Several years ago, I bought a book called Miss Rosie’s Spice of Life by Carrie L Nelson.  There are 13 quilt designs in the book. When I showed it to my daughter, I remarked that I liked every quilt in the book and I would make them all.  She challenged me to make all the quilts from my stash and I counter challenged her to make them all, also.    All the quilts were made from our fabric stashes.  Even though we thought that our stashes would diminish, they did not.   It took over one year for each of us to make all thirteen quilts. I machine quilted mine and she sent hers to a long arm quilter as she still worked full time.  We were so happy to sew the last stitch on this project.

This is the first quilt in the book.  It is called Whirligig.

 

 

I made mine using solid fabrics with a black background.

Hers was done in browns, reds yellow and beige.

 

It was fun to see how different colors made the quits look very different.

Look for Miss Rosie #2 next week.

Have a great day and happy quilting.

 

This week’s Gaa – Barge is a very small piece.  It is only 9 1/2″ x 10″.  The pattern is called Chinese Coins and is so very easy to make.  It is made from very small scraps.

 

It uses an adding machine tape for the stabilizer.  The tape is easy to remove when sewing is finished.

Flip and sew scraps onto the adding machine tape.  Make sure that they fill the whole tape plus a little.

 

 

This is the back side of the tape.

 

 

Place a rotary cutting ruler on the edge and trim sides away.

 

When both sides are trimmed, the strip is straight and even.  Remove tape and insert strip between sashing.  Add a border.

 

 

Quilt  as desired or, using built in embroidery stitches on the machine, cover each seam,  It is a quick and easy quilt.

Now that I look at this little quilt, I may make a full size quilt from my basket of mile a minute scraps.  If I sew on the tape for just a few minutes a day, I can have another quilt top without much effort for my UFO pile.

Have a great day and happy quilting.

My husband’s Grandmother made Grandmother Flower Quilts in her spare time.  She worked hard, sometimes taking in laundry.  She was a midwife, going with a doctor to the new mother’s  home when a baby was delivered and then staying for a while to take care of the new mother and the baby.  When I met her, she was a companion and aide for an elderly woman. 

 

I inherited one of her quilts from my mother in law.  Nana’s quilts were perfect. She used scraps from her sewing .  Anyone interesting in dating fabrics, would find a goldmine in her quilts.  This one looks as if it was made in the thirties or forties. She tied all her quilts.

When I was a young mother, Nana taught me how to make the quilt.  I placed green where she had green and the centers were yellow.  My fabrics are from the fifties.  I used scraps from the skirts that I made for my girls and some from Nana’s sewing.  My quilt is hand quilted.  

 

 

 

My mother also made a Grandmother’s Flower garden and was making another when she passed away.  I am still sewing on that quilt and will show both of them at a later date.

Have a great day and happy quilting.

My maternal grandmother made quilts, but was not known as a quilter.  She was an artist and the curator of a museum. Also, an excellent cook and seamstress.   In her later life, she traveled across the United States and kept journals of all her travels.  Fortunately, her father was a photographer and the family has pictures of her during her childhood.

My mother had inherited one of her quilts and when she downsized asked me if I wanted to keep this quilt.  I was honored to receive it.  At first glance, it looks like squares sewn together, but standing back, there is a definite pattern.

Each square was bordered with a hand sewn feather stitch.

 

 

As I photographed the quilt on the living room sofa, I noticed that the living room rug was one that she hand hooked.  I recently took out the carpet and had Pergo put down in two rooms.  This rug was in the attic, so I brought it down stairs to use until I could find a new rug.  I like it so much, it is going to stay.

 

Miss Molly, my quality control inspector,  had to check the quilt.  Yes, she can see through all that hair.  That is her winter coat.  She will look much different next month when she goes for her vacation and spa treatment.

 

Have a great day and happy quilting.

I haven’t written the Single Gourmet blog for a while.  I either haven’t make anything worth writing about or forgot to take a picture.  It is still hard to cut recipes down for just one.  I still cook for two or more and have lots of left overs.

Yesterday, I wanted to make pizza.  I do have a good recipe for two 7″ pizzas. There is no waiting for the dough to rise.

Recipe:  Preheat oven to 450 degrees

Ingredients :  1 1/2 tsp. dry yeast   1/2 tsp. sugar   1/2 c warm water   1 1/4 c flour   1 Tbsp. olive oil   1/2 tsp. salt.

Dissolve yeast and sugar in water.  Let set for 10 minutes.  Add flour, oil and salt.. Beat until smooth.  I use the dough hook in the stand mixer.

Turn dough onto a lightly floured board.  Let rest for 5 minutes.  I put a bowl over the dough.

 

 

 

Cut into two pieces. At this point, you can make two pizzas or freeze one for a later date.  You could also make one larger pizza from the whole dough.  Roll into a circle.  If you like a thin crust, roll it thin.   Transfer crust to a lightly greased pan.  I use 7″ pie tins.  Add desired toppings.  Bake in preheated oven for 15 to 20 minutes.

I used cheese, pizza sauce, and pepperoni on one pizza.     

I didn’t want two pizzas, so wondered how it would be if I made a dessert pizza using one apple, some raisins, nuts, sugar, cinnamon, and nutmeg.  It was not very good.  It would have been better with a pie crust, not a pizza crust.  Not wanting to throw it away, I whisked one egg with 1/2 c milk and a little sugar, cut up the dessert pizza and baked it for 30 minutes at 350.  Delicious bread pudding.

