Progress

Happy Go Lucky Quilt - DONE! (NEEDS NEW PHOTO)

Yet to Do: square up, buy fabric and make binding, bind, wash.

Semi-Sampler (small) Quilt-to-be?

Progress: add additional border?, make a back, baste, quilt, bind, wash  

Pansy Patch Project

No recent progress.
Yet to Do: finish piecing tops together, make back, baste, quilt, bind

Our Bedroom Quilts

Yet to do:

• Cut Reunion fabrics for tops
• Cut sash
• Piece each top
• Pre-wash fabrics for the backs
• Piece each back (choose more fabric?)
• Baste both
• Choose thread/buy thread 
• Quilt
• Make binding 
• Bind
• Wash

Green/Koi/April/May Mini Thing...

Yet to Do: determine if this is going to go on my chair (the plan) or as a wall hanging instead.

Waiting to Start:

• Something with vintage sheets

Happy Thanksgiving!

No, that's not Momo. Momo couldn't come with us to Thanksgiving Dinner - but this little cutie who happily wears a harness did!

Happy Thanksgiving all!

Pinterest-Inspired Fashion Challenge?

1) The big winter holidays usually mean more traveling than usual, more seeing people than usual, and more doing things out of the normal for me - from attending concerts, to being in concerts, to family pictures... my usual issue of jeans and a t-shirt - even dressed up a little - doesn't always cut it.

2) Holiday concert performances require black outfits, something I no longer have. (Meanwhile, from 2000 to 2009, my not-jeans-and-a-tee wardrobe was almost exclusively black performance wear.)

3) Although I meant to get black slacks, I accidentally also picked up a black dress - which needed accessories.

4) I am not really an accessories kind of woman. Okay, I might own about 6 purses at the moment, and somewhere between 15 and 20 shoes, but other than that, I really don't know how to do accessories. I don't own any belts. One winter scarf (which I've never actually worn). Two bracelets (gifts I received this year). One necklace (worn for a wedding, never since). Um... I think that's really it. Oh, two pairs of tights - are tights accessories??

Anyway, the point is, that all of these factors together started me down an initially unintentional path toward some Pin' inspired outfits and accessories.

Even though neither fashion, nor accessories, nor taking photos of myself are areas I'm really comfortable in, I figured I'd keep the momentum going and roll the unintentional into something a bit more intentional (especially since I think I wanted to do 3 non-food related challenges from my Pinterest ideas, and my first two attempts have crashed bad - no, no sharing...).

Here are my accidents:
1) I have been crushing these outfits 1, 2, 3, 4. I accidentally bought a black dress. It's not exactly  like any of the ones I've been looking at, but I think it'll do - though it's a bit of a blank canvas kind of dress...
2) I have been hinting about picking up something like this or this  as a birthday/Christmas gift. Without realizing just how close, I bought something very similar completely on a whim.

Even though I had a packing list worked up telling me just what to take on all my trips (type A personality sometimes? I think so...), I am thinking that to kick this into an intentional challenge, I am going to pick a couple inspiration looks from my Pinterest boards and try to create a version for me - and of course, to add a little more challenge, the goal being to avoid buying something new just to make it happen. With one exception - because I already have tights on the list, I'm allowing myself no more than two pair of new tights. Everything else has to come out of the closet, out of the drawer, or be borrowed. Not even thrift shops.

Yikes. Putting that in writing it sounds harder than I thought it would be when I was just kicking the idea around the other night... but that kind of makes me want to do it even more!

A Glimpse...

Work is still running me at record hours -- which of course is great, except that I'm not managing to keep up with that and anything else. It seems like everything else, from hanging out with friends to looking at houses to keeping up with housework, has been falling aside. I've got a friend in town for the holidays - and I've only managed to sneak off to see her twice for only a couple hours.

Every time I have a chance to reflect on my day - or week, or month - I want to make changes toward having a more balanced life. You know, time for work, time for housework, time for social things, time for hobbies. It sounds great. But unrealistic right now.

Since I can flip on my sewing machine any hour I'm free - unlike my poor friends who do not want to hear an invitation to meet for tea at 11 pm on any given night - I've been doing a little sewing. Nothing big, nothing from plans, just playing around and seeing what happens.

This are my two attempts at a case for my work tablet. Attempt number two is just a little bigger than I'd hoped - but attempt number one wound up less than half-an-inch too small (a sad error when putting it together), so I went a little bigger on attempt two. Still, I am looking forward to using it in the next week. Since I'm free to carry whatever kind of purse I want over the holidays (instead of the cross body I need for work days), I'm looking at my few options, all of which have open tops. Without the security of a closed top purse, I felt like I needed a little more protection on my most important work tool.

