It's a Start

Good morning, my friends. I'm writing fast this morning because Mike and I are heading out to the RV show today. We're not in the market for an RV, but we always enjoy looking at what's new. I believe the fifth wheel and truck camper we have now will probably be our last RVs. Before the show, we're dropping Mike's truck off for some needed service and then getting our beloved Egg McMuffins for breakfast. Comfort food, you know. So, you can see it's going to be a busy day. 

We did our grocery shopping yesterday. It was a beautiful day in Oregon. When we left the house, we drove into town, cresting a hill and getting a stunning view of Mt. Hood.

It was fairly late in the day before I could think about sewing. My first stop was to make up a mixture of starch for my project. As I've mentioned, I don't know much about starch, but the bottle told me the lightest stiffness would be a ratio of 1:6 starch concentrate to water. I mixed it up and put it in this empty jar that held some kind of moisturizing cream at one point.

I wanted something air tight and relatively stable, so it couldn't be tipped over easily, because...you know. The book also suggests working with a scrap piece of batting to absorb any drips or spills.

Sadie was my helper cat for a while. She was sitting on my photo which I've pixelated so you guys can't peek. 

Smitty found a comfy spot on the quilts-to-be-quilted pile. I keep the piles covered just for that reason. By the way, Smitty had his laser eyes turned on in this image. I was able to correct them with the red-eye correction tool that comes as a part of my newer version of Photoshop Elements. Cool!

The book suggested using a paintbrush to paint the edges that would be turned under. It would have been nice to start with a larger piece, but this is what I was given.

If you've done needle turn applique, then you probably know all about this, but it's new to me. From there, I stitched it to the larger background piece. I'm using a 60/8 microtex needle and monofilament thread for this. My quarter inch foot has an excellent guide for stitching right along the edge of that piece.

When it was finished, it looked like this. Ta-da!

Only, when I placed it next to the photograph section I was trying to copy, I realized that I hadn't done this correctly. And I'm not exactly sure what I did wrong here, but that ain't right.

So, I went back to the book and read again what I was supposed to be doing. Then, I made a new template. This time, I remembered to mark on the paper side of the freezer paper which colors went where. That had nothing to do with what I did wrong, but I wanted you to see how this is done.

And then I remade the piece. The one on the right is the second try.

And that worked much better. From there, I moved to the second piece. It looked like this:

It required three pieces of fabric. This is going to be a scrappy quilt, and so I'm using different fabrics. When I had the second piece sewn together, I decided to sew the two pieces to one another so I could see if it resembled the photograph. And it did. Yay.

I'll leave the remaining pieces unstitched until they're all finished. I only stitched these two corner pieces to make sure I was on the right track.

The third piece was solid, and so I did that one too. And that was enough for one day.

I'd run out of time by then, so I wasn't able to get any quilting done on the Beach Bum ladies. Probably I won't get any sewing done today at all, and so the Beach Bum ladies won't get their chance before tomorrow at the earliest. 

As I mentioned to my friend Kate yesterday, one thing I really like about this art quilt group is that we have plenty of time to work on our projects. We have three months between each reveal...so, around 90 days. This quilt has just 58 pieces, and so even if I only did one piece per day, I'd still finish in plenty of time. 

Okay, so I tried something new for dinner last night. These are Best Salmon Patties. I took a picture of mine, but it didn't turn out very well. I'm using the image I found online.

They're made with canned salmon, and they were so easy to do, a child could make them. And that also means they're a good RV recipe. Here's my image...kind of boring. I don't claim to be a food stylist. (Am I the only one who thinks that would be kind of a weird job?)

It got me thinking about a recipe I used to make quite often, but haven't in a while. It was published in Bon Appetit decades ago for Salmon with Garlic Mayonnaise. The salmon was cooked in the microwave, and then dabbed with this "garlic mayonnaise." Now that Food Network has turned so many of us into food snobs, it would probably be called an "aioli" if it were published today.

I looked for the recipe online, but it's so old, it's probably only available on the walls of some cave somewhere at this point. In any case, I thought it would be a good accompaniment to this dish, and so this is how I made it.

While we were eating dinner, the Amazon man arrived with an order I'd placed the evening before. Doncha just love Amazon? Yeah, I know I'm supposed to be mad at Amazon, but I keep forgiving them because they make shopping so easy. In any case, while I was working on the grid for the Mosaic quilt, I started wondering. Take a look at this image:

See how the black Sharpie lines disappear in the darkest parts of the image? I started wondering if it was possible to find some sort of light-colored marker that would be permanent. So I inquired of my friends at Amazon, and sure enough. And my good friends at Amazon would deliver the very next day. Well...how could I resist? 

So when the Amazon man arrived, right away I wanted to see if it would work. I was trying to avoid the "paint" kinds of markers, but it looks like that's what I got anyway.  

Here's a blurry picture of the directions. My camera has a hard time focusing on something so small.

It says "Remove cap." (Duh.) And then it goes on to say "With marker in tip up position, depress point with finger. Recap and shake well to mix paint. Depress marker point several times on surface to saturate point."

And so, my friends, I did just that. It took a long time and many, many depressions of the marker point to get the ink flowing. At one point, I just pressed it to the surface of my paper and held it there for a bit. Finally, I got the ink flowing, and look at that!

I wanted to avoid "paint" because I worried it would smear. As it turns out, it dries in seconds, and it does not smear.

So I'm kind of excited about this discovery because I'm thinking it could also make it possible to do embroidery on dark fabric. If you've ever tried to trace a design onto dark fabric, then you know it's darned near impossible to see the traced lines once you've finished. I haven't actually tried this on fabric, and so it's possible it will bleed. If I have time today, I'll give that a try and let you know what I find out.

Okay, my friends. It's time for me to get on my way. How about we end with one more calming quotation. I saw this on Facebook yesterday. I tried to find the source, but couldn't identify the author. They're words to live by. 

It's another sunny day in Oregon. Egg McMuffins and the RV show await. Have a good day, everybody!