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.

Old & New

Minimal sewing has gone on this week because there has been such an insane amount of grading to do lately. Then on Friday I got an IUD put in so I spent all day in agony on the couch hugging my heating pad. Then on Sunday I came down with food poisoning or some kind of stomach virus which I am STILL trying to recover from. That means I spent time on the couch working on hand stitching! I started adding a basic running stitch 1/4" away from the stars to the table dresser runner.


Prior to Friday I finished one of the six Salt Water/sketch napkins. The other five are in the awkward poofy stage that any self-binding, mitered-corner item has to go through, so they should be finished soon.


Those were my old projects. As for the new, I made yet another potholder for my boyfriend's aunt. This way she will have enough to be choosy about which ones to keep. This was my first kaleidoscope block and since piecing anything that needs to look tidy without foundation paper is a recipe for disaster (Anyone else? Or is this just me?) I used a paper pieced pattern (found here) in the hopes of achieving nice, crisp points. Mission accomplished!

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!

April Fools?

Warning: This post has nothing to do with April Fools Day, other than the date it was written on.

Sometimes I just really need to sew but no one is getting married or having kids, so there is no reason to start a whole quilt (especially since there are 5 quilt fronts hanging out in a drawer with no purpose or home). To satisfy my stitch-craving, I practiced my FMQ for a few hours. Be kind, I'm only used to doing stipple.


Progress has been made on April's LYoF goal (and it is only April first!) and all the paper pieces ripped out of my EPP dresser table runner thingamajig and it is now basted. But now I'm stuck because I don't know if it should be machine or hand quilted. What would you do?


Here's another grocery tote that got whipped up. This one is the designated meat tote, so that never again will a package of bacon touch my yogurt and give me the heebeejeebees. This way it will be tremendously easy to wash it after every trip.


It would appear that black/red was the color combo of the weekend. Here's a teeny tiny wide mouth pouch for holding little things in my purse.


And lastly here's a potholder for the boyfriend's mom.

Neil deGrasse Tyson and Chickens

This past Thursday the university I teach at was lucky enough to have Neil deGrasse Tyson as our main guest speaker for the semester!! Now you might be thinking that since I am an astronomy professor I had something to do with this and got to meet him, but you would be wrong. It had nothing to do with me, my department, or any academic department for that matter. I was lucky to just get tickets! They sold out in under and hour!

Luckily, we scored some autographs! We also hung around outside after the lecture and as he was being escorted to a car by an entourage of police officers, we got to say hi to him.


We were up in the nosebleed seats, but you can totally see him! He did the whole talk without shoes on... Just socks! I love it!


This was possibly my favorite slide of the whole lecture: Pluto (It's still not a planet). Oh my gosh, he was so hilarious!


Now it is time to talk about the not-so-little chicks that are now SEVEN weeks old! Provided none are roosters, these are the three we plan on keeping out of the fifteen.

First off, a ridiculously adorable Easter Egger with poofy cheek feathers. Since we got them at 3 days old, this one has been the most accepting of human interaction and a life of domestication.


Secondly, one of the three nearly-identical Easter Eggers with polydactyly (no idea where that came from, since it is usually a Silky trait). This one seems to be very clever and so friendly! Whenever I mess with them, this is one of the first to come play with me. Check out those feather colors! Gorgeous!


Then we have this striking Olive Egger that ended up being the darkest of the fifteen. I'm not sure what it is crossed with, but it has feathered legs and feet; we have been calling it the Hobbit chicken. This is going to be a gorgeous bird!

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.

Spring Break: Part Two

Here goes another attempt at a brief blog post. I finished and mailed my March contribution to the Mug Rug Revival swap. I went a little out of my comfort zone with the asymmetry, but I don't think it would look as fun any other way.

I drafted up the pattern to use for the block because I wanted to make sure all the corners were extra crisp. Here are links to the patterns I came up with in a few sizes, all free of course. 

Paper piecing pattern for 9" block.

Paper piecing pattern for 10" block.

Paper piecing pattern for 12" block.

Then it was laundry day and somehow the third load was forgotten. I could either sleep on a pillow without a pillowcase, wait until the dryer was done to sleep, or make a pillowcase. I decided to race my sewing machine against the dryer. I won by a landslide. Here is my squirrely new pillowcase.


See? Squirrely!


I also made another hot pad for my boyfriend's aunt in an effort to slowly replace her worn out ones. I used reverse applique for the circle and then regular applique for the rays.


She loves mushrooms so I had to use this for the back! Side note: This might be my best stipple everrrrr!


Oh! We decided to make a baked bloomin' onion (recipe over here) and it turned out delish.


Then one day I decided it was a tote bag sort of day so I made this one for my friend Connie...


And this one for my bff Nurget (Melissa)...


And this one for myself. I couldn't decide which locally grown fabric I liked more, so I made it into a two-face sort of bag. Half the lining and exterior is one fabric, the other half is the other. Aren't the lambs and chickens adorable?!


Speaking of chicks, here are my chickens on their 5 week birthday. We celebrated by giving them a big bowl of red cabbage. They mostly just carried pieces around in their mouths while frantically running away trying to hide it from everyone else who was obviously trying to steal that one piece instead of getting their own from the bowl.


My boyfriend and I also made it up to the San Antonio Gem and Mineral Show. He picked up this gorgeous and huge piece of tiger iron. He got a great deal on it because it is just cut, and not actually polished (I put water on it to show the chatoyancy).  Side note, the locally grown tote bag was strong enough to carry this and all of our other purchases around the show!


We both prefer rough rocks, so the smooth side will be the side facing down. How can you not love the rough side? I mean, this is what this rock looked like when it was dug up. Gorgeous, gorgeous, gorgeous! Anyways, we decided it should live on the coffee table, but didn't want it to scuff the table...


...So I made it a teeny tiny quilt to lie on. I tried to model the FMQ after the striation in the rock itself. I toyed with actually making the lines the same color as the stripes in the rock, but the fabric was black to match the coffee table so I decided against that.


Here is a better shot of the FMQ.


And here is the lovely rock in its cozy new home. Taaadaaaa!