The Word became flesh and blood and moved into the neighbourhood.

Monday 12 January 2015

Linda B's Quilting

I have still been quilting... and sewing...

I guess it began in the spring when I attempted to sew a graduation dress for Amy. She graduated from her grade 9 and moved on to join her brother at the local high school.

We spent many hours pouring over patterns and ideas. In the end I packed everything up and took it with me on my annual trip up north and enlisted the help of my mom.

We were all pleased with the end result and Amy wore the dress like a diva... The grad theme was 50's retro.




After that I focused more on summer skirts and shorts and later some leggings for the girls. I also continued to sew for little ones... More on those items later.

Soaping for real

I've discovered that if you are making your own soap you are Soaping. That is the technical term. To prepare for soaping, I read many, many articles. Spoke with several other soapers; And visited the Value Village the Soap and More and the Canadian Tire in order to collect all my supplies. I was even lucky enough to collect a large storage tote at the Superstore via free gift for spending so much on groceries. This becomes the perfect storage container for all my supplies.

In addition, I need some molds. I decided frozen juice concentrate cans would be perfect, so I washed several of those and set them aside, kept the individual yogurt containers, as well as any suitable plastic tray I could get my hands on.

So with supplies laid out, recipe in mind and courage in check I set out to make my first batch of real lye soap.
16 oz lard
2 oz lye
5 oz water

Fat goes in the pot - this one is lard

Water and lye are measured (water is measured by weight as well)

Chemical reaction - its kind of hard to see here but when the lye is added to water it starts out cloudy. You stir until the lye completes reaction and the solution turns clear again. The solution also heats up. I think it went up to about 180 degrees F. 

Once both solutions have cooled, in our case they were both around 120 F we added the lye water to the fat and began to mix. We started with the whisk, but soon turned to the stick blender. It really does make it go a lot quicker.

Once we had trace we could add in any additives and Essential Oils. We added about a tablespoon of borax and a few drops of Eucalyptus/Mint to this one and poured into the cylinder molds.

One recipe filled 2 molds.

I waited the recommended amount of time, removed them from the molds and cut.
Some of the bars crumbled a bit, I think I may have waited a bit too long. The second batch was OK.


To the second batch we added about 1/4 cup oatmeal, 1 Tbsp honey, Vanilla/Lavender EO and a couple drops of Tea Tree oil. Something must have been a bit too much, as I am not enjoying the smell as much as the first batch. 

9.4 oz shortening
6 oz coconut oil
6 oz olive oil
3 oz lye
7 oz water




Now we wait. We set them aside and wait for them to cure, which can take several weeks.