together through the batting like this. Next I attached the “1″, sewing a narrow zig-zag with a short stitch length through the fabric and batting, then attached the backing fabric, leaving the bottom open. I trimmed the seam allowance very close and turned the crown right side out, then quilted around each section of the front of the crown. I totally screwed up the elastic casing. Not really sure what I was thinking, but I first attached the elastic to the crown, then sewed the binding to the back of the crown, folded it to front and zig-zagged it with the same narrow zig-zag and a longer stitch length, and finally tried (failed, but tried) to seam the binding around the elastic. Ugly, but it stayed together for the party. 

You can only imagine how long and hard I thought about my baby’s first birthday cake. I lamented having already done the very hungry caterpillar, considered something Sesame Street (in honor of their 40th birthday), and finally settled on a rainbow. It was months of agonizing and eye twitching – Seriously, I have a recurring eye twitch now. That’s hot! – mental gymnastics. Here’s the result. 

crappy photo, but we were in the moment

 The six layer cake is made with a double recipe of Cook’s Illustrated’s Basic White Cake. The batter was very, very scarily thin, but the cakes turned out pretty good. I used the same old baking powder that I thought was crappy last May. So, surprise! The cake seemed dense to me. The frosting is a basic buttercream, and lots of it. Like 10 lbs of powdered sugar’s worth. 

Back to the method, each batch of batter was divided into thirds and dyed a different color with gel food coloring.  A bit was poured into a cupcake pan and the rest was then baked in a disposable 8″ diameter pan. So, there were six individually colored cupcakes and cake layers. The cupcakes were trimmed flat and cut in half to make smash cakes for Liam and Grandpa, who turned 70 in November. 

You can see some of the smash cake layers in the photos below. And, yes, Liam did wind up with both cakes. And Grandpa’s slice of cake too, if you’re keeping track. 

And finally, the moment you’ve all been waiting for. The jello rainbow. 

and it only took 8 hours to make!

 In the bowl, it wasn’t bad, but turned out, this nasty thing looked like a flaccid, multicolored breast implant. I’ll spare you the gory details and leave you with this tip. Do it this way or this way. 

what a feast of sweets...

     As you can see by the date on Brian’s t-shirt he has had his first SOLO on October 6, 2009 (the t-shirt hangs in the airport office where Brian and Jeff take their lessons).   It has been an exciting time for all of us.  Jeff had his solo back in August and now Brian.  They have both been working on their privat pilot licenses and are getting close to having them.  I am so proud of both Jeff and Brian.   Matt has decided that next year he will want to learn to fly too.  Brian will do a “cross-country” solo very soon.  I am nervous about it – there are so many restricted areas around DC.  I know he will be fine, but I do worry.  Silly momma.

     Other happenings…Quilter’s Eden has just had is FIVE YEAR ANNIVERSARY!  I guess that should be a seperate post, since this is the Quilter’s Eden Blog.  It has been a fun five years.  We have had so many wonderful customers come through the store and then stay as friends.  Some of them have even become employees!  What fun that has been.  We now have Nancy and Tina with us as well as Mary, Marilynn, Liz and Amy.  If you are in town (East Grand Forks, MN) you will have to stop in to the store and see all of the new samples that the girls have been working on as well as the beautiful fabrics.  I wish I was there to see it with you.   I miss the girls and our wonderful Eden friends!

I am designing all these quilts with a Christmas theme despite the fact that I live in a country which is hot at this time of the year ……….. and getting hotter towards the end of December. So do we need quilts? Some nights we don’t even need a sheet. Our Christmas quilt doesn’t have wadding, and it is just perfect when a sheet isn’t quite enough but a quilt with wadding (or a blanket) is way too much. Forget about a doona!

We don’t have a single bed in the house anymore, though there are a couple of single air mattresses, so I don’t think about rectangular quilts a great deal. When our kids were at home I made single bed quilts for them, including quite skimpy ones for bunk beds. I even have a single bed size Christmas quilt somewhere in the house ……. must find it to give it an airing between now and the end of the month!

