One Block Over: January

This year I joined my first bloggy quilting bee with One Block Over. Here's my first set of blocks for Michele. She wanted large, slightly wonky log cabins. I sure loved the strawberry prints!

Looking forward to a whole year sewing different blocks with these lovely gals!

Inspiration in the Day

A new neutral fabric...

speckles on this morning's brown eggs...

ice crystals diving and dancing outside my window, little sparks...

the start of something new.

Double Mint Fun: 2 Chocolate Mint Cookie Recipes

Before I head off to my favorite snowy mountain states to celebrate Christmas with family, I'll leave you with the two cookie recipes I most enjoyed making this year.

Marin's Andes Mint Cookies

3/4 c. butter
1 1/2 c. brown sugar
2 T. water
2 cups semi-sweet chocolate chips
2 eggs
1 1/4 tsp soda
1/2 tsp salt
2 1/2 cups flour

1. Preheat oven to 350 F.
2. Melt butter, sugar and water over low heat.
3. When melted, stir in semi-sweet chocolate chips. Stir until melted. Cool 10 minutes.
4. Beat in eggs, soda, salt and flour. Cool 45 minutes.
5. Roll into balls and place on cookie sheet.
6. Bake for 11 minutes.
7. Immediately after removing the cookies from the oven, top each cookies with an Andes mint. Spread the mint across the top of the cookie when melted.
8. Transfer cookies to a cooling rack and let cool.
(Note: I sprinkled crushed candy cane on these cookies, but Marin makes them year round sans candy cane. Yumm-o!)

Chocolate Candy Cane Cookies

1 cup butter
3/4 cup brown sugar
3/4 cup white sugar
2 eggs
2 tsp vanilla
2 cups all-purpose flour
2/3 cup cocoa
3/4 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp salt
12 candy canes, crushed

1. Preheat oven to 350 F.
2. Cream butter and sugar. Beat in eggs and vanilla.
3. Add dry ingredients and mix again.
4. Sample as much of this truly divine cookie dough as desired. If there is ample dough left, proceed with recipe. Otherwise, begin again at step two.
5. Mix in crushed candy cane.
6. Drop by spoonful onto greased cookie sheet.
7. Bake 8-10 minutes.
8. Cool only slightly, then transfer to rack to cool. (Note: Maybe they shouldn't cool at all on the sheet. I left my cookies on the sheet too long and the bits of melted candy cane cooled, hardened and stuck to the cookie sheet. As this is an improvised recipe, I'm still figuring this part out. If you have any insights, by all means share!)

What are you loving making this year?
Whatever it may be, I hope your Christmas is

peaceful, joyous and delicious!

Design and Play with Metro Mod Quilters

I'm really digging the Metro Mod Quilters' Guild. Here's a peek at a project I participated in for last months meeting.

Jessica made this from a scrap exchange...

She mentioned loving the scrap with the tiny little crumb strips in it. (Can you find it?) I liked the improvised sense, the bright colors and that same little detail. I found it interesting, but wasn't swooning. That makes it a good play project. (When I get overly precious about something, I'm not always able to think outside the box and PLAY.)

When I sat down to work on it, I had a few "rules":

1. Only use fabric I already have.
2. Somehow echo the design elements that are already there.
3. Include more little strips, since Jessica loved them.

Here are the strips....

I kept thinking "borders", but ultimately decided that instead of framing the entire quilt, the borders could echo the block design. I put them on only two sides, making Jessica's piece the cornerstone of one big block. Here's how it turned out...

I went from thinking "interesting" to "love, love, love"! I so enjoyed the process, just experimenting with design and color, rather than focusing on the final product.

Check out what V did with it next!

Three Reasons You Need Quilting Friends

1. They make you think about how to make your quilts the absolute best they can be today, without going crazy. While you all were right that unpicking would be insanity, it made the problem roll around my brain long enough to realize that a little unpicking might do the trick.


And it did.


2. They take you to sweet quilting events, like this quilt give away. All the families in temporary housing were delighted to receive their quilts.


Some couldn't wait until they got home to love on them.


