Hello mojo

Yay, finally the stars are aligned. I have time, and I feel the need for sewing.

Christmas has come and gone. I hosted the family Christmas this year. Not too much stress (except for the Bearnaise sauce), not too hot weather wise, and no family dramas, made for a very nice day. I totally forgot to take photos on the day. Probably lucky for you! 

The only photo of food from the day. Our sorry attempt at a gingerbread tree. At least it tasted delicious.

Since then I've had the time to relax and unwind and I took the opportunity to get back into my sewing room.

First up I've been working on this

I've just made lots of flying geese, and I'm now planning the following border.

I've also dragged starflowers out of the closet.  I started making borders for it, probably over a year ago, but couldn't be bothered appliqueing the starflowers to a surround in preparation for this border. It just seemed too hard.  I finally finished appliqueing the starflowers to the background last week. So I've been cutting and sewing the blocks to finish this border.  I'm still undecided on what I will do for the next border.

I can't believe my mojo has returned in such full force. It's a great feeling to be enjoying sewing again and progressing with these projects.

Cocktail Wednesday

Another week rolls by and it's only one week to Christmas Day, arghhhhhh.

This week's cocktail was brought to us by Rachael at Blue Mountain Daisy.

It's a very summery and refreshingly sounding Cucumber Collins.

This is what mine looked like, very anaemic compared to Rachael's.

The verdict.  It was a tiny bit too sweet for my taste. I don't love sweet cocktails, overall this is refreshing but next time I would add only a little simple syrup or none at all. It's a lovely fresh and unusual taste in a cocktail, but who doesn't love cool crisp cucumbers in summer.  

After seeing Rachael's and thinking that mine was too sweet, I tried again. Although by now it was Thursday. My photos are not nearly as pretty as Rachael's. It didn't help that both days, I made the drink in the evening, with less than stellar lighting.

Take two.

I need to use smaller glasses. I only used half the amount of sugar, that was better, but it was still very anaemic looking, I think even paler than yesterday's, and with too much soda in it, the flavour was very subdued.  A great drink for those hot summer evenings. I will absolutely make this one again, but next time I'll use much smaller glasses.

Quelle Jolie Fée

I'm so happy I finally have a quilt finished. It has only taken me about 18 months.

It is a quilt for my sister's big *0 birthday last year.  Surprisingly, cough cough, I didn't have it finished in time for her birthday but I had made headway with it, so I "gave" it to her half finished and said I'll finish it for you in time for Christmas.  I meant 2012 not 2013, but as usual, life and my tardiness got in the way.

The story behind this quilt. 

Back in 2009 I travelled to Europe, and while in Paris I bought a present for my sister. Her name is Fi, and I know that Fée is French for fairy but I just couldn't resist this seriously cute cushion cover.  My sis loved it but eventually said to me that it wasn't getting used as a cushion because it's quite big, Euro pillow size, and would I please make it into a quilt. The cushion cover fabric is a very fine pure cotton and creases a lot!  A search through my fabric stash and  voila,  some coordinating fabric.  Even though my sister wanted me to make a quilt, she wanted minimal piecing and minimal quilting. The front of the cushion cover was unpicked from the backing and I started adding borders.

A variety of fabrics from my stash, including a piece from Pashmina by Moda, Kona Charcoal, Bella Snow and a Denyse Schmidt from Spotlight fabric, not all seen in the above shot.

Minimal piecing meant I chose to make a medallion style quilt with simple borders. Minimal quilting ended up being stitch in the ditch, using Aurifil 2021 and 2024 50wt.  I love quilting with the Aurifil thread as it's fine and it sits nicely into the fabric, it's perfect for stitch in the ditch quilting.  I also added a couple of extra machine quilted lines to add some very subtle quilting detail.

I had a dilemma with the wide Paris map border. It was too wide to just stitch in the ditch, so I chose to stitch along the streets. I really like how that turned out. It was a bit of a headache trying to plan ahead with minimal stopping and starting but I think I did quite well and the further I went, the more creative I became following the streets.

The next challenge was how to quilt the centre panel.  That took a lot of thought, I eventually machine quilted around the outside of the fairy, and then used white Perle 8 to add lots of daisies to the design. The original design had embroidered red and blue daisies scattered across the background.  I couldn't match the thread colour and weight so I added white.  They are hard to see in the photos, but that was the whole idea, I didn't want them to be a distraction.  I made each daisy adding two to three stitches in the centre of each flower, going through the backing to anchor it. 

For the backing I used the cute dog print from Aneela Hooey's Sherbet Pips. Not particularly French, but my sister loves it and I think it works really well.

I'm really happy with the whole quilt and I absolutely love the grey and white stripe binding.

The colour purple

I hope you're sitting down, it's a bit of a shock that I'm posting twice in one day.

