Back to it

I was able to finish so much stuff in the final days leading up to the start of spring semester. I am going to be teaching over-full time, so my time now belongs to students.

First off, I picked a design for Mug Rug Revival! I hope my partner likes it!


I even quilted it up and finished the binding. Zomg, I love this backing fabric. I had just enough in my scrap bin and it was difficult to part with it. Please give it a good home, partner!



















So here is the finished product! The heart is so much bigger than the mug because I think love is bigger than caffeinated beverages (unless of course you love caffeinated beverages!).

Here is some super tasty rye bread. It turned out so delicious! Two loaves of it went into the freezer to be provisions for the semester since I won't have time to cook. (Recipe here)


One of the loaves went towards Rueben sandwiches. They came out so incredible! We bought the kraut at a local German restaurant because their kraut is magically creamy and delicious. Couple that with nice corned beef, swiss, and homemade Russian dressing and it would be difficult to not be amazing. (Russian dressing recipe is over here)


Then we have some feijoada (pronounced: fay-joe-ah-duh) with sauteed kale and rice. This is a Brazilian recipe and was so insanely tasty. There are 6 leftover bags of this in the freezer!  I kind of frankensteined the recipe out of two that looked decent. My original struggle with this recipe was the cuts of meat they all called for. Originally this was a slave dish in Brazil, using the cheapest cuts of meat, but now it uses some fancy stuff that I couldn't find locally. I used 2 pounds of black beans, 1/2 lb of bacon, 1.5 lbs of beef tips, and 1.5 pounds of pork sausage. Basically I used all the veggies and seasoning listed in both recipes, but added the veggies towards the end. (Recipe 1 & Recipe 2)


We also made Greek food. I didn't take a picture of the tirotrigonas (cheese puffs) but here is the pastitsio. So delicious but so messy. When I was a little kid, an elderly Greek woman told me that "pastitsio" actually means "every dish is dirty" which is totally believable, but I still try to make it at least once a year.  One whole leftover pan of this stuff is in the freezer! This is a family recipe but I could get it for you if you really want it. :)


I also got the mini heart sample quilt back from the quilters and finished the binding up.


Here is a close-up shot of the quilting which was done by Kenneth Butler of the Quilt Cottage.


And here is a horribly lit overall shot of the quilt! It really didn't turn out as bad as I expected, though it still isn't my style.

Lastly I made up some reusable snack baggies for my cousin and her brand new husband. They are taking a cruise for their [delayed] honeymoon, and I am a big proponent of taking snacks off the boat with you on cruises. I mean, you totally payed for the food! 

Anyways, two of these have velcro closures and two have foldy over type closures. I like the velcro ones a lot more because they keep in little stuff like blueberries and nuts but I can see the allure of both so I would suggest trying both and seeing which fits your needs. I used rip stop nylon from JoAnn's for the lining on both (meaning I subbed it for the melted plastic bags in the flippy turny one). This was done for two reasons: 1) I take my own grocery bags so I really don't have leftovers and 2) My chemical engineer boyfriend says that as long as the bags aren't scorched, there shouldn't be any issues whatsoever but for some reason, melted plastic near food just stresses me out. [Said the girl who once ate food that was microwaved in a styrofoam container]. (Velcro bag tutorial & foldy bag tutorial)

Today was my first day of classes and I am exhausted already. This might be because I have had to be up ridiculously too early every day this week for various reasons that are luckily not ongoing. It could also be because I just had almost a month off from teaching. Oh well. Six and a half weeks until spring break! 

Dread.

First things first: DOWNTON! I'm stressing out! Ahh! We don't have a TV so I'm watching UK versions my amazing pen-pal sent me and am finding it challenging to stay on track and not jump ahead in the hopes that the storylines will get happier. The only thing stopping me is this consuming feeling of dread that things will not actually be happier in the upcoming episodes.

Speaking of dread, I might not be ready to start teaching again. Winter break has gone by way too quickly. I haven't accomplished half the sewing and cooking goals set for myself. How sad! I am going to be teaching over-full-time again this semester and when you factor in that the commute I'm used to of 10 minutes each way (is it fair to call that a commute?) will now become 40 minutes each way. Yuck. That is going to result in so much less sewing time.

Here is the stuff I have finished up. First off a repurposed old t-shirt that I'm [eventually] turning into a grocery bag. My Star Trek bag is getting so many compliments that I just had to add a Star Wars bag to the mix. I love confusing people especially when those people are strangers at the grocery store!


This bit of stitching will be worked into the bag somehow. I'm not the tidiest of stitchers, but hopefully I can put it to good use.


I also whipped up some bread bowls to freeze since there will not be enough time to make any exciting food this semester and a homemade bread bowl can jazz up nearly any soup!


Over the holidays I learned that cooking in someone else's kitchen is difficult. To thank the people who generously let me commandeer their kitchens, I offered to make them some potholders. This first one is for my boyfriend's aunt. I had made the EPP star just to see if I could do it neatly (turns out I can) and thought this would be the best use for it!


