A New Day

Good morning, my friends. We were without power for 21 hours yesterday. It's the longest power outage in my memory. What an exceedingly boring day! Fortunately, I had a fully-charged headlamp, and so I could spend most of my day on hand embroidery. But let me tell you...even for someone like me, obsessed with hand embroidery, it gets old after a while. Besides, previously broken thumbs begin to grumble after a couple of hours. Nevertheless, I was able to finish up the Winter Wonder piece.

It isn't really finished because it should still have a tiny quilt there in the middle. That will be paper-pieced. And then there's a border around the whole piece. This can be a stand-alone wall-hanging, but I'm making all four seasons. I'm still trying to decide whether to add the border now, or wait until I have them all finished. It might be nice to give each of them a season-appropriate border. Since mine will be sewn into a single quilt, I'm leaning toward the season-appropriate border. Either way, I'll finish the little quilt before I set it aside. 

Okay, so I'm going to need to back up a day since I couldn't post yesterday. Also, I'm writing fast because I need to be in the shower in 20 minutes. It's looking like a reasonable day weather-wise, and I'm going to the farmer's market with Erik and Mae. Spending a morning with my kiddos is the best way to spend a morning that I can think of.

So, backing up to Thursday morning, I was trying out a new recipe for Blender Chocolate Mousse. After ladling it into ramekins, it looked like this. They still needed at least two hours in the refrigerator to set up.

We had them later the same evening with a dollop of whipped cream.

They were very tasty, and certainly easy to make. These were made with dark rum, however, and we thought the dark rum gave them a strange background flavor. I'm not sure if it was the rum or the alcohol we were tasting. Either way, I'd like to try this again substituting apple juice for the rum. The recipe offered up other alternatives, but I think the alcohol was the problem. I'm sharing the recipe here. This is my "for two" adaptation of the original. Please take a look at the note at the bottom, and then decide how you want to proceed. Also, I cut the recipe in half to make it "for two." You can double it to make the full meal deal, if you want more.

Okay, so after that, I went to work on my new "When Quilter's Gather" project. This could be done as paper-piecing, but I'm doing it the freezer paper way that I learned from Ann Shaw. This pattern is from a book by Ruth McDowell, and she would do it the same way.

The patterns from the book have been enlarged to 200% to make them workable. They could be made smaller, but at Staples, I was limited to certain multiples. My block patterns end up at about 15 x 17 inches. I've figured I can still make 12 blocks. With a very narrow sashing, I can sew them into a reasonably-sized quilt.

Happily, my roll of freezer paper is large enough to allow for just one sheet to cover the whole thing. I pinned the freezer paper to the pattern, shiny side up. This is going to be like fusible applique, in that the templates will be ironed to the wrong side of the fabric. By tracing onto the shiny side, the templates will be reversed, but the pieces will be oriented correctly when they're sewn together.

Then, I used my lightbox and an extra-fine Sharpie to draw in the lines from the pattern. The extra-fine Sharpe is the only choice here. It is the only ink that will write on the shiny side of the freezer paper without smearing.

When that was done, I turned both pieces over. By that I mean, I turned the pattern upside-down, and then turned the freezer paper upside-down. I aligned it as closely as I could, and then repinned it. It doesn't need to be perfect because I'm only labeling the pieces for placement here. This must be done on the opposite side (which means you're reading the labels backwards). If they are on the shiny side, those marks will come off when you iron it to your fabric. Only the lines are on the shiny side. Labels go on the dull side.

When that was finished, I added "tick marks" that will help with placement. For that, I used different colored pencils. The same color can be used on the same line, but the other lines should be done in different colors or different configurations. Sometimes I make just one "tick," sometimes two. Then I used a pink highlighter to mark the different sections. A yellow highlighter was used around the outer edge. The markings are all there to assist with placement and orientation.

From there I was ready to cut the pieces apart and get started with fabric. Fortunately, I had a good helper cat for this.

Okay, I'm afraid I need to stop here. I'll come back and finish up after the farmer's market. I'll be back in a flash. You won't even know I've been gone. Now, would be a good time to refill your coffee cup, though. Back in a few...

Here I am. Back again. Did you miss me? Now where was I? Oh yes...we were cutting apart the larger sections. This can be done with a ruler and a rotary cutter. And I'm just going to say here that I don't use my fabric rotary cutters to cut paper. For that, I have this Gingher rotary cutter. I don't like it as much as the Olfa rotary cutters that close when you set them down. This one requires sliding a button with one's thumb, and I forget more often than not. I've also cut myself when I forget. So, I quit using this one, and save it for when I want to cut paper.

Looking at the photo in the book, I was going to be making this section first:

It's mainly background, a little bit of dress, and a little bit of hair. For the hair, I chose this batik. The next step was to iron the freezer paper templates to the wrong side of the fabric. I'll be cutting these all around the edges, leaving a quarter-inch seam allowance, and so it's important to leave enough room between the pieces and around the edges for the seam allowance.

And then, you can see how those highlighted lines and the tick marks help with orientation and accuracy.

When the pieces are sewn together properly, the tick marks will match up. You can see where I've circled them in the image below.

When I match up two pieces to be sewn together, I like to stick a pin through the fabrics where the tick mark is...

Then, I can look at the opposite side to see if I have them aligned correctly. In this case, it's just a smidge off.

With a slight adjustment, the tick marks meet up.

When all the pieces for that section were sewn together, it looked like this.

It helps to have a supply of small rulers, and you want to use rulers with easy-to-see quarter inch markings.

I just kept going until I had most of the left side of the block sewn together.

When I quit for the day, I didn't know it was the last sewing I'd do for two days. So I'll continue on with this today. I should be able to finish up this block by day's end.

When we awakened to 3-4 inches more of snow accumulation yesterday, combined with a power outage, we gave up on the idea of going camping for the time being. We'll try again later. For now, I have a lot of hand-stitching I was planning to take along. I've started on the final four quilt shops and places for the Shop Hop quilt. One name is done, and I've started on the second. Also, I have the Dream Big Leaf panel that needs the binding hand-sewn. Those projects will get most of my attention for the next day or two. There isn't much more on the agenda for today. After missing out on a whole day of machine sewing yesterday, I think I'm owed an NBS day today.