I was at the grocery store looking at vegetables when a friend came by for a chat.  We were standing by the eggplant when I remarked that I didn’t like eggplant.  I had it once when I was a child and it was tough and bitter.  That was the time when bigger was supposed to be better.  She told me how to cook the small eggplants, so I bought one and thought that I would try it once.

It was delicious and I will definitely make it again.

Preheat the oven to 370 degrees.  Slice the eggplant into 1″ slices and coat the eggplant with olive oil on both sides.  Sprinkle with onion salt.  Bake for 20 minutes, turning once during this time.

I made a sauce to go on the eggplant.  Fry 1/2 cup each of onion, green pepper, and orange pepper in olive oil for a few minutes.  Add 1 diced garlic clove and fry for a few more minutes.  Add a can of mushrooms and lots of basil.  I had 1/2 jar of leftover pizza sauce in the refrigerator, so I added it to the pan.  Any tomato sauce would be fine.

When the eggplant was done, I covered it lightly with the sauce .

For a side, I spiraled some zucchini, which I cooked for 2 minutes.  Now that I’ve mastered the spiralizer, it is fun to use.  The product has to be firm. Be careful of the blade.  It’s very sharp.

 

 

I also had some delicious cheesy onion  biscuits.

Ingredients

1/4 c chopped onion   3/4 c flour    1/8 tsp baking powder      1/8 tsp baking soda   1/8 tsp salt    1  Tbsp.. shortening     1/4 c shredded cheese    1/3 c buttermilk

Microwave onion for 1-2 minutes.  Cool for a bit.  Combine flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt.  Cut in shortening until mixture resembles small crumbs.  Stir in cheese and onions.  Stir in buttermilk until just moistened.  Turn onto a floured board and knead 8-10 times.  Pat or roll into a 4″ circle.  Cut into four wedges.  Place 2″ apart on a greased cooking sheet.  Bake at 450 degrees for 8 – 10 minutes.

I keep powdered buttermilk in the refrigerator and use it when a recipe calls for buttermilk.  When I make this for myself, I cut the recipe in half so that I have two biscuits.  They are so good.  I would eat all four at once.

Have a great day and happy quilting.

 

It has been fun designing all the 32 pieces in the Gaa Barge series.  I have enough scraps taken from the wastebasket or swept off the floor to finish the remainder of my challenge.  I had originally planned to make one a week for a whole year, but gardening got in the way and the series wasn’t finished. Maybe, I can finish the series next winter when the snow flies.

The cat and dog pieces were made with purple and other dark fabrics for the background and tan fabrics for the animals.  The made fabric was made in the mile a minute method.  The patterns for the animals came from a child’s coloring book.  The cut out animals were fused down and then zig zaged around the edges with tan thread.  The lines of the drawing were zig zaged with black  thread.

Shortly after I made these two pieces, I taught a class on this procedure at a local quilt shop.  The pieces were my sample pieces.  They were at the shop when a photographer came to take a picture of the owners.  One of the pieces was grabbed and put under the needle of a sewing machine.  The colors went with a piece that was on the wall behind them.   I enjoy seeing my animal in the picture on the wall when I go to the quilt shop.

Have a great day and happy quilting,

Several years ago I hand dyed lots of fabric.  I just couldn’t cut it up for a quilt.  It sat for a long time in a bin.

I saw a quilt pattern called October Weekend and thought of the dyed fabric.  It would be just right for the project.  The pattern was diagramed like a cross stitch.  Some of the squares were whole.  Some were half square triangles and some were three pieces. I cut each piece separately, and arranged them on a flannel sheet so they would be in the right position on the quilt.  It seemed to take forever to make this quilt. This was made when I worked on one quilt at a time.    Not at all like today when I have four or five going at once, not to mention dozens of ufos.

After the quilt was pieced, I did find three mistakes.  There are probably many more, but when leaves fall on the forest floor, it doesn’t matter.

The leaves are hand quilted with veins.  The black background is hand quilted 1/4″ apart.  When it was finished, I renamed it “Autumn Madness”. Looking back, I really did enjoy making this quilt.

Have a great day and happy quilting,

 

All the babies in my family receive a quilt when they are born. The quilts are loved and well worn.  As the babies grow older and transition to a big bed, they often get a big bed quilt.

One of my daughters had a set of twins, a boy and a girl.  I used a panel to make them their crib quilts.  The quilts were alike.  Very quick and easy.

 

When the boy went to a big bed, he received a red, white and blue log cabin quilt.  This quilt was made from cotton fabric.

The girl also received a log cabin quilt.  I had bought all the left over fabric from a quilt shop that went out of business.  Some of the fabric was shiny satin and other delicate fabrics.  This was a wrong choice.  The 1/4″ seams frayed and the quilt was unusable after a few washes.  Live and learn.  I should have made bigger seams.

I have two more little boys that are going into big beds soon so I should get busy and make quilts for them.

Have a great day and happy quilting.

 

This is one of my favorite quilts.  I made it when I first started quilting.  It is machine pieced and hand quilted.  For some reason, it is very comfortable to sleep under.  For years, I took it to the Vermont Quilt Festival to place on my bed.  It is my home away from home quilt.