I really prefer the contrast zipper on attempt number one - which also looks a little better in terms of zipper installation - but it is just a little too small. Oh well, I'm sure I'll find some way of using it.

Can you tell I've got storage and travels on my mind? I'm not a good traveler, but having lots of cute little bags in my luggage might help. (Yes, that picture is incredibly blurry. If I were a good blogger, I would probably retake it. But right now I'm not feeling up to the effort.)

I don't know what it is about traveling, but the moment I hear I'm going on a trip, I start wanting a new purse. I would guess that probably means I have a tendency to settle for 'good enough' on purses, and later it turns out it wasn't 'good enough' after all... But, looking through my stash - even smaller now that I've sent more than half my supply off to charity - I still didn't find anything I really wanted to take.

Long story short, I am not one of those people who is comfortable mixing dark neutrals - like navy with black or brown with black. I see it happen for other people and think it's okay, but I haven't been able to embrace it yet. So, trying to pick a black or brown purse to go with both navy and black outfits... well... it was a losing battle. Since black and brown are about all I have left, I just wasn't feeling it.

Several days worth of plotting and a few hours of sewing and I have something like this:

Not quite finished yet

A quilted and lined purse with one big exterior pocket. I've added an over the shoulder strap that can clip on or off, and I'm hoping to eventually make a longer cross body option - but not this week. This is my first time working with any kind of hardware, and still working without a pattern. I'm sure there were better ways to do almost everything I did, but so far I'm liking it. I'm really looking forward to taking it on a test drive tomorrow.

Since I didn't add any interior pockets to my lining, I wanted to use the scraps I had leftover to make a coordinating little zipper bag that I could put my mobile in as protection.

Front (Whoops! I see I missed clipping a piece of thread)

Back

Again, I was just making it up as I went along - but I think it turned out well. I did have a coordinating turquoise zipper (that was supposed to go on the purse) but I so loved the contrast zipper on the tablet bag I made that when I saw I had one more of that color left (and in a size better suited to cell phone carriers than anything else), I went with it. I am not disappointed.

Looking at them together, I'm fairly pleased with how they turned out - especially for having absolutely no real pattern or tutorial to follow. I think that they are going to perform fairly well for me - but I am glad to have some time before my trip to test drive them before I take off.

If pops of fun fabric are going to help me through this trip, I think I am about as set as I'm going to get.

I've just got to hand over the key to the house sitter - make it through tomorrow - and it's vacation here we come!

Pinterest Challenge: Slow Cooker Thai Chicken Soup

The Inspiration: Slow Cooker Thai Chicken Soup from FoodieCrush.com

The Attempt:
I didn't have fish sauce on hand, and I decided to skip the peanut butter and brown sugar (my pesky dislike for sweet/savory combinations again - plus a very strong dislike of savory nut dishes).

Since we didn't have any rice on hand today, I started some quinoa about the same time I added the thawed peas to the slow cooker. I had some frozen cubes of red chili and cilantro to use in this - though in the end I chickened out on the red chili. Rightfully so! Without the brown sugar or peanut butter, this was hot enough already without the additional chili.

Result:
Initially, we both said this was something we liked the taste of and wanted to do again - but I noticed that neither one of us ate any of the left over soup... So, maybe it wasn't quite such a hit. Even though it was spicy, the flavors were good - and it was very easy since there were no extra pots to wash or anything. As it cooled, the soup did separate a little, which made it look much less appetizing. Also (probably because I cut so many ingredients without adding anything back in), it did feel like it was missing something. I'll probably try something similar as a jumping off point again, but I'm not sure this will be going into the typical rotation. But, if I ever need spicy soup for a crowd (no left overs), this is something I'd consider doing again (though then I would probably include the peanut butter, or some of the other ingredients I left out in this attempt).

Quilted in Two Directions

Even though it felt like a lot of straight lines to get through, finishing up the quilting on my semi-sampler quilt only took a couple more hours.

I decided to go with three line sets in the long direction. I debated about going for a fourth, but so far I'm enjoying the way three looks.

I did 'end' the quilt with a quick stitch right at the edge of the border. This will probably get cut off or covered up when I add the binding, but I hope this discourages the solid fabric from running and unraveling quite as much as it did during the quilting. The second batch of grey I picked up, which is on the outside of the quilt top, has been a little prone to running than the original batch on the interior pieces was.