Check out that echo quilting! This was a first for me and I think it came out fairly well considering I kind of forgot to baste everything. Props to my boyfriend for posing as a design wall at the farmer's market!


I also made another trivet for my boyfriend's bff's wife (she also received the fox one). This one is backed in shelf lining stuff to make it grippy (huzzah for that stuff being machine washable!).


I decided to try a new bread recipe because Active Dry Yeast was on sale. I made challah bread from this recipe. This recipe was easy to follow and tastes wonderful! My only issue is that the bottom of the loaf is a little too dark and crunchy despite being taken out a little before the minimum suggested time. I'm blaming my oven.


Oh! I also made (and mailed) this cat/space themed grocery bag for a wonderful friend. She is as close to a crazy cat lady as someone can get without actually being a crazy cat lady so this fabric made me think of her. It is so kitsch and catty, but dare I say it a little tasteful! Sadly I can only find one of her three cats' doppelgangers in the fabric. The blue space fabric is the lining as well as the straps.


Lastly, I finished the main body of yet another big blocks quilt. It is all Dr. Seuss fabric or oddly matchy matchy prints. Oh and there are a few solids thrown in for good measure. This is destined to be a sample quilt for a LQS, but I didn't grab enough fabric for the border.


My goal for the rest of the week is to finish up all of my syllabi and prep for the semester as quickly as possible so that I can head down and power through a bunch of sewing and cooking freezer food to last the 6.5 weeks until spring break. I can do anything for 6.5 weeks.

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! :)

Winter Prep: Part 2

In between teaching and grading I have managed to fit in some much-needed sewing. The sewing has been much needed because the projects have had time constraints and for stress release since I have one student who is being a total jerkface. I won't talk about that because thinking about it makes me involuntarily grind my teeth. Instead I will focus on the sewing!

I finished the matching mustache tree potholders for my BFF and I. The piecing process was detailed over here. First off, here is the detail on the star. The thread is metallic so it sparkles a little!

Then there is a close-up shot of the mustache stitching. The photo is at such an extreme angle to show how poofy the mustaches came out! It looks like trapunto (which I have no idea how to do!). The accidental way I pulled this off was by using fusible web applique for the mustaches then by machine quilting around them but not on them. If you want the mustache templates I drew up, let me know and I can send them to you.


Finally we have an overall shot showing both of them. Mine is the one without the hanging tab.


Over the weekend my boyfriend and I were able to fit in some homebrewing! This is a batch of Imperial Red IPA. Yum! Now we just have to wait for it to be ready.


There was also some marathon cooking going on. First off we have these strawberry basil grilled cheese sandwiches which were delicious, though we doubled the basil to ensure we could taste it. The cheese was a little lost, so maybe stronger cheese next time. Recipe over here.


We also made some amazingly delicious caramelized garlic tart. Seriously, this was one of the most delicious quiche things I have ever tasted. It could totally use some veggies though, like spinach or asparagus. The recipe is from Martha Stewart but we didn't use puff pastry for the crust. Instead we used the olive oil pie crust recipe from Vegan Pie in the Sky, which you can find over here. Or you can just buy the book and learn the secret to my peach basil pie!


Oh my gosh, it is so gorgeous!

I broke all my rules and took on another commissioned t-shirt quilt. The only commissioned quilts I have ever done are t-shirt quilts, and the only t-shirt quilts I have made are commissioned quilts. Because of this, I don't know if I hate making t-shirt quilts or commissioned quilts. Anyways, here is the initial layout, which was too long and skinny.

So I added some sashing from leftover t-shirt bottoms to make it a little wider and came up with this for the front. Now I just need to quilt and bind it so that I can deliver it in time for it to be given as a Christmas present. 

On a happy albeit unrelated note, Finn, our betta is finally happy! We got him a heater and he loves it. Check out this incredible bubble net he made to show how happy he is! 

The last bit of marathon cooking was pork loin roasted with veggies and mustard gravy (recipe over here). Ooo, this turned out so tasty! Our piece of pork was smaller so it cooked up very quickly.


The last bit of holiday prep sewing I have been working has been really fun. For background information, my family is super nerdy and if you put us all in a room together, it is likely that we will start playing Dungeons & Dragons. Because of this, I have an assortment of dice, trinkets and pencils to locate and pack prior to any family function. I really wanted a small bag/pouch thing to hold it all in so it could be contained and more easily packed. While searching for an appropriate bag, I discovered that nearly all dice bags are drawstring which seems silly to me because dice and pencils can fall out the drawstring. So it dawned on me that I could just make a totally awesome zippered pouch!

I decided to use part of a t-shirt for one side (stay tuned because that is staying secret) and a super cool dragon for the other side! The dragon pattern is from the book Spellbinding Quilts which is full of incredible stuff (seriously, you need to get this book. It might as well be called "Harry Potter and LOTR Paper Pieced patterns). I shrunk it down because the original block size was huge. This resulted in so many teeny tiny bits that needed to be paper pieced. It took about 3 hours! Sheesh! Hopefully I can still finish this in time to play D&D for X-mas!