Usually, I make my own red sauce, but I was lazy and bought a can at the store.  There was some left over, so I froze it in little tins.  I’ll take it out of the tins, transfer it to freezer bags and put it back in the freezer for later use.

 

Have a great day and happy quilting.

I looked up the definition of friends on the internet.  It says a person who one knows and with whom one has a bond of mutual affection.  Then I pulled an old Funk and Wagnalls dictionary from the shelf and found these synonyms – chum, coadjutor, colleague, companion, comrade, consort. fellow, helpmate, partner, peer, an associate.  Then the dictionary went on to tell how the terms were applied to the word friend.

In our lives, we have many different friends.  Some are neighbors, some belong to a group that you belong to, some are classmates from the past, some just pass through your life, making it better for a while.  Friends come and go.  We do loose track of some, but we pick up right where we left off if we meet again.  Most of our friends do not know our other friends.

One of my group of friends is my Maine Guild.  Every year, we have  a Christmas in July pot luck supper .  What great cooks!  We have great food and lots of fun. After we eat, we  have a Yankee swap.  We swap ’til we drop.  It is so much fun.  During different years, I have had the privilege of going home with three wall hangings made by friends.

Nancy’s wall hanging was the first one that I received when the swap was over.  Her quilts were perfect.  It is 15″ x 19″  Another year, she received  a small wall hanging that I made.

 

 

 

I always wanted something from Shirley.  She is a master of the mini quilt.  This one is 17″ x 19″ I had watched her work on this quilt at another group meeting and really liked it.  Every year, at the Yankee swap when I got something from Shirley, someone took it away from me.  I thought that I would loose this little quilt, but the last person in the swap chose something else.

I went home with Claire’s quilt the last year that Claire was with us.  She moved to Florida and I have such fond memories of her.  I could have swapped for other items, but I wanted a memory of Claire.

 

Three friends, three quilts, three memories.

Have a great day and happy quilting

 

I have finished two ufos.

The first was made from two paper pieced flowers.  I don’t remember why I made them.  They have been in my stash for a long time.  My sister in law gave me a toilet paper cover for Christmas.  It was knit in Christmas colors,  As pretty as it was, when the season was gone, I put it away.  The two flowers looked about the same size so using the knit piece as a pattern,  I designed a cover.  I enjoy adding piping to quilt pieces so piped around the top.  It looks like Spring.

Last June, I had a class at the Vermont Quilt Festival with David Taylor.  He taught Invisible machine applique.  It is an quick,easy, and fun technique.  The piece, Under the Apple Tree,  was completely appliqued in the class.  Then it has sat in my ufo stash until this week.  It just needed the border added, quilting and binding.  It is 12″ x 12″ so didn’t take long.

There are still lots of ufos in the basket.  More to come later  I’m still making my goal of one finished ufo a week.

Have a great day and happy quilting.

When I made the Garbage to Gaa-barge series, I belonged to a group called the Tuesday night quilters.  We had lessons and sewed challenges and round robins.  At one meeting, a member was making a baby quilt.  The fabric was unusual.  It was not baby quilt fabric.  When it was finished it was awesome.  A baby would love to bright colors.

After the meeting, I robbed the wastebasket and took the scraps home.  The bigger pieces were on an angle from straightening the fabric.  I used them in the border, as is, so the border is not straight.  The small strings were placed on a background and covered with tulle.  It was stippled quilted.

Every time that I look at a Gaa-barge piece, I think that it is my favorite.  Maybe, I just like them all.

Have a great day and happy quilting

My Christmas cactus has outdone itself this year.  It has been blooming continually since Thanksgiving day.  It must like how I care for it.  It is in an east window.  At night, I pull the insulated drapes around it, leaving it to the evening window chill.  It apparently likes to be cold at night.

This week, I am not going to make blocks from garden pictures.  I have found three flower wall hangings in my quilt stash that I will share with you.

Basket is a Nancy Pearson pattern.  It is hand appliqued and hand quilted.  25′ x 25″

 

 

 

Rose is also hand appliqued and hand quilted  18″ x 18″  It has a double row of piping on the border.

 

 

Stone Soup was made from a stone soup challenge.  A bag was filled with different criteria from fabric stashes and then traded with other quilters.  When I opened my bag, I found that there were two different colorways. One was red, white and blue, the other was pastel.   They didn’t  seem to fit in one quilt so I made two and joined them at the top.  They fit over the back of a chair.  

The red, white and blue side comes out in July.  The other side is fantasy flowers that I designed.  We could add one fabric, so I added the white background.  This piece is machine appliqued and machine quilted.  27″ x 27″  This was a fun challenge.

       

Have a great day and happy quilting

P.S.  I forgot to add the St. Patrick Day wall hanging last week.

 

Yesterday, I went to a friend’s house to make a non quilt project.  We made sunflower wreaths.  There were three of us plus my friend’s daughter, who was our teacher.

We had already purchased the tulle and cut it into 10″ strips.    

In addition we used a stapler and a hot glue gun.

The strips were rolled on a diagonal and the bottom stapled.

 

The rolled strips were stapled and glued to a circle that was made from a pizza box.  Two holes were punched into one side of the circle for the wire to hang the finished wreath.

There were three rows of rolled strips.  The middle was made from brown burlap that was glued onto a smaller circle.

 

 

Each of us had different color tulle and the sunflowers were very different.   We had a great day with fun, laughter, and fellowship.  Not to mention the most delicious lunch.

 

Have a great day and happy quilting.  Or something else that is lots of fun.