A simple Ohio Star block with a Cathedral Window center is this weeks Twilt. “Winter Sparkle” welcomes in the season.

I hope for the very best Holidays for everyone!

For more info on the Twilts: Twitter quilts…….Twilts or see all my Twilts : Flickr Twilts Page.

As many of you know I had a drawing for a small lap quilt to promote the publication of my book, Devoted to Quilting.  I’d planned to have my 3 year old granddaughter draw the winner, but unfortunetly she was ill and unable to attend our gathering. No fears, my 9 year old grandson was more than willing to fill in for me. I’ll add a picture of him drawing the winning name later today.

And the winner is… Barbara Sather of McAlester.  Congratulations Barbara. Since Barbara lives near me I will try to get a picture of her receiving her quilt and post it also. Barbara  signed up for the quilt drawing during my very first book signing at the Grand Avenue Methodist Church Bazaar in Mcalester.

There were names in the bowl from across Oklahoma and even a few from Texas.  If you signed up and didn’t win, there will be another drawing around Easter. That quilt isn’t made yet, probably won’t be made until January.

When the quilt is finished I’ll post a picture of it here for new subscribers to sign up. Those of you already on the list will automatically be in the next drawing. Good luck to you all. Congratulations Barbara. Hope you enjoy your little quilt.

1.  Weather — Today is cold.  Steely sky, breath condensing.  Hat and glove weather.

2.  One thing I did well yesterday — Can’t think of anything.  I’ll have to come back.

3.  One thing I could have done better yesterday — Responded more neutrally when D. said he had a sore throat.

4. and 5.  Two things I’ll commit to doing today that I might not otherwise get done –

1. download H1N1 vaccine forms and fill them out for the boys.  √
2. cut out pictures for SoulCollage® gathering this weekend.  √

Back to doing something well.

What DID I do well yesterday?  I made a muslin angel that I ALMOST love — but I loved her better before I sharpied in a face, which on some level feels to me like I ruined her, so THAT doesn’t count.  Overcooked the pork chops, which were still okay, but can’t count that.  Spent hours on the phone finding out about Mass. Health, ECOB, COBRA for my sister… but all of that felt like a big muddle so that even though I came out of it with a couple of appts. and a located birth certificate, I wouldn’t put that on the list.  So, what then?

Can I count NOT being awful as doing something well?!!

Yesterday, I contained my rage waiting for 25 minutes at the post office.  There I was picking up a certified letter (on my sister’s behalf — so there’s THAT) that my postal carrier SHOULD have rung the bell for me to sign and receive at the house.  He had THREE chances to make life easy for me.

There it was, the first ‘real’ business day after Thanksgiving and presumably the beginning of package-mailing-season and my wonderful post office branch had ONE window open (the line was ten deep the entire time I waited).  Furthermore, (does this count as TWO things I did well?)  I did not call the postal carrier a liar when he claimed to have rung the bell and knocked when he delivered the three notices, which I know for a fact, he did not.  I was there when the mail hit the floor every single time and no bell was rung, no door was knocked.

And now, I’ll rant about this guy.

This is a postal carrier that defies the notion of service and veers into some creepy realm of vindictive laziness.  When he was assigned to our street, it was all anyone could talk about for weeks — what stupid, incredulous thing he had done THAT day (e.g., drop envelopes with checks in them onto the curb, not deliver mail because a rug-cleaning hose was threaded through the front door, refuse to bend over and pick anything up on a stoop because of a bad back, act like my dog is a vicious, postman-eating predator).  Many of us reported his errors to his supervisor, he was put ‘on probation’ for awhile, and now he is back to his tricks.

