Cooking and Sewing

This is Luna, Devourer of Worlds. She is our recently[ish] adopted house bunny. Here she is enjoying some outdoor playtime. She helps me sew.


She helped me narrow down the layout of my Moda Friendship Sampler Blocks. For info on the blocks themselves, including color codes, look here and here.


I have also been working on my fox for the Secret Fox Swap. I came up with this mug rug/mini quilt thing. Obviously it needs facial features.


Luna, however, was not impressed with the fox. Here she is illustrating how not-scary the fox is by pretending to sleep. So I made the fox a teensy bit bigger. Gosh, she is so helpful. In all seriousness, isn't she adorable when she sleeps???


Anyways, this semester I am teaching one less lecture and two less labs than normal so I find myself with more time to sew. I pulled this fabric to get started on a quilt for my old college roommate and her boyfriend who just bought a house!


And this is the layout I'm working on. The quilt will be comprised of 8" blocks and the blocks that are colored in are what I'm using to make the quilt. So it will be 8 x 9 blocks. If you can see on the bottom of the page, I sketched each possible block then assigned everything numerical values so I could really randomize the quilt by rolling dice to pick block order. I might write a post to explain what exactly I did because it was a really fun and stress free way to decide on a random layout. I also thought it would look awesome to have the colorful blocks surrounded by a border of monochromatic blocks, but KT wants lots of color, so that would not work this time.


In other news, all three of my hens are laying eggs! From left to right: Bullroarer, Eglantine, and Polydontasaurus.


I used some of their eggs to bake some challah bread that we used to make lemon poppyseed French Toast. Yum!


Speaking of cooking, last week the boyfriend and I decided to do some themed cooking. The theme we decided on was South American. The first themed dish is keshi yena, an amazing treat from the Dutch Antilles. We first had it in Bonaire and loved it!


The second dish for theme week was feijoada, a Brazilian black bean stew. Omnomnom.

Quilt, Purse, Chickens

Last week I volunteered to donate a quilt for a silent auction. The proceeds from which will go to San Antonio Girls Inc. and their STEM (science, technology, engineering, mathematics) summer programs for girls, which is something I think is desperately needed. Woot! So I wanted to make something moderately sciencey. The only bad thing is that the quilt needs to be done by April 25th, because that is the only chance I have to drop it off. AHH!

I decided to do a gradient of blues to represent astronomical twilight--the time of day when the sun is far enough below the horizon so that stars are starting to be visible. The blues I decided on (in order) are: Michael Miller Cotton Couture in Royal, Bella Amelie Blue, Bella Bright Sky, Bella Little Boy Blue, and Kona Bahama Blue

I wanted the stars to be different sizes and shapes, so I ordered fabric from Fat Quarter Shop on Monday and had it by Wednesday. Yay for living so close to them! By the time I left town for the weekend on Friday, I had this much done. Pretty impressive considering how much grading I had to do. But then not so impressive when you factor in that I didn't work on anything else and had one night of total insomnia where I just kept sewing all night because I wasn't sleepy.


Yesterday was my odd day when I teach from 9-11:30 then not again until 7pm, so in that big gap of time, I finished up the front. Backing fabric was purchased today, so it will get basted tonight and hopefully quilted Wednesday.


Since I had a big gap of time yesterday after the quilt front was finished, I decided to work on a purse. I am in need of a fancy purse since every other purse I have made is covered with crazy fabric. I combined the shape of this bag with the fabric cones from this bag. I am loving the way it turned out! The grey and green are both linen.


Close-up of the cones. It looks frumpy because I didn't have fusible fleece, so I had to settle for FMQ on some regular batting.


And I couldn't resist throwing in some Star Wars fabric since the colors matched so well. My inner nerd is very happy about this.


And continuing with the bright green, we have the now 10 week old chickens! They are huge! Also, they now live outside in a bright green enclosure.


Eight have already gone to their forever homes, so we are left with seven. Four of these are still needing to be re-homed, which will leave us with the three we want to keep.

Cheating on My Sewing Machine

I have been going behind my sewing machine's back and doing other stuff. I did get some sewing done, and some prep for sewing, but you will see where my time has been allocated this past week. Let's start with actual sewing though, shall we?

First off we have some progress on my goal for April LYoF, the completely EPP table dresser runner. I stitched in the ditch to hold everything in place because I still didn't know if I wanted to machine or hand quilt it. Isn't the mark of good stitch-in-the-ditch stitching that you can't see it? If so, I win!


Then I decided to start with a little FMQ inside the stars. Now that I see how this looks, I am definitely going to add some hand quilting as well. Though where? Hmm...


I also solved a huge problem that has been plaguing me for over a decade and a half: COLLARS! I love witty t-shirts but hate collars. They are too tight and chokey, they do not accommodate necklaces, and they just aren't flattering. Over the years I have started purging some of my favorite shirts all because of the collars. That will never happen again! I found this outstanding tutorial and managed to make a fully functional, scoop-neck collar for a shirt I love but was going to get rid of. Yes! I even machine washed and dried it to make sure it held up... And it did! Double YES! Now I get to save all my shirts!


Speaking of things that were machine washed and dried, here's some pre-washed fabric. I never pre-wash fabric, but I'm making a set of fancy schmancy napkins for the house and don't want any warping after the fact so I figured pre-washing might eliminate any uneven shrinking. After my lunchbox napkins had uneven shrinking between the front and back fabrics, I knew something had to be done. Fingers crossed!


Now we get into the major cheating on my sewing machine. I made a necklace! Over the weekend, my boyfriend's parents came into town to see the chickens (and us, I suppose?), and we are all rock-hounds so we went rock shop-hopping. I didn't find any rocks I couldn't live without, but I did find these fresh-water pearls that I loved. Then at the second store, I found the awesome leaf toggle, and a plan was born! I have never made a necklace before, so hopefully it holds up.


