Quilts

I had been saving some of these reds and blues for a while. I really wanted to do some kind of quilt featuring the chambray blue colour. When i founds this pattern I knew it would fit perfectly with the fabrics I had. I built the blocks, and at the end I was short with the red shooting stars fabric. I knew i had seen it down in Anthem AZ in the Walmart the last time we were down there, so I contacted my friend Wendy, who winters down in Phoenix and asked if she could look around for that print. Turns out the only location who seemed to carry it was the Anthem location. Luckily her sister has a place in the area and was kind enough to pick up a couple of yards for me. When Wendy returned north in the spring I was able to finish this quilt. Its a lap size and looks bright and adorable. 

Here I had purchased a nature panel. Not my usual, but I loved the deer on this one. Its a set of 4, intended to be used for cushions. I guess it doesn't matter - a person could do whatever they wanted with it. I studied it for a while and finally decided on a 4 grid layout with some sort of pattern block surrounding the center. Log Cabin block seemed to make sense, along with a cornerstone block. Brown tones are my favourite so I searched through my stash until I found most of the pieces (I believe I bought 1 or 2 solids) and I was able to calculate the blocks, measurements and amount of fabric. This one was fun to put together and is currently awaiting quilting of some kind.

I decided to run a another class last year. I decided on a Stars of Bowness original design. We used a combination of 9 patch and a Rising Star Base block. The stars were  designed with each center being a different design. Together with the 9 patch created a secondary pattern of "bowties". This was a sampler preview done for the class. I offered it in 3 different sizes, lap, twin and queen. I provided instruction for all the blocks required to create the queen size. The women who made a smaller size were able to choose which blocks they wanted to complete for their quilts. 

This was my quilt along during class. I made the queen size. This one is currently awaiting quilting. I am still looking for just the right backing.

Here is a stack of my most recent projects.

I had been wanting to do a black and white quilt. When Craftsy offered another free Block of the Month, I decided this would be my black and white. I added yellow for my accent colour and began. Turned out, I was not really keen on the patterns or the layout, so I chose not to finish the project as instructed. Because it was such a scrappy layout, most of the blocks were different sizes. I found this very difficult. After sitting in my UFO bucket for a while, I finally pulled out my favourite blocks, added a few of my own design and came up with a layout which worked for me. 

Shopping with Wendy is a bad idea. At Heritage Park's Festival of Quilts, I picked up a Jelly Roll. Wendy has been to many different shops and has done much price comparison and she convinced me this was a fantastic deal for this large jelly roll. So I picked it up... I thought I would like to do a braid pattern. I was very pleased with the outcome, but now needed some coordinating fabric for the borders. During the summer, we road tripped out to some local quilt shops in search of Row by Row patterns (more about that in a separate post). In Caroline I found this perfect shade of pink up in their sale selection. And low and behold, the outer border fabric was identical to one of my strips in the jelly roll! Score! I was able to get enough, at a very reasonable price, to border my braid quilt. Love it. This one is waiting for quilting as well.

I have been collecting the brushed plaids for a bit. One day I began making some small hourglass blocks. They were time consuming. The fabric stretches easily so the blocks become contorted. Trimming them to an even size took a lot of time. I was going to make a quilt out of the hourglass blocks, but it was such slow going I stopped when I had enough to cover the cushion. However, I still had too much of it left over, and I couldn't stand to toss it as I just love the look of the plaids. I searched until I found this Angles n' Squares pattern. I was able to make a very mini version of the pattern and it became the perfect chair companion to my cushion.

Donation Day

Over the past few years, I've been adding to my collection of items for babies. The problem is, I don't know enough babies to give these to. I have blankets, receiving blankets, crochet hats, and outfits. One day last week, it occurred to me, I should sort through my items and in order to reduce my inventory (make room for new), I would package up and donate several items to the Pregnancy Care Center in Calgary. This is the pile I ended up donating. 

When I arrived downtown, I ran into the Care Center - I wanted to be in and out. The receptionist was very welcoming, very excited to receive my items and offered to show me the room where they store their collections. They had quite a few items in store at the moment, but she told me how just a month ago, the shelves were almost bare. She explained the process by which they hand out the items, how they prepare gifts bags for new mom's, and provide even more support through counselling, classes and more items, depending on the level of need and commitment of the new mom's.

What a blessing! I will certainly be bringing more items in the future.

Sew and Sew

I also really enjoy sewing clothing... Sometimes its hard to find just the right fit when you're shopping, and sometimes its hard to justify the cost of an item if you can make it yourself.

One day, low and behold the uniform police were on patrol at the school our daughter attends. Believe it or not, tape measure in hand, our daughter was told her skort was a smidge too short.

Hummph... of all the uniform infractions at that school they choose to focus on skort length on my leggy daughter. Ok, ok... rules are rules. But this is Mama Bear...