Though it serves no purpose, I spend a fair amount of time wondering, as he strenuously cuts corners and makes life difficult for everyone on the route, whether he is acting out of a generalized incompetence or out of some sort of shrewd and calculating desire to inflict misery on his customers.  I tend to think the latter.

Can’t I come up with ONE THING I DID well yesterday?  Oh, here — I added some machine stitching to my Full Moon in Taurus quilt, and miracle of miracles, located the missing moon, by, again miracle of miracles, cleaning up my work area a little.

Here are a few more patterns from Sue Kinn of Mouse Blankets.  Perfect for the season or for any time, they are called Snow Day and Lily Pad.  We have them in the shop and the embellishments are included in the pattern.  Great gift ideas for yourself or a friend.

If you look up the top of this page you will see a tab labeled Links to Lessons.

It has been there for quite awhile, but I have been doing some housework, dusting everything, vacuuming and washing floors, ………………… sorry, that was around our home address ……………….. adding new links, renewing a couple which didn’t work properly. Hopefully everything works, and there maybe a link there to some information you really want!

Also spent some time working on the blogroll too ……….. added a few, deleted a few , lost a few I meant to keep, but they are out there somewhere!

Sometimes things just work. This design is just one of those times. Delicate, dainty, pretty, romantic ……. its got it all.

This one is nice enough, but just doesn’t work like the one above.

There are so many steps to making a quilt, including what it is going to look like in use. Maybe the second one would look perfect on a bed with the framed blocks in the centre of the bed, and the ‘filler’ blocks filling in the space around them and falling over the edge of the bed. The first one would perhaps win more votes in Viewer’s Choice.

Just another decision to make about each quilt project ….. do you want it to be a winner on the wall or on the bed? I design most projects with an end use, small projects for the wall, medium sized ones to have strewn around the living spaces to use as knee rugs, and bigger ones for beds.

With bed quilts I try to keep the main focus on the top of the bed, and although I love borders, I keep the borders fairly simple because in the average bedroom there isn’t room to see the borders properly.

For most of us the huge bedroom with room to waltz around the bed, and see the borders of the quilt, are a dream. I have made a couple of king size quilts which have been auditioned on our queen size bed …… wonderful effect but totally impracticable, especially as I am the one who would have to fight my way past the bits which have half fallen off the bed in the middle of the night for a night time visit to the littlest room in the house!

(It doesn’t help that the biggest bedroom of each of the houses we live in becomes the sewing room/studio!)

PS …………. Ann’s Album has it’s own special Virtual Album Page

Christmas isn’t even here yet and already I’m thinking of January birthday gifts! I just received this quilt in the mail (it only took a week!) for my Mom’s birthday. The three oldest kids in the fam are going in on buying it for her and we just know she’s going to die when she sees it!

Check out QuiltLover’s shop  for more absolutely amazing creations!

Many quilt guilds are coming up to their last meeting before Christmas, and most – including mine – are hosting a potluck party to ring in the holidays.  Here’s a quick and delightful recipe that is easy to make (last minute!) and is perfect for a holiday celebration!

CANDY CANE BARK

That’s it!  Pretty simple.  And yummy.  Get your kids to help you – this recipe is easy enough for them to do as well.

It’s done!
It’s done!

Behold!

Okay, too dramatic? I’m just very excited to finish up this quilt and share it with you all. Though it figures that the days between finishing the quilt and gifting the quilt were either dreary and rainy or I was too busy, so I didn’t get decent photos. (Though, I did end up getting one of five month old Hayden approving it.)

I started it in the beginning of July—though I didn’t touch it most of October. So it took me about four months, give or take. Machine pieced but hand quilted. I’ve decided four months is a bit too long, so I’ll be attempting machine quilting for the next one.

It’s about 40” x 60” with a patchwork of vintage gingham, Harmony Art Organic cottons and an Erin McMorris print for good measure. Paired with the gray, I think it’s a lovely color combination.

PS: Happy Bench Monday!

