Summer Fair Black Currant Jam

I entered a quilt in the Summer Fair yesterday and just like all great old timey summer fairs, you need to have some great jam on display too.  Yesterday, I used the black currants that Husband had so carefully picked and made our favourite black currant jam.  There is something just so special, unusual and intense about black currants.  Just brushing up against the leaves of the bush, sends up a fragrance that is both astringent and perfumed.  Eating a fresh black currant is also an experience.  Not everyone likes them.  But once they are cooked, the flavour is transformed into something that has to be experienced.  Full-bodied, somewhat winey, and definitely magical.  Full of vitamin C.  Excellent on a scone or your favourite sponge cake.  Fabulous on toast.  Makes you think you are eating something that is incredibly rare and expensive.  

Check your farmer's market if you don't have any of your own.  Pure yummy-ness in a jar.  

Black Currant Jam

4 cups of black currants

1 1/4 cups of water

Boil 10 minutes, stirring, then add 2 1/2 cups of sugar and 2 tablespoons of lemon juice, bring to a boil and boil hard for 10 more minutes.  Skim off the foam.  Bottle in prepared jars and seal.  Makes about 4 small jars of goodness.

Check out the quilts and recipes at the summer fair!

Sunflowers for Summer... Summer Fair Quilt Show!

I made this quilt as a gift for our daughter's university graduation this past spring.  When I saw that Gen X Quilters were hosting a Summer Fair Quilt Show, I had to think about which quilt to enter.  Considering this is one of my favourite quilts for so many reasons and considering sunflowers shout "summer", I thought this should be the quilt.

Our daughter is our sunflower girl.  She loves sunflowers and always has.  I have kept and scrounged sunflower fabrics over the years because of her.  Some of the fabrics in this quilt are scraps from sundresses I made for her when she was a little girl.  I also added a few more "modern" sunflower fabrics to round out the selection.  I knew that I had the fabric but then I had to decide on a pattern.  I did not want the quilt to look too country or too something.  I was taken with Elizabeth Hartman's Kitchen Window quilt in her book, The Practical Guide to Patchwork.  This is a great book by the way!  And it seemed perfect to showcase the sunflowers in a modern quilting way.  Framed in Kona black and floating in a yellow Kona solid, stippled all over in yellow, I am just so pleased with how it turned out.  I backed the quilt in a striped sheet with a strip of sunflower print to tie it altogether.  And the icing on the cake was how delighted our daughter was when she opened it at her graduation.  Probably my favourite quilt gift to date.  Here is the quilt, next to our woods, this past May.

Have a wonderful summer and check out the other entries in the Summer Fair Quilt Show!