I do wonder if I should have added a center to that O. I know what it's supposed to be, but I sometimes read it as 'Live' instead of 'Love.' I don't think I'll hand applique one in place at this point! At least it's a good message whichever way it's read...

My lines aren't exactly straight - when will that ever happen!? But I think it generally looks alright. There were a few places where too many layers overlapped and stitching through them was a little bit of a challenge, but for the most part slow and steady seems to have worked.

And while the blue/multi dots aren't a perfect match to the cream/multi dots I added to make the front sample blocks, I think they work well together.

Now it's on to binding. I have a little bit of the two additional red/cream prints (the red text used on the back and the red border on the front). I'm hoping the two together will be enough for the binding. Looking at the pictures now, I'm wondering about using the blue/multi dot - which I certainly have enough of. Hmm... The ultimate decision will depend on whether the reds choice is even workable with how little I have left, but if both are an option I'll have to find a way to test out both options and see which looks better.

Halfway Done

I think I'm just under halfway done quilting my little semi-sampler.

Just a few relatively straight lines going across the short way so far - in pairs of two.

Going directly across the sampler blocks was an emotional challenge. The first time I ran into one I had a moment of panic that I should have quilted the sash and border and left the blocks alone. But I pushed on, and I think in the big picture it's going to be okay.

Looks like the back did wind up with a little more pulling than I'd wanted - but not much. I'm beginning to wonder if I need to track down some spray baste and try that. I've never tried it, partly because I've never found any in my local stores, and partly because I've read enough to know I'd need an area where I can work with ventilation and where over-spray on the surface isn't a big deal. I don't have that unless I work on the driveway (haha). But I'm becoming a little less happy with my pin basting, even when I do a rough baste of the back to the batting before turning it over (instead of laying all three layers out at once). Or maybe I'm just out of practice...

Back to the machine. Hopefully I can get the rest finished tonight and snatch some photos tomorrow.

Semi-Sampler Quilting Plan

Once again calling on my limited Paint skills, I've worked up a loose mock-up of what I think the semi-sampler quilt might look like after quilting: 

I'm leaning towards straight lines in two directions. Sets of two in the horizontal direction, sets of three in the vertical. I'm hoping the lines would be a bit more subtle than they are in my mock-up here...

I really like the idea. And seeing it, even with massive lines, gets me really excited to start stitching. But it is going to be incredibly time consuming. And straight lines aren't exactly my strong suite.

My Paint wavy lines are too perfect to give a good idea what I'm more likely to end up with - but it still looks good to me...

Decisions, decisions!

I'm still leaning towards straight lines - even though it's more time consuming and will probably require tape to help me get straight lines. But I'm definitely going to think on it for a couple days before I do anything. Yes, I do recall saying that good and done is better than perfect, but I'm not ready to commit to this much work yet. I want to spend another night or two thinking if there's anything else that might work.

Semi-Sampler Progress

Although I wasn't completely happy with my choice for filling out the rest of the semi-sampler backing, my fabric purchasing budget has recently been seriously reduced (as have my chances for going fabric shopping), so I decided to just go with it rather than letting it languish in the 'to do' pile while I waited for budgets and schedules to align for more shopping... I have to remind myself that most of the time good and done are better than perfect. 

Fortunately, I had more than enough of the fabric I'd chosen to go with the rest of the back pieces - and even more fortunately, things came together about how I'd hoped they would! 

The back is slightly larger than the front - as it should be for quilting - so I know I'll be losing a little of each edge, but I think everything is placed enough that nothing lost will be important. I'd hoped to place the 'love' letters at the very edge of the backing, but in the end I was afraid I'd lose too much of them and added the little bit of border between those blocks and the bottom edge. I think that was the right call.

Once the sun went down and there was no more use in attempting to get better photos of the back, I turned my attention to basting.

I had planned on working with the polyester batting again for this one - making it another test of the poly batting before I seriously start working on the quilts for our bed (which will most likely be in poly). But when it came time to baste, I chickened out. I've been working on this top for close to a year now, and I'm rather invested in it at this point. I just couldn't bring myself to take the chance on the poly, which didn't work out as well as I'd hoped last time I used it.

I also happened to have a scrap of cotton batting on hand that was the ideal size for this quilt. That made the decision to turn away from poly for this project feel more like fate than fear or laziness (though in reality, I'm certain it was the last one).