Photographed by r0ssie

It’s done and gifted! This quilt is high school graduation gift for my cousin (continuing a tradition my Grandma started). He liked it.

my design was inspired by this quilt:
www.flickr.com/photos/31716122@N04/3746451853/

– License

My house is now dripping with decorations ………….. trees, Santas, Snowmen, Gingerbreadmen, baubles, lots of tree trims, reindeer, quilts,  …………… many of them designed and made by me. (These quilts haven’t been made by me, but I did do the designing bit).

You won’t want to miss this sale on November 30th!! If you have any more room in your stash for something special you will want to shop during this sale. It is the best of Cyber Monday sales we have ever had!!

EVERYTHING IN THE STORE IS 20% OFF for NOVEMBER 30th!!

You can view everything in our online catalog by following THIS LINK.

We hope to see you there!!

Jennifer and Robin

I’ve finished Amy’s quilt top! Need to piece the back, then I can start the intimidating process of machine quilting. Will practice with extra fabric and batting first.

I would post the recipe but I must have left it at my in-laws’. The pumpkin was from our garden last fall, baked and pureed and frozen back then. The pie calls for whipping cream instead of evaporated milk and maple syrup instead of sugar. It doesn’t taste particularly mapley — just a nice alternative to white sugar. The crust is made with whole wheat flour and butter — grate the frozen butter right into the flour, then toss with chilled water.

Joanna's Collection by Jennifer Chiaverini for Red Rooster

Sugar Biscuit (in blue) by Robin Betterley for Wilmington Prints

Sugar Biscuit (in pink) by Robin Betterley for Wilmington Prints

We hope you enjoy these new additions to our store at www.quilt-this.com.

Jennifer and Robin

OK, so here are my resolutions for the week, kind of an online to do list…

1. Make something other than teaching resources everyday, even if it’s just for 5 mins
2. Think about things that make me happy and that I can achieve not the things that I can’t achieve
3. Take photos everyday of stuff
4. Don’t procrastinate… do what needs to be done and move on.

Tough last one.

I started a crib quilt for sweetpea, my neice today. It’s the first quilt I will have made and I’m already stressing about it. I thought I’d have a go at doing it quickly without getting the grumbler (my sewing machine) out. So I got out this:

The mini machine

Oh ho. What fun. Not the quick solution I had hoped. It was sew a seam, break a thread, sew a seam, break… you get the picture. The grumbler is coming out after my husband returns home. I, on the other hand, am going to mark THE BOOKS. Joy.

Interesting combination of Super 7s ……………… and I like the first one, but would prefer it didn’t have the swag border. Thank goodness I haven’t wasted a lot of time and fabric making either design!

I am going to let you in on a little secret ………….. I wanted to give blog readers something for Christmas, yes, but I also wanted to reach a grand total of 500 quilts as soon as possible. It will happen next week!

The first part of the tale.

After a long, long sleep, the little box finally got woken up. Her new dress was finished at last! She just couldn’t wait any longer to try it on. So within a single evening, the dress got fitted, and there was a very happy little box admiring herself in every mirror she could find. Not only that, but of course she needed to show off for the camera!

First from one side:

Then from the other side:

With the lid off to show the inside:

And even upside down to show off her pretty feet:

When she had finished admiring herself and dancing in front of the camera, she suddenly got very quiet. “What’s going to happen now? I don’t want to go back to sleeping all the time!” Her maker comforted her: “Don’t worry, you’ll be a Christmas present for a little girl that I’m sure will like you, and be proud to keep her little treasures inside you!” The little box was very glad to hear that she was going to have company soon, and maybe some secrets to guard. So she happily went back to sleep with the promise to be woken up on Christmas Eve and being able to show off her sparkling dress under the tree.

The End.

Whew … Right now I feel a little bit in a daze! I know we all have so much going on … in our personal as well as professional lives. Together with the Harvest Festival we have going on right now, as well as the Thanksgiving Holiday and now Christmas preparations, we are being pulled in so many directions! But, that doesn’t mean we have forgotten you. Still, my favorite thing to do when a take a few moments each day is to read the kind deeds you all are doing.