First thing I did was wear an ankle length skirt to school the next day to show the VP we were ankle covering Mennonites and did not wish to be confused with immodest dress.

Then I got to work, purchased some navy twill and sewed my daughter a new, slightly longer skort.

Old Navy skort...

New Braun skort... I'd say its pretty close.

New one slightly longer - to my knowledge, no one has noticed its the "wrong" brand.

Here are a few other projects of late.

More Soap

My mom started using raw milk again. Because of this she collected some whey from making cottage cheese. She froze it for me and delivered so I could make a soap using whey.

This is what I came up with - a nice moisturizing soap with properties great for problem skin. I added Thieves oil, and it smells amazing!

I gave most of the bars back to her, hoping they would help keep my dad's eczema somewhat under control. Although not a cure, reports are its quite comfortable.

This one is Shea Butter and Lavender. I meant for it to be a purple color. I had used some goats milk in the process and when I added the red and blue coloring (to make purple) I ended up with a lovely shade of green ;)  

In the fall, Rob and I picked a bunch of rose hips. I thought it may be a great ingredient, infused into oil to add to a facial bar. So the Coconut Rose Facial Bar was created.

I had these individual molds with rose imprints and I thought it would be genius to use those for this soap. However, the releasing did not go quite as I had imagined and I ended up with really messy rose imprints. Oh well, they may not be display friendly but should work for at home just the same.

I wanted to try a recipe for Butters Soap. Since I was using equal amounts of Shea and Cocoa Butter, I decided to add some cocoa for a darker colour.

Another batch of Linda B's Blue Brush Soap. Amy really likes using this to clean her paint brushes. Seems to have just the right amount of "clean" and "condition" which is so important for paint brushes. Works well for both her acrylic and oil paints.

This batch looks a little pale, but the bottom side has more colour. It's a blue green mix - works well for the brushes.

Apple Vanilla Spice...  

I was very pleased with this one. I allowed the solutions to cool significantly so I could soap at a lower temperature thereby avoiding the dreaded gelling ring I so often get.

Tee Tree & Eucalyptus...

Beautiful light green soap with poppy seeds.

Oatmeal & Honey...

This one is kind of a universal favourite. Oatmeal and Honey is a popular combination, smells nice and great for your skin.

Lavender Calendula Healing Hand Salve. Here I infused a combination of Calendula leaves, eucalyptus leaves and lavender pods into Olive Oil. Added a couple extra ingredients and result - a lovely scented, although quite greasy, hand salve. Its best to use at night or when you have plenty of time to massage it into you skin and allow it to absorb.

Seems like one of my most favoured and most popular bars are the avocado bars. Since I was running out, this became my next batch.

Next up - Dark Chocolate and Cream. Ever since I made the soap with the liquid whey, I'd been wanting to do another. However, collecting the whey is a difficult process as it comes from 12 hours north of here. I went to the health food store, and without knowing for sure if it would be the same thing, I purchased a small amount of powdered whey. I was hoping it would present similarly as the liquid in the finished product.

I used leftover coffee as my water, and added the usual coffee grinds and a bit of cocoa for colour. To my surprise I ended up with a lovely rich chocolate brown shade. The only thing I can think of is perhaps the whey powder helped to capture the colour particles and deepen it through the recipe. Regardless, I love it! And it smells great. 

Hemp and Rosemary...  Hemp oil is not my favourite. It is dark, greenish in colour and has a strong smell. However, I can understand the benefits of the oil and therefore can not write off the goodness which may come from a Hemp soap bar. I thought, since I was using Hemp, maybe I should go ahead and add some extra goodness for the skin and add in some Neem oil, I thought I could call this one The Stinky Soap. Maybe I'm getting used to the Neem oil smell, I don't know, but once I added some Rosemary and Peppermint EO's, it's not too bad. The botanicals are rosemary pods.

This soap almost became my first big oops. I was using some leftover beer - it has been sitting out for weeks so I knew it was flat as could be. I'm going to blame the sugar content, but when I added the lye to the beer/water solution the water heated up so quickly it began to bubble and foam. For a minute I thought it may boil over my container! It quickly settled down, but I think I ended up with the hottest water solution ever. After I waited for everything to cool to soaping temperature, I mixed and poured into my molds. At first I thought it was settling quite nicely, the initial creamy film covered over my exposed end. After a while, I took another look. Low and behold, my soap looked much more translucent. I felt the containers and they were hot! Clearly my soap was hot and gelling away. I was afraid of the great volcano possibility so I immediately moved my soap outside (where it was approx -20 degrees). Whew... close one.

Lavender... I'm still working on getting a nice lavender colour. This time I added a bit of pink kaolin clay and some blue colour. Closer, but still not great. I was a bit too impatient when mixing this batch and ended up with a lovely gel ring up the middle - shucks. Would have been prudent to have more patience.