3. They give you funny dreams, like the one I had last night about shop hopping with Amanda Jean and Shelly. Don't ask me why V & I were scheduled to fly home when these two were heading out. I'm sure if I'd slept a bit longer, we would have canceled all plane tickets and gone hog wild! Three days visiting fabric stores with these ladies??? Heaven! I woke up with a smile.

What do you love about your creative friends?

To unpick or not to unpick

This weekend, Amanda Jean raised the question of when to just leave imperfections alone and when to go back and rip them out. In the middle of quilting a quilt myself, my first response was, "Every quilt is a learning process. Finish it and move on." Sometimes though, getting it right IS part of the process.

I started thinking more and more about my quilt and wondering if maybe I should kick it up a notch. Here are the questions I'm asking myself to decide whether or not to get out the seam ripper.


1. What is the purpose of this quilt?

It is a gift for a friend who got married recently. However, all of my quilts right now are "quilting practice". I want to push myself beyond my current free-motion quilting abilities, so I take it as a given that the quilting will be less than perfect as I learn. (I take Diane at her word when she says here, "Make the quilt for a baby, friend or an in-law. They will love whatever you do, good or bad, mistakes and all.")

2. What is the problem?

The quilting I'm thinking about changing is actually the part I love best! I wanted free-motion roses in the border and spent a lot of time sketching to find a design that looked like roses and could be done as a continuous line. Figuring it out and being able to do it on the quilt itself feels like a major step, no leap, forward in my quilting. All weekend I wanted to call a quilter to celebrate the milestone. (Ok, I might have sent one little e-mail to shout "Yipppppeeeeee!")


The problem? They don't quite fit the design of the rest of the quilt. They are dense, detailed and semi-realistic roses. The rest of the quilt is open curves...outline quilting, wonky spirals, big cursive words. Those prolific roses up against the spacious words...just not working for me. (We're not even going to discuss thread choice. Learning about that one from observation, not correction, on this quilt.)

3. Do the problems affect this primary purpose?

Not really. I think my friend will still like it and I learned to consider how the different parts of a quilting plan work together as a whole. It gives me a new perspective for future quilts, whether I pick out this one or not.

4. Is there a simpler solution rather than unpicking???

Possibly. Perhaps adding vining leaves or something around my words will make the contrast between words and flowers not so drastic. A bit of time brainstorming ideas on that one may be a life-saver.

5. Can I do better?

On this part, yes. I definitely feel confident that I can figure out roses that fit the open, curvy style of the rest of the quilting.


I am not touching the rest of it since I don't know that I can do better on the center curves or the wonky spirals in the first border. (They weren't supposed to be wonky.) Unpicking either of those parts sounds like torture and may not improve anything. Plus, it is just time to give her this quilt already!

6. Will I (or my friend) get out of it what I put in to it?

Undecided. Unpicking and redoing, probably not.

7. Do I honestly have the time to change it?

Also undecided. As I said before...it's time for this project to be done already and gifted. Maybe not.

8. Will it feed my creativity and sense of satisfaction or deplete it?

Undecided.

Hmmmm...lots of undecideds or maybe nots. Unpicking may not be worth my time. I think I'm going to spend some time sketching some possible fillers for around the words. I'll keep you posted.

When do YOU go back and redo? When do you just let it go?

Top Ten Things to Do as an Auntie

(Bean all bundled up.)

10. Be in awe of your beautiful, strong sister as she calmly takes on motherhood.


9. Giggle a little that at times the Bean's breathing does indeed sound like a CPAP machine.

8. Volunteer for diaper duty.

7. Knit booties.

(Gratuitous bootie shot.)

6. Interrupt dinner-making every 3-4 minutes to kiss these sweet cheeks. (Mid-nap cooing requires an immediate response.)

(When she stretches, she barely fits in this basket, little long-legged girl.)

5. Watch everyone just fall in love with her.

(Bean and her great-grandma.)

(First-time Grandpa.)

4. Wonder how her little ears and her silky, curly-when-just-bathed hair grew so perfectly.

3. Cheer when she kicks, stretches her long legs out straight or focuses her eyes on something for more than a second.

(Bet you wish you had an alligator work-out suit.)

2. Spend inordinate amounts of time in one's pj's.

1. Smell her sweet, sweet baby smell while snuggling with this little bundle napping on my chest.

Welcome to the world baby Bean. This auntie is smitten!