I collected the teal, blue and green fabrics in this quilt for several years.  There was something missing.  At the time that I was planning this quilt, I was teaching some of my co-workers how to quilt. As I was showing the students the fabric, one of them said “See what I bought at Keepsake Quilting ” and threw the pink fabric on top of my pile.  It was the spark that this quilt needed. I called Keepsake and read the information that was on the selvage to them.  A few days later, I had the yardage that I needed to make this quilt.  This one is also machine pieced and hand quilted.

These two quilts are still in my collection.  Someone once asked me why I had so many quilts.  My response is that some people collect salt and pepper shakers, I collect quilts.  It just takes more space.

Have a great day and happy quilting.

The sixth quilt in the Miss Rosie Spice of Life book by Carrie L Nelson is called Open Door.  Carrie made her quilt in blue, brown, and red.  The colors in this picture are not accurate.

 

 

My daughter called her quilt Tribute to Dad.  She used pictures of her Dad along with a fishing theme for the large center pieces.  She drew from her stash of fishing fabric for the rest of the piecing.

 

 

My quilt centers were cut from a panel of a bog.  I cut the panel into nine pieces and sewed them back in the same order.  

 

 

The quilt looks complicated, but it is made of half square triangles, snowball blocks and cut off quarter square triangles.  Most of the quilts in this book are easy to make as long as the block is broken down and pieced in sections. Next week you will see the exception to this statement.

Have a great day and happy quilting.

A lot of the gaa barge was just scraps that fell on the floor.  I quite often make blocks with the Tucker Trimmer.  A small piece is trimmed from each  oversize block.  For this block, I must have trimmed white fabric because I had a lot of it.

The very small strips are sewn down with a stipple stitch.  There is no tulle so the strips are floating.  A few red flowers were embroidered on top.  It is a very simple piece.  It’s not my favorite piece of gaa barge but it did use up lots of little white scraps .

Have  a great day and happy quilting,.

When you have a lot of scraps left over from making quilts, you make a mile a minute quilt.  When sewing, the seam allowance can be what ever you wish.  It doesn’t  have to be 1/4″.  It just has to be straight. It is a good way to use up leftover bobbins and spools of thread.  It doesn’t matter what color thread you use.  The mile a minute is made by not looking and just grabbing the next piece of color, although some people like to match the  colors or themes of their fabric. Either way is o.k. The color of the quilt is determined by the color of the sashing.  For instance, if you use a blue sashing, it will pick up the blues in the mile a minute block and the quilt will read as blue.

The technique is easy.  Sew small scraps to a strip.  Cut the pieces apart, press and then add the pieces to a second strip.  Keep sewing in this manner until there is a piece big enough to cut out a square that is the size that you want.  I use a 6 1/2″ square ruler to cut the square.  It is put on the diagonal, not straight.  This 6 1/2″ block can be used in any block pattern that has a piece that size in it.

The easiest quilt to piece uses sashing and three borders.  The mile a minute block is in a straight set.  The middle border is a mile a minute piece cut 3 1/2″ and joined together to make a border long enough to go around the quilt.

Another option is to use a diagonal set.  Oversize mile a minute blocks are cut in half for the triangles next to the border.

Every time  I think I have finished my last mile a minute quilt and have used up all the scraps, I find bins of leftover scraps from other quilts.  I still have a big bag of Christmas fabric.  Some day, I will have a Christmas mile a minute.

Have a great day and happy quilting.

It has been a long time since I finished a UFO.  I’m way behind on my goal of one a week.  Springtime will do that to you when you spend lots of time raking, weeding, mowing and dividing overgrown plants.  I can catch up next winter.  Many of the UFOs will probably take more than a week to finish anyway so I won’t worry about that.

Many years and two sewing machines ago, I learned how to digitize.  It was long, hard work and I really didn’t like to do it.  I did digitize some labels, some embroideries, and this red work flower pattern.  When I found out that I could buy beautiful embroideries already digitized for a small amount, I gladly stopped.  My work had skipped stitches and just didn’t look professional.

I sewed out twelve flower blocks and put them aside as I didn’t like them.  While watching the Missouri Star Company on you tube, I saw a video of embroidered squares sewn together in a quilt as you go method.  This was interesting and I like to try new things, so I remembered the red work blocks and brought them out.  They are now together and will go in the give away bin.  No matter how many times I try new quilt as you go methods, I still Like Georgia Bonesteel’s method.  It does involve some handwork as this method is all sewn by machine.

     

It did turn out O.K. and someone will like it.

Have a great day and happy quilting.

These are a few of my beginning wall hangings.  It was fun learning new techniques and making small pieces.  I’m glad that I found the photo album of quilts that I had given away and can share them with you.

I had a class with Harriett Hargraves and learned machine applique and machine quilting.  Making a wall hanging with curves made it easier to manipulate the applique.  This wall hanging was made quickly using Harriett’s methods.  Harriett was a great teacher.  I took two classes with her.

 

 

The second wall hanging is made of two different nine patch blocks. White sashing is between the blocks with a four patch corner square.  The difference in fabric color make the piece look difficult, but it was very easy to piece.  I’m thinking that this would make a very easy and pretty full size quilt

 

 

The third wall hanging was my first attempt in curved piecing.  I found that the drunkards path pattern was easy to piece using just three pins.  When I first started to quilt, I was self taught, using the Quilters Newsletter magazine as my textbook.  I was a solitary quilter and had no one to give me an opinion of what was hard and what was easy.  I have no fear of Y seams, curved piecing or partial seams because no one told me they were supposed to be hard.  I just followed the instructions and they were easy.

Have a great day and happy quilting.