I haven't just been drinking cocktails the last few weeks, a little bit of sewing has been happening too.  Not at the same time. Hmm that's a thought, maybe if I drank more I'd get more sewing done.

Firstly I've been playing with clamshells. Shock horror. I never ever thought I'd attempt anything using clamshells, but a few weeks ago, I saw one of Sue Daly's quilts that had clamshells in the design and Sue showed how she makes them. It was so darn easy I just had to try, and here's the first few I cut out. Please overlook that they are not pressed and looking pristine, I had just rescued them from under the cat.  If all goes to plan I should have cut another 50 or so by the end of the week year, decade.

 They are going to be added to the EPP block that I showed you last week, I think.

I'm ahead of the game too, have you seen Pantone's colour for 2014? Radiant Orchid.
I can use up my purple stash and be right on trend!!!!!!!

Another crap photo, but I'm in the middle of hand quilting this baby and I wasn't going to go and press it just for the sake of the photo, I'm lazy, and really what's the point when it's just going to get all scrunched up again 5 minutes later.  I'm almost at the end of this project, it's the quilt for my sister. Some of you may remember it was supposed to be for her big 0 birthday last year, yep that's right, it was almost 18 months ago. I'm now aiming for Christmas this year,  and I'm presently sewing lots and lots of daisies (the white ones) 

on to the centre panel as a quilting element.  Why? Don't ask. 

Another peek at my sister's quilt, before quilting.

Cocktail Wednesday

Wow the weeks are disappearing very quickly, yikes, only two weeks until Christmas.  That's a good reason to taste test a cocktail or two. I need to decide which drinks are going to make the cut and will be served on Christmas Day. That brings me to today's cocktail.

I'm not sure whether this one has a name, Shay picked it so we'll just have to ask her. I think it's called a cranberry cocktail, if not, I'm sure Shay can come up with a suitable and probably highly inappropriate name!!!! 

Anyhoo, the ingredient's for this one are in the pic below. As usual I forgot to include one of the ingredients. You'd think I was taste testing the cocktails before I took the photo, as this is the second week in a row I've stuffed it up.

A lime should be in this shot, oh and ice.

The recipe for this one: a handful of ice, a shot of vodka, I had cranberry vodka on hand, so I used that instead of regular vodka.  Topped up with cranberry juice and dry ginger ale and served with a lime wedge and a mint sprig. Oh and if I lived somewhere I could get my hands on fresh cranberries, I'd have chucked a couple into the glass too for some festive cheer.

This is it.

Not bad at all. 100000000000% better than last weeks cocktail (sorry Thea). I'd give it a 4.25. I couldn't decide between a 4 or a 4.5 so I split the difference. 

Cocktail Wednesday (on Thursday)

Another week has rolled around and it's Cocktail Wednesday again.   Well it was yesterday, but as Thea has picked this weeks gem and she lives on the other side of the world and is therefore a day behind, we have been waiting for her to give us her verdict before Shay and I posted our "results".

Below we have a photo of most of the ingredients, I forgot about the other two ingredients when I was taking the photo, although I didn't forget to add them in when it was time to make this cocktail.

An eclectic mix in this one

The recipe called for Calisaya Liqueur but as both Shay and I discovered, it is not available in Australia or anywhere else in the world except Eugene, Oregon.  After quite a bit of research, and many emails back and forth between Shay and myself, we thought that Angostura bitters would be a reasonable substitute.

The ingredients: rum, Calisaya liqueur (Angostura Bitters substituted), maple syrup, coffee, and frothed milk. I'm not going to give you the recipe. You're welcome.

The piéce de resistance, see the photo below.

Yes, that is bacon

Another shot of the bacon

The Bacon Maple Syrup Cocktail.

I  couldn't decide whether it was going to be really bad, or it might just be an interesting mix that couldn't be as bad as it sounds.  Well I'm here to tell you that I think Thea may have been trying to poison us.  In the defence of the cocktail, it possibly could have been much better if we had the Calisaya, but I'm not ever going to try it even if I miraculously find that stuff, (not that I'm ever going to look for it either.)

Thank god for the bacon. The bacon was great. It almost masked the taste of the two sips I tried. Why did I take a second sip?

On a more positive note, BP has finished university for the year and is back home for the summer break. She has found part time work locally, so I'll have the pleasure of her company for the next three months!

BP and Bailey selfies.

Material acquisition at Material Obsession

I couldn't pass up a trip to Material Obsession whilst we were in Sydney, and of course, I had to make some purchases whilst I was there.

Some lovely prints to add to my ever expending stash.  Hopefully I'll be using most of these in my current EPP project.

Not sure where I'm going with this. I started following one pattern but I'm now thinking of  going off on my own tangent and combining it with another pattern.