A very Sewing weekend!

My husband was out of town this weekend.  Love the man; but, boy do I get a lot of sewing done when he is not around!
This quilt has been waiting, pinned to the frame for 2 weeks and then on Sat. I got the whole thing quilted without a single interruption.  And Sun I finished binding it!   The center of the top was a guild Flea Market find.  It came with extra fabric which, along with the solid blue I used to make the borders.

Hard to believe some one got that whole center done and then gave it away?!  Well it will make a wonderful donation quilt with very little effort on my part!

These pin wheel blocks were so much fun to quilt!  

All I had to do was trail around the designs, which is really easy with a long arm. 

It is so interesting how one piece of fabric can create so many patterns with the stack and wack method.

I used a wonderful plush bed throw for the backing.  The quilt is not as flat but it is so wonderfully squishy and since this quilt is probably going to a kid that seemed the better choice.

Besides finishing this quilt I got 3 other quilts machine bound. They too had been hanging around for quite awhile.  It felt really good to get all those loose ends sew-up!!

I hope you all get some Quality sewing time in this week!

Cheers, CW

A Student's finish and trying some new skills!

Last weekend I taught another installment of a class I've been calling Quilting 101.  This is a class I've been offering because we have so many new members in our local guild and so few basic skills classes available in our community so I've been trying to help fill that gap.
Each month I offer a class on a different skill.  Last months class was on HST.  Sheri H.  who attended that class also came to this months class and had this wonderful baby quilt to share.  Sheri said the class on HST gave her the confidence to construct the Friendship stars in this quilt!  Brava, Sheri, for trying something new!  And what a cute quilt to gift to your friend!

 Sheri said the mother-to-be's color scheme was very neutral but she found these really cute fabrics to fill that order!  What a lucky baby! 

It's so nice to see students try new things!

Have a great week!

cheers, CW

Blogger's Festival- Fall 2018

Looking back on 2018 quilt finishes I think maybe I've been a little off my game or preoccupied.  But going through the possibilities I decided to show this quilt.  It's an original design, all the blocks are free form curve pieced and improvised so I think it might be interesting to some viewers?!  It was certainly fun to make since there were very constraints on what I could do!  And I always like a to work with a Medallion design.  There's just something really fun about starting in the middle and working your way out to the edge. Here's the link back to the festival

 I got that grey, black and whit print at Quilt Con this year.  It really helped to balance things out.  I wish I'd bought more!

This quilt started because I was doing a Demo of Free Formed Curved Piecing for the Northern California Quilt Council's January Meeting.  I kept making blocks for samples to show how easy it is to convert a conventional block into a Free form block and before you know it I had a whole collection of blocks!

I am definitely going to try this idea out again; maybe in pastels or another color scheme!

If you would like to learn more about this fun technique look here.

Happy Blogging!

Cheers, CW

Fearless Quilters!

I visited the Amador Valley Quilters this past weekend.  What a great group they are!  Their Guild meeting is on Sat. afternoons and perhaps that contributes to a really nice turn out of their membership.  They have a really well organized meeting. Lots of different activities /programs that the membership can take part in.  A huge Charitable group where they make upwards of 900 charitable quilts a year!   It's always fun to see how other Guilds run their meetings.  I always pick up good ideas to take home to my guild.  And it's always fun to share my Trunk Show!

On Sunday I taught a Class I've been calling "Simple Modern Improv".  I've taught a lot of design oriented classes over the years and sometimes students are a little nervous.  Making their own designs rather than following a pattern is challenging, but my students yesterday were fearless.  They all jumped right in and the results were really inspiring! 

A lot of the students wanted to learn my technique for adding a large curvy element to their tops but gave it their own spin and some students made completely original designs!  

I just love everyones results!

Kathy chose vintage fabrics and a doily.  I wouldn't have thought that combo would work but it was wonderful! 

The mono-chrome curved strip in Barb's top is calm and beautiful. She's auditioning some other shapes to balance her composition on the right 

Maria's background fabric compliments the colors of the strips and the change in their widths creates a lot of interest.  Maria's still working on some other ideas to balance the rest of the space.

Jeanne used up a lot of scraps to make her curved strip and she balanced it wonderfully with the rectangle and circle!

Joanne has taken the curved strip to a whole other level, I can't wait to see what she does with it! 

Teresa's a relatively new quilter. Her main goal was to learn how to make this curved unit.  She made it extra wide so it could stand alone to complete her design!  I Love the colors, it looks great Teresa!!  Brava! 

Barbra has come up with a completely original design!  Do you see the Hop scotch?

So clever and great colors! 

Rebecca chose some beautiful batiks to construct her curved strip she's got some great ideas  as to how to balance it on the left!

Maya came up with a completely original composition!  I love the diagonal bricky unit it's very dynamic and creates a lot of interest!  And I love the color scheme too!  Maya has plans for the upper right area,  it will be fun to see how she finishes this wonderful top! 

Sue chose a colorful single print for her curved strip and I think it really works well!  She balanced it 

with the other various width strips really nicely.

All in all I think it was an extremely productive day.  It was such a pleasure working with this group, they were all so talented and willing to try new things!

And when my students are happy with their results,  that really makes my day!

As I was prepping for the class I realized a more accurate title might be "Minimalist Improv" and when I asked the class they agreed,  so I'm re-naming!

                                                            Happy Quilting, CW

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