Despite working with cotton, which I have more confidence with, I am still pinning significantly more than I have in the past. It's always important that things not move around while I'm quilting, but sometimes it's possible to hide the flaws with a busy pattern and a wash. I don't think this top, or back, is capable of hiding much - so any issues will lead to unpicking. More pins should help me avoid that possible outcome.

Next up comes quilting - and I think I have a plan in mind. It's just a matter of finding a few hours to work, and maybe a little painter's tape...

Pinterest Challenge: Oreo Marshmallow Cookie Bars

(Note: this should have been shared in October - but I forgot!)

Well, I know I found this idea through Pinterest, but... I can't seem to find the link today.

The basic idea is to make rice crispy treats - but with crushed Oreo cookies instead of the cereal.

The first time I attempted this I used 1 box of regular Oreo cookies, 1 10 oz bag of mini marshmallows, and half a stick of butter.

1) Crush the cookies - I used a food processor, though in theory you can put them in a bag and crush them with a rolling pin or something.
2) Melt the butter and marshmallows - I did it in the microwave (15-20 seconds then stir, repeatedly)
3) Mix the cookies into the gooey mess
4) When everything is combined, pour into a pan and let cool at least 10 minutes.

I was a little surprised when batch number one (regular Oreo cookies, 10 oz mini marshmallows) turned out to be less than a full pan's worth of cookie bar. It made about an 8x8 size bar that was a little on the thin side:

Yeah, not quite so appetizing to look at, right? But, they were pretty good. The sweetness of the marshmallow cut down the bitterness of the chocolate cookie pieces, and the other all taste was neither too sweet nor too bitter.

Since that batch turned out a little less than I'd hoped, and since we ate it all (eventually) without any other opinions, I wanted to try again. This last weekend I made a second batch - doubled. This time I went with two packages of a knock off brand, and a 20 oz bag of large marshmallows, with slightly less than a whole stick of butter. (And I still think the butter could be cut down a little more next time.) Same process, but completely different looking - and tasting - results:

I didn't have a large enough bowl for mixing, so I did end up with a less well blended cookie bar - but that made it better. Instead of every bite tasting exactly the same, there was some variation in how much cookie or marshmallow. And this 'double' size easily filled a 9x13 pan with a thick layer. I don't know if it was the change in marshmallow size or brand of cookie, or something else, but this second batch was much better all around.

Now I'm curious to see if I can make a peanut butter version. I'd like to try yet this week - but I think I need a little break from marshmallows... Don't get me wrong - these cookies are good and I could certainly eat more of them -- but I probably shouldn't eat part  most of three pans worth in two weeks!

Edit: I tried a peanut butter version. Every recipe I found said to use peanut butter and marshmallow. That didn't really work. After trying a bite, two of my taste testers said they'd never used both when making peanut butter rice crispy cookies, so now I'm wondering if I should try it again with only the peanut butter or if I call it a failure... Again, probably should let some time pass before I try again. 

November Goals

November Goals

Read 5+ books
Trip:

• Check tires Pick up rental car
• Spare key for house sitter
• Find/make a purse for the trip
• Pack etc. 
• Find a new toy for Momo (and the sitter?) 

Christmas Cantata Rehearsals (at least 2)

Finish Christmas shopping (except stockings)

Attempt 3+ non-food Pinterest ideas
1+ food related Pinterest idea
Cut sash for our quilts
Finish Semi-Sampler quilt

Well - thanks to being days behind already, I've either accomplished things on the list already (yay) or exchanged plans...

I liked the extra hour of sleep this morning very much - but considering how dark it is already, I am not looking forward to the extra challenge for my picture taking. Oh well, maybe I can use this afternoon (which already feels like tonight since it's so dark!) for doing some projects and snap a couple pictures before work tomorrow... We'll see if I can adapt to a new schedule for winter!

October Wrap Up

October Wrap Up:

Read 5+ books

• "The Realms of the Gods" Tamora Pierce
• "The Gatehouse Mystery" Julie Campbell
• "Tortall: and Other Lands" Tamora Pierce
• "The Clockwork Prince" Cassandra Clare
• "The Clockwork Princess" Cassandra Clare
• "Bloodhound" Tamora Pierce
• "Huntress" Malinda Lo
• "The Coldest Girl in Coldtown" Holly Black

Try a new recipe Oreo Marshmallow Cookies
Finish decorating for autumn
Date night
De-wasp the car, again
Make 2 larger gift bags
Finish the bed runner 
Cut sash fabric for our quilts
Start Christmas shopping
Start planning holiday travel - This has already been more stress than I wanted to take on this year, but - we're making good progress and I think we have a plan nailed down now.