A few more finishes...

These first two are nothing fancy, but I'm trying to stick to my schedule of charitable donations.
This first one will probably go to Jacobs Heart. 42" x 50"

The second one will go to Wheel Chair Bound Vets program.  36" x 48".  Both projects were started with orphan blocks from the Guild Flea Market. 

This third quilt is for my younger grand daughter who just turned two!  Wouldn't you know,  she's a fan of Frozen just like her big Sister! 

Simple quilts, simple pleasures!

Have a great week!

Cheers, CW

North West Recipes- Or what to do with 5 gallons of Blackberries!

I haven't done a lot of sewing since we got to the cabin 'cause my kids and g-kids were all visiting over Fri. toTues.  But since we had a whole lot of people here I've been doing A LOT of cooking!

We have many favorite recipes for the cabin.  Several focusing on the wild Black Berries that grow abundantly all around our cabin this time of year.  And since Berry picking is a favorite activity of the young and old a like I had more than enough berries to make 3 batches of jam, 2 crisps and a buckle!  So here are some recipes that I highly recommend and I hope you enjoy!

First up is Black Berry Crisp,  This is about as tasty (and simple) as a confection can be.  There's at least 40 variations on the web but I stumbled across Chef John's recipe and I really like it. The link is below the picture. 

https://www.allrecipes.com/recipe/254554/chef-johns-blackberry-crisp/?clickId=right%20rail0&internalSource=rr_feed_recipe_sb&referringId=244756%20referringContentType%3Drecipe

Next up is a recipe I found in this fundraiser cookbook, from about 1970?!

It's titled Huckleberry Buckle.  But if you've ever picked Huckleberries you know it will take you all day to pick 4 cups of Huckleberries! Blackberries make an excellent substitute.

 This was the last morsel.  It's basically a coffee cake with blackberry filling and a crumble top.  But I always introduced it as "the best coffee cake ever!"

I use butter instead of shortening and twice as many berries. And I always make a double recipe (so that's 8 cups of berries!) and it bakes up real nice in my 10" x 15" pyrex baking dish.

Last but not least my way to make Blackberry jam,  it's very simple;

- 8 cups of berries into a good heavy pot.  Mash the berries and bring to a simmer.  If the berries are real juicy let them simmer for a while on low 'til some of the liquid has cooked off. 

 -My general rule is to add half as much sugar as the volume of berries.  8 cups of berries gets 4 cups of sugar.  But taste the berries!  If they are really sweet you might want to use a little less. 

-This year my first batch was 8 cups of berries and 4 cups of sugar and it was sooooo sweet the second batch was 16 cups of berries and I added  just 6 cups of sugar.  I think it came out better.

-I also like to mix about 2-3 tsp. cinnamon and 1/2 to 1 tsp. of ground clove to the sugar.

-I use to just eyeball the soft ball stage. It jelled about 60% of the time and when it didn't I called it Sauce!

-now I use a candy thermometer and bring the boiling mixture to 220 degrees and it almost always jells!  Who'd a thought!

As you can read,  I cook kinda the way I sew...close is good enough!

Well I don't hear anyone complaining! tee hee

My g-daughter and I made some fresh lemonade and we added some fresh Blackberry juice.  It was very pretty and tastey!

Let me know If you try one of these recipes, I'd love your feedback!

Have a sweet week!

Cheers, CW

Three quilts done!

I was motivated to get out some tops this week and get them quilted because we are leaving for our cabin and I wanted some new quilts to decorate the beds with!  Mind you two of these tops had been sitting around FOR YEARS!  Amazing what a little external motivation can do for my productivity!

 These first two quilts are part of a series of scrappy flannel quilts.  I keep going back to my flannel scraps thinking this will be the last one. 

I love this west coast map fabric.  Who'd of thought to make flannel map fabric?! 

I quilted the flannel tops with 1.5" parallel lines but I think I will go back and quilt more lines on the diagonal to make "hanging diamonds".  Here I lay some threads down to give an idea of what it would look like. 

This quilt is more straight forward.  Randy (Barrister's Block/blogspot.com) gave me a lot of these scraps.  

The fishing theme is very apropos' since our cabin is on Hood Canal, Wash.   

This last quilt I made while at Sunriver visiting with Randy the week of the Sister's Outdoor Quilt show.  I made it for my granddaughter who really likes Disney's minion characters.  I thought it would be fun to make her a special quilt to have at the cabin!

I think this panel is pretty cute and funny! 

If you have someone special in your life that likes Frozen or Minions Characters check out equilter.com They have a whole bunch of Novelty fabrics at 20% off right now!

Well that's all for now!

Have a great week!

cheers, CW

Indiana State Fair- Quilt exhibits

We are out here visiting are son and his family who live in Avon Indiana.  And by chance our visit coincides with the State Fair in Indianapolis!  I have lived in California most of my 64 years and I have never been to the State Fair so I was really excited to go today.

It was fabulous and of courses the biggest treat of all (besides getting to hang out with my g-kids watching them have fun) was going to the Arts Building to see the quilts! 

Best of Show!  Amazing!!!

This one looked like an original design. 

There were a lot of examples of really fancy Longarm quilting. 

I liked this one a lot! 

Great red and white sampler!

The quilting on this one was fabulous.  I think that's what the ribbon was for?!  Sadly the signage was very poor.

I liked this use of neck ties!  Check the lower right, it reads "Stan the Man"! 

There was a lot of nice applique too.

There were about 40 some quilts hanging around the Arts Building balcony but many more in these cases.  It's to bad they could not all be fully displayed but the quilts have a lot of competition for space in the Arts Building.  Painting, Photography, Garments, Crochet, lace work and every possible needle craft was represented!

I thought this one was really interesting.  This gal weaves and sews together the long woven strands of straw to make her own sun hats.  Best of Show in a category all her own!

Today was a super adventure!

I hope you are having great summer adventures too!

cheers, CW