Crafty

New Seasons and New Sewing

November 20, 2017 LSiehLeave a comment

I finished the Rainbow Snowball Quilt! Finally! I even had a little of the fleece backing left, which will become a dog coat for the Fanciest pup I know. 😉 I just have to meet up with its new owner and it will be gone. I was desperate to start a new black and rainbow quilt, so I knew I had to finish one of the quilt tops that was waiting.

Here’s the Rainbow Snowball and the backing for it. It’s french seamed essentially, sewn and flipped, and sewn again. No batting because of the fleece backing.

The new rainbow quilt is a Friendship Braid pattern. I had a lot of the pieces cut already, from Maelee’s quilt. Here is the new quilt:

The colorful pieces are just on one side. This is two pieces how they’ll be when finished. The edges will be trimmed, so they’ll be rectangles.

I have three strips done and a fourth started. It will probably be five strips, potentially six, if I have enough orange and yellow. I run out of those colors all the time! I don’t really use them, but if I’m going to keep making rainbow quilts, I need to get some fat quarters or remnants.

We had fun on our Super Secret Christmas Mission. I took some pretty pictures! It was fun to go on a weekday. It felt like we were playing hooky!

Since our weekend started early with our trip, we continued the fun with a massage on Saturday, a visit from Katy and Fancy’s secret dog friend, Moose, a party with Kayla on Sunday, and a visit to the Lego store. We came home with the next piece of our Christmas Lego village: the Christmas station, a little nutcracker ornament, and the world’s biggest Lego bag. I’m pretty sure I would fit in this sucker. See?!

(I will not be trying to fit myself in the bag, by the way, I just think I could. I think it would confuse Fancy a lot and she would probably try to eat the bag to get me out of it.)

My weekend continued through today unexpectedly. I didn’t have to go to work at all. My first and last appointments cancelled and I rescheduled my middle one. It was right in the middle of rush hour and would have taken me longer to get there, than the appointment itself. It’s weird transition time right now, since I’m trying to get everyone transferred or referred before I switch to only one center. I will be much happier when my commute is 15 minutes instead of 45.

Because I had this extra time, I was able to work downstairs a bit. The responsible sewist came out today and instead of running out with coupons in my hot little hands for new solid fabrics, I looked in my bins! I want to make some more solid or neutral reading dresses to wear with patterned leggings.

I kept finding cute fabrics that I hadn’t seen in a while. I rediscovered another flamingo flannel piece. It’ll be pjs, of course! I cannot have enough warm jammies ever. I’ve been known to wear flannel pants in June.

Isn’t it cute? It’s waiting to be washed.

I tried to make dark-colored dress, but didn’t have enough of the fabric. I started a tunic in a very light cotton. As I’m typing, I realized, I should have used a pattern from one of my books! It would have been the perfect fabric for it. Either way, it’s a new pattern, so it still counts for my list.

This is the pattern.

Here are the pattern pieces and the color.

It’s possible I need to branch out color wise… I have a ton of blue clothes fabrics.

Well, Fancy is telling me that it is her bedtime and she would like me to go to bed too. I hope you’re staying warm as fall turns into winter. I’ll be warm again in the spring. 🙂

Wordless Wednesdays

Wordless Wednesday

November 15, 2017 LSiehLeave a comment

(Obviously, I need these! The Husband is not convinced…)

Party Posts

“What about Second Breakfast?!”- Elevensies Party Post

November 13, 2017 LSieh2 Comments

Whew! I need a nap. We had our Elevensies party yesterday and it went well. We need a few more comfy chairs though when we do movie parties.

I used a bunch of new recipes and had almost everything made by Saturday. We started at 11 AM and the last movie finished at around 9:30 or so. By that time, it was just the Husband and I, which was fine. Fancy was absolutely exhausted and kept whining at me until I let her have her round chair again. It was in front of the fireplace, which is very hobbit looking. Here is her at the end of the night.

Yes, that is her foot in her mouth. What a doll! She did pretty well, although we still had to leash her to keep her off the table.

I made sure to take a picture of all the different meals. The only one I don’t have a picture of is Supper at 8. No one was hungry! I can’t imagine why! 🙂

Here is Elenvensies.

We had brunch type foods. The chocolate banana muffins were a hit. We also had the Quiche Lorraine again, nissu, jams, and berries with cream.

Luncheon was at 1 pm.

We had sandwiches, salad, pickles, and chocolate chip cookies, and lemonade. Kayla brought the salad and fixings and a peanut butter cheesecake, which I have no pictures of. It was all delicious.

Afternoon tea was at 3:30.

We had tea sandwiches, which Kayla helped me make, cream and berries, cinnamon sugar scones, lemon bread, madeleines, Lembas shortbread, and jams. Tea, of course, was served as well.

This meal was where I used the most new recipes. I would eat afternoon tea all the time, if I could.

I used two of my tea cookbooks and a Pioneer Woman recipe for the scones. http://thepioneerwoman.com/cooking/sweet-cinnamon-scones/

I didn’t add cinnamon chips because I don’t like them, or have them on hand. I also just sprinkled the top with cinnamon and sugar, not the called for topping. They were so yummy!

We had no lemon curd for the tea. I had a momentary panic on Saturday night, but decided it would be okay and it was. 🙂

I used a cookbook called The Charms of Tea by Hearst Books, for the tea sandwiches, madeleines, and lemon bread. The lemon bread is on the left, nissu on the right.

We had ham and watercress and cucumber sandwiches.

Taking Tea by Andrea Israel with recipes by Pamela Mitchell provided the recipes for the shortbread and seed cake.

These two cookbooks are cool because they have information on all sorts of teas and tea ceremonies around the world. It’s really fun just to read all the information.

Dinner (6 pm) was not a large affair. We had potato chowder with bacon and cheese for toppings. I served from the kitchen, so no elaborate table. This recipe was from Taste of Home: The New Slow Cooker.

Supper (8 pm) was going to be leftovers and seed cake, but no one was hungry. I have a whole seed cake for craft night tomorrow. 🙂 I have it wrapped up, so no pictures.

We all decided that we couldn’t eat like hobbits all the time! We were all stuffed. It was a ton of fun.

Next year we might have a Harry Potter marathon. There’s a lot of food in those movies too.

Now though, I have to go back to reality and head out to work. Have a wonderfully cozy day!