It is choker length. Two pictures of me in one blog post; Wowww!


Then we have a shot of the now 8-week old chickies. Seven of them are going to their forever homes this week. That will leave eight: three for us, five to be sold.


Mmm, then we have the cooking. This was balsamic flank steak (recipe here), roasted veggies (combined my recipe with this one) with bleu cheese biscuits (no recipe link because they were boring and awful).


Then some orange beef (recipe here) with my favorite ever coconut rice (recipe here). We made some changes to the orange beef: No jalapeno, no deep frying, used sesame oil for pan frying, used half the corn starch to toss the beef in, then used some later to thicken sauce, after beef was seared we put carrots cooked for a bit, then broccoli, then garlic/ginger/orange/green onion THEN we added sauce  and put the beef back in.


Lastly here is my go-to quiche recipe, caramelized garlic, but this time made with a spaghetti squash crust to make it a tad bit healthier. To make this, I roasted a spaghetti squash as I normally would (Martha Stewart can explain that part better), then mixed the stringy goodness with one egg. I pressed that into a pie pan and baked at 375 for about 15 minutes or until it didn't look so moist. Then I just used it like a regular quiche crust! Taaaadaaaa!

Nearly Wordless

I decided on my April goal for Lovely Year of Finishes: My EPP table runner for my dresser. It needs the papers ripped out, basting, quilting, and binding.


I EPPed everything on it, just for funsies.


I made some bleu cheese meatballs with Brussels sprouts and couscous.


Finalized my fabric pull for an upcoming project.


And realized that I need to go in a different direction, so this giant pattern is going in the recycling bin and I'm drafting another.


Then we have the chicks at 40 days old eating a banana.


Then 41 days old helping us brew beer. Of course by helping us brew I mean eating the spent grain that was leftover from brewing a Bock this weekend.

Plenty to do

This month for LYoF, I am going to divide my attention between two main goals. First off we have my Pantone challenge quilt. This is my fabric haul for it. The two left fabrics are solids and the second from the right is a shot cotton. I have never used shot cotton before and I am loving it! I have a design and everything is cut. Stay tuned for progress!


My other main goal for the month is to finish up my bag for the Secret Tote Bag Swap. (Is it cheating is both of these HAVE to be done this month?) This is the main panel I have come up with. It is now trimmed and on its was towards becoming a bag.


While I was working on the boxed corners for the tote last weekend I broke not one...


But TWO needles! Dang. This second one was even a brand new denim needle! There are just so many layers in this bag. I might have been a tad overzealous in my plan. Oh well. With a third needle I was able to get the corners done!


I also served as a pattern tester for TartanKiwi and came up with this lovely badger (pattern is now available for free over here). I named her Constance after the badger in the Redwall books. She is going to be the focal block in a tote bag for a friend of mine who is ironically named Constance. (She goes by Connie and would kill me if she knew I just called her by her birth name!)


In an exciting twist of fate, I actually won something! Something gorgeous! I won all this fabric from Cuts of Cotton! I have no idea what to do with it.


Then of course we have the chickens. They are thriving. Here they are at 11 days old, learning the joys of napping in laps.


Two weeks old.


 Now 18 days old and huge!

Coming off a Downton High

The past few weeks have felt like a whirlwind. Winter break from teaching has been flying by! I have been filling the time with sewing, cooking, and Downton Abbey! Zomg. Sundays are going to rock for a while!

Anywho, here is a quick recap of what I have been up to! First off we have coconut curry that was super tasty (recipe over here).

Then come the Swedish meatballs (recipe), homemade egg noodles (recipe), and lingonberry jam (from IKEA).


The imperial red IPA mentioned previously has finished fermenting and now all we are waiting on is for it to finish carbonating. I can't wait to taste the final product! So far it tastes like it might be my favorite beer we have ever made! Buuut, we also brewed some barleywine that is fermenting [like a beast!] at the moment. Check out all this hop sediment in the bottom of the red!


After Christmas, my boyfriend spent a day helping his BFF build a work bench so I decided to go on a fabric buying road trip! I visited Gone Quiltin' in Bandera, One Quilt Place in Fredericksburg, and Creations in Kerrville (all in Texas). They were all wonderful shops, but Creations felt like heaven!!! I spent over two hours there!!! I had not yet seen the incredible Frida Kahlo line and absolutely fell in love with it. I might have brought too much back with me, but it will get used.


I have also been working on some monochromatic EPP 8 point star blocks for a secret project.


I also made a chess pie following my great Aunt Cuba's recipe. This pie tastes like happiness and sunshine.


I have even made some progress on the houndstooth "quilt." I am using the " " because this is destined to upholster the cushion on my cedar chest. I am not too sure how to make the cover fit the cushion exactly but still be roomy enough to take off for washing. It will come to me!


Last night the boyfriend and I made some stir fry with lots of added veggies (recipe) and some insanely delicious coconut rice (recipe). This made for amazing leftovers today.


I also worked on a sample pattern for The Quilt Cottage. The owner and I are having a competition of sorts; We each picked the fabric for one version of the same quilt and are seeing which one came out best. I picked the fabric for this one because I do not believe Valentines Day should be confined to reds and pinks. If my BFF's new baby turns out to be a girl, I'm quilting this up for her.


Lynda picked the fabric for this one. I finished them both up today and will drop them off tomorrow. They both have their charm.


Lastly, I also finished a trivet for my boyfriend's BFF's wife. The fox is appliqued onto a dark tea-dyed muslin that makes me think of leather. The flying geese did not come out how I envisioned them, but that's okay; either she will like it, or she won't! :)