I realized last night that some of you may be wondering what we are doing to contribute to the kind acts. Inspired by many of you, we have had a week of giving around here … cleaning out closets and donating 8 giant bags of clothes, plus we brought in dozens of like-new toys, games and puzzles. My husband and son worked at the soup kitchen all day on Monday – they served over 600 people that day – and you can believe it made quite an impression on my teenager. I have also been making my boys more aware of what’s going on around them … pointing out a lady to help with her grocery cart (they get stuck in the snow on the way out to the car), and I had my oldest offer to pump the gas for an older man – the gentleman told me it reminded him of the old days when that was part of the service – and was so thankful! We have a homeless man who lives down in town, and so we picked up a pre-cooked chicken for him, a couple of apples, a bag of cookies, and a couple of water bottles – the smile alone was a huge reward. As you can imagine, we have become quite friendly with our local PO. So, we brought in a batch of fudge on Wednesday – they were all so grateful to know that we care! Because we are involved in the Scouts, I always order extra wreaths, trees & centerpieces – and bring them to 3 of the senior citizen homes around here. While we have had such a giving week, what I’m really trying to instill in my boys is the importance of year round thoughtfulness – my boys are very fortunate, so it is their responsibility to help those around them.

Okay, so now on to the past few days of winners. Where were we? Oh Yeah .. Days 21 – 28 … Yikes! But, that’s ok – we have something special for each of these winners … they each receive a $25 Gift Certificate from Homespun Hearth! These Gift Certificates are valid from December 1 – 31, 2009, so they can have a little something extra to spend for the holidays.

Our Day 20-28 Winners are…
Patty – 11/25 Post
Kate – 11/22 Post
Karen Propes – 11/22 Post
Cindy C. – 11/20 Post
Linda Lee NH – 11/11 Post
Joanne – 11/6 Post
Amy – 11 /20 Post
CONGRATULATIONS TO ALL!

So, we are nearing the end of our 30 Days of Giving.  On Monday we are going to have 4 Drawings!  2 for the 30 Days of Giving, and 2 for the Harvest Festival!  We have had so much fun with both of these, and it still is not too late for you to be a part of the fun.  If you would like to be entered into our Grand Prize Drawing for the 30 Days, 30 Gifts, 30 Winners Drawing, then be sure to let us know what kind deeds you are up to!  Simply blog us at any of the posts this month, and your name will be added to the drawing ‘bowl’.  Also, for those of you who make a Homespun Hearth purchase between 11/25 and 11/29, you are eligible to win a $100 Shopping Spree or a $50 Surprise Gift… the drawing for these is also on Monday 11/30!

And, it is just about time that you will be able to spend your Homespun Reward Discounts for 2009.  For the month of December, the accumulated points translate into  discounts for the entire month of December. 

Have a wonderful day!

Teresa

The other day I described a gift I received through an art exchange I took part in. On Friday, this little gem (7.5″ x 6″), from Bonnie of Bonnie Samuel Designs, was in my mailbox. I am beginning to understand why artists are enthusiastic about such exchanges!

Untitled ~ by Bonnie Samuel

Bonnie describes her love of art as follows:

I’ve been interested in art since a child and combining my fiber experience and knowledge with my design and painting skills has opened a new and exciting path for me in the form of textile arts. I pull together all the artistic methods that I enjoy most- fiber, paint, stitchery – and find expressive and creative voice in fiber arts.

Visit her gallery of work, and follow her artistic journey on Bonnie’s blog, as well.

In her artist statement, Bonnie ends with:

My imagery is meant for the viewer to identify with, have a good laugh, raise a fist in affirmation or simply enjoy.

Thank you so much, Bonnie, you certainly sent enjoyment my way!