A little needlebook finish...

I made another needlebook.  I get such a kick out of making these.  Seriously!  I used some of my sawdust scraps to add some interest to the front and back.  I used a linen scrap but the icing on the cake is the lovely 30wt Aurifil 5017.  That lovely bright green thread with a gorgeous sheen adds a finishing pop to the whole thing.  Can you see that I COVERED a button!  That was so much fun!  Yesterday when Mum and I were out thrifting, I bought all sorts of vintage covered button packages so I can cover buttons until the cows come home!

I embellished all the little pages.  Amy at Nanacomapany always does that on her needlebooks.  And I think I will pop this into the needlebook swap at our net guild meeting.  I already have another one made so maybe I will swap two!
Linking up with Amanda Jean for Finish it up Friday.

Blueberries on the floor and other musings...

So we are seeing a lot of these lately.  We are experiencing a bumper crop.  We have also had no rain.  This makes for happy blueberries.  So we pick and then pick some more.  Today we had some u-pickers.  That was interesting.  The little boys, who came with their mom, got into the ditch beside the blueberries and were top to toe in black peat mud.  I hosed them off.  With their mom's permission.  But I digress.  This is the time of year where blueberries are often found on the floor in the kitchen.  It just happens.  

We are rather new to the whole business of blueberries and as we bought an established farm, we don't have any information about the actual varieties so we make up names.  We really like picking marble berries.  They are big, round and tasty.  But the best berries are the cake berries.  They are HUGE!!!!!  I put them next to our now defunct Canadian penny.  That is a marble berry on the far right.  The cake berries are on the left.  They are they best.

The recipe from yesterday...
Let them eat cake
1/2 cup margarine or butter
1 cup sugar
1 egg
1/3 cup milk
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 and 1/2 cups flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon baking powder
3 cups blueberries, fresh or frozen  (the original recipe asks for 1 and 1/2 cups of blueberries but we kinda think go big or go home)

In a large bowl, cream shortening and add sugar gradually.  Add egg.  Mix the dry ingredients.  Add to batter along with the milk, vanilla and blues.  Pour the batter into an 8" by 8" pan and bake at 350 degrees for about 50 to 55 minutes, less if you are skimpy on the blues.  Or if you are feeling so inclined, pop them into cupcake papers and make 8 jumbo to die for blueberry cupcake muffins.  Oh my goodness.  So fabulous.  Bake those for about 40 minutes but watch them.

So there.  Check the floor after baking.  Blueberries just have a way of landing there and trust me, they aren't pretty when you step on them.  Ick.

Linking up with Cindy at Random Thursday.

Work in Progress...

I had to bring out the step stool.  This is a biggie.  The HSTs are 5.5" and it is filling up the design wall entirely.  Ack!  Tomorrow I will start sewing it together.  It actually grew much faster than I thought it would.  I was staring and staring at it and then I decided that I needed to shift the whole thing to the right by two columns.  I moved every last stinking HST over.  Even though that was a total pain, I wanted the off centre effect to be more pronounced.  Nobody sneeze!!!!


(All those boxes to the right in the other room are just my school stuff that needs to get moved into my new office but that too is a work in progress.)

This is before the move right...  It was too centred.  

Then I started making another needlebook.  I love making these.  I used some itty bitty sawdust scraps and some linen scraps.  I need to do all the fun stuff now.  The little pages need some pretties.

And I canned beans.

And we ate these...

We had some people over to pick blueberries and the little kids had a picnic tea party under the blueberry bushes with these.  Total yum!

Linking up with the Needle and Thread Network and Lee at Freshly Pieced for Work in Progress Wednesday.

On Saturday I....

On Saturday I got together with a bunch of my guild to make a guild quilt.  We needed one and we didn't have much time.  Several of the guild members are off to Portland in August for a guild meet up and we are supposed to have a guild quilt that sort of represents us.  SO... here it is in process.  We used Denyse Schmidt's Anyway You Slice it as inspiration.  Lots of Kona solids in our "guild logo' colours and a bunch of things from our respective stashes.  Seriously!  It came to together like nobody's business!  That is Cynthia and Christine making design decisions.  And then below, Lysa is being the walking quilted model.  Nice feet! I have to say that this was such a wonderful fun collaboration with people cutting, other people stitching, people pressing and people putting up the blocks.  So much fun!

Here is the back.  The back took longer than the front!  How funny is that????  The quilt is now with Cynthia who will quilt it on her new Juki (so exciting) and then I will do the binding.  Quilt in a day.  Almost.

Then Cynthia played with the block trimmings and in no time flat had this...

Squeal!  Love it!

and we were left with this...pin cushion stuffing!

Design Wall... playing with value

I started this the other day.  I chopped up scraps and bits and pieces until I had a big stack of lights and darks.  Then the half square triangle fest began.  The squares are 6" and I then trimmed the HSTs to 5.5".  Still lots to make and lots of tweaking as the whole thing shows up on the design wall.  This quilt is telling me it will be a big one.  I have been wanting to do this for a long time.  I really love the play of value.  And I think I have been toying with this inspiration for years!

Linking up with Judy's Design Wall Monday...

Black and White TV... all done!

Name:  Black and White TV

Design:  Depression Blocks in Black, grey and white for That Stash Bee

Size:  approx 60" by 70"

Fabric:  scraps from my bee mates stash, Kona White, and bound in Kona Charcoal, Backed with Ikea Number Print

Quilted: by me with Aurifil 50 wt in white

I made this quilt with the help of my awesome bee mates at That Stash Bee.  My month was May and I asked for Depression Blocks made with black, grey and white prints.  I asked them to think of Black and White TV.  And they did!  I was quite happy to open up all the soft and squishy packages of quilt blocks over several weeks.  Then I had to get busy and make some blocks myself to make the quilt big enough.  

I quilted three rows of straight line stitching on each side of the blocks.  I used Aurifil 50 wt in white of course! It gives a really nice texture and there is a nice break in the quilting at the centre of each block.  I adore straight line quilting!  I love the scrappiness of the blocks and oh, did you notice how one little red triangle snuck into the quilt?  I couldn't resist.  

I backed the quilt in the fabulous number print from Ikea with a strip of grey solids and bound the whole thing in Kona Charcoal which is such a fabulous deep grey.  All finished.  Linking up with Amanda Jean for Finish it up Friday.  

Work in Progress Wednesday

So after finishing my  Black and White TV quilt, working away on the Lucky Stars BOM, finishing my bee blocks  and continuing on with Road to Fortune, I decided to start something new.  I have been stewing away for ages about doing a value quilt...  so I finally just started it.  So far it has just been about cutting up fabric.  I am looking through the scrap boxes and pulling bits and pieces from my stash.  It feels good to be cutting up stuff that may not have been used in other projects too.  I am planning on using some fabric that may not be on my favourites list but will work nicely in this mix.

Pictures of Black and White TV are coming.

While I was cutting up stuff, I decided to take Cheryl and Amanda Jean's advice and separate my string scraps from my regular scraps.  I still have to go through all my scrap boxes to find the strings but I have a start on it.  This makes a great deal of sense to me!

And all this stuff?  Pin cushion stuffing.  Apparently it makes the very best... who knew?

Linking up with Lee at Freshly Pieced for Work In Progress Wednesday and The Needle and Thread Network for Canadian Bloggers.