So this is what I came up with. I bought the green/gold fabric in Ketchikan, Alaska while on a cruise with my family. We totally played D&D on the cruise ship (which is not surprising since we have played D&D in Japan and Hawaii). The purple fabric that looks blue was leftover from a baby quilt. I promise it is purple. For some reason, my phone cannot photograph this fabric as purple. My boyfriend's phone can, but the picture wasn't as clear! The same thing happened when I used it in a baby girl quilt. Everyone kept giving me grief for using so much blue in a baby quilt, but it was purple in real life!!

I have the dragon sitting in front of me right now, and this is what the purple actually looks like. I promise! 

Anyways, hopefully I can finish everything that needs to be done in time for their respective deadlines. I am completely caught up on grading until I administer final exams and my students submit projects next week. Wow! I actually get a weekend!

8 Years in the Making

My cousin and her boyfriend fiance are getting married! They have been dating for EIGHT YEARS! They already bought a house together, so they might even be commonlaw at this point, but still, they are getting married!! She is very anti-wedding. When we were kiddos, she and her sister had to be flower girls in a wedding so they both wore frilly little girl dresses. She proceeded to take hers off and drag it through the dirt because she wanted nothing to do with a wedding. Some things never change. They are getting married at the courthouse and then having a small party at a bar/restaurant/bowling alley/arcade (isn't Texas wonderful?).

Naturally I am making a quilt for them! This might seem extravagant since I already made them this quilt when they bought their house.


But my piecing and quilting skills have improved SO much since I made this one that I just have to make another (like I need an excuse to make a quilt, puhlease!). Plus, my cousin has started sewing and is toying with the idea of learning to quilt, so I want to do something really special for someone I love! This is going to be the center of the quilt. Apparently I'm on a Kona solids kick since the last quilt I made was all solids.


But this one probably won't end up made entirely out of solids because it needs a border. This quilt is going to be about 72" by 72" or just big enough to cover the top of a king sized bed. Each block is 8" by 8" so I still need to add about an 8" border all the way around. I generally don't like to do borders that large, but it would have looked even sillier to make an extra row of blocks and have a ridiculously thin border.

So now I'm to the picking border fabric stage. I already decided it can't be a a solid or any color that is already in the quilt. Perhaps a charcoal? Well, this is the assortment of fabrics my local quilt shop had to choose from.


Out of these, I like the blacks. But wouldn't a simple sketch in black & white look great?

Or what about some linen?

Ack! Decisions, decisions! Which one would you pick? 

Winter Prep: Part 1

It finally got cold here in South Texas for about a week, so it felt like winter. Of course cold for South Texas is 40-50 degrees. Today we are back into the low 80s, but it should be getting cold again this weekend!

Anyways, the cold weather motivated me to work on Christmasy stuff that needed to get worked on. First of which is the tree skirt for my boyfriend's sister. It all started last December when we were at her house while she was decorating her tree. I noticed she didn't have a skirt and inquired about this. She couldn't find one without color and over-the-top holidayness, so I offered to make one.

That means I have been working on this for almost a year! The last time I had even touched this was back in July when I finished the front. You can read all about that over here. 

But the cold weather was a wonderful motivator and I was able to quilt it up and bind it in time to deliver it to her on Thanksgiving! The quilting includes stipple in the grey between the 3D crinkle grey and the blueish grey flower stuff along with stitch in the ditch everywhere else since the batting was super poofy and not very quilting friendly. The grey strips that make up the stars are actually glittery. So much monochromatic goodness!


I also started working on some matching hot pads for one of my BFFs. She and I are both highly unusual, which probably explains why we get along so well. Anyways, we both love mustaches, so I decided to make us appliqued mustache trees! Does anyone want the mustache applique templates I created? If so, let me know so I can post them.


And what would be a Christmas tree without a star on top?? I could have easily made little bitty wonky stars, but when I visualize tree-topping stars, I see 5-point stars. I decided the easiest way to accomplish this was with foundation paper piecing, so I used this pattern and scaled it down to 25%, which ended resulted in 3" unfinished stars. I am fairly proud of those y-seams! [Hilarious side note, when I just went to get the link for the pattern, an advertised pattern on the side menu was for a mustache tree mug rug that doesn't look much like mine. Apparently I am not TOO original.]


I also made a batch of Pioneer Woman Cinnamon Rolls. Baking these is my one and only holiday tradition. It also happens to be a super tasty tradition!


The cold also made me decide to try my hands at Fair Isle knitting. I can knit, but am incapable of doing anything more complex than squares and rectangles, so this was a big leap. After watching 5 YouTube videos, I managed to make this swatch. FYI: This was my first time knitting in the round, so it got twisted and turned into a mobius strip.


Have no fear! I casted on (or is cast on present and past tense?) a new set of stitches and managed to not get them twisted, so this new set will eventually make it all the way to scarf. Pictures will be posted when it actually looks like something.