first of the season!

sunday i made my first holiday cookies of the season... a chocolate & mint sandwich cookie. i saw the recipe in the december issue of better homes and gardens... which, fyi, i also subscribed to today. 12 issues for 5.99! come on, you cannot beat that! so i used the recipe in an article about charity cookies, and voile! (no, not the fabric, the cookie!)

slightly different from the magazine of course, with the main difference being, i used a scalloped edge star shape cut out, made the icing green in color, and mine is just mint, not peppermint, but i wish to say, that is only because the third world, third rate pathmark by our house did not have peppermint extract. heathens!

i think they are pretty good actually, and i think i am happy with their design. (the cookie cutter is one that was my grandmother's... long story short, i do not have a ton of memories of her through my life, her living far away from me, but i do remember getting holiday cookies from her that were made with this cutter.)

i have made a big box for my darling to take to work tomorrow. you gotta move those cookies... and of course, christmas cookies mean christmas giving...woo hoo!

sometimes it all comes together...

and sometimes it doesn't. bah. i am not discouraged mind you, but this whole pattern making thingy, well, it's a bit annoying, you know, when you are wrong about it. ha.

not that i have had any huge mistakes, mind you, just that i have learned that more than 1/4 yard of each fabric is necessary, more like 3/8...is that acceptable? i hope so.

i guess i am more discouraged by everything else at the moment. well, not terribly. it's just that there are so many things on the pot right now, and i want them done. done! but alas, i need more fabric to finish my bohemian style baby quilt proto-type, i need muslin, which my local shop is currently out of, to finish those sweet simple curtains, and i haven't even started any sort of holiday gifts, which i totally need to get started, cause baby, christmas is coming.

i will never complain about christmas though. tis my favorite holiday. red and green and over the top and sparkly and scented and all lit up! that's the way i like it. i guess i better get crackin' then...

oh anna...

can i just say, right now, here, that i love anna maria horner. like true love. i just read her most recent blog post, about the velveteen, and i am smitten. smitten i say. her work is so beautiful, and inspiring, and she is so helpful. i mean, come on, she has like 6 kids, and she sits and writes a wonderful expose on the beauty and intricacies of her new velveteen line of cotton fabrics, which, of course i will say, are amazing! and she creates perfectly wonderful patterns, and fabrics, and everything. (oh man, am i gushing?)

and i just wanted to say that. please, if you don't already worship her work, you will. how can you not? logical me knows that to say i want to be her is silly, i mean, i don't even know the poor woman, i know nothing about her real life, and i may come off slightly....odd. but you know what, i want to be her.

it's curtains...

i haven't done a terrible lot of sewing in the past few days. had the weekend off, but i went out to shoot the pictures for the baby k quilt, then on sunday ed and i trekked out to ardmore to check out the last clover market of the season. bummer. it was way tiny, but i was informed that normally it is much bigger, so i missed it. double bummer. i think ed knew that too, he said he felt bad. however, after i got some chipotle, well, it was livable. we also got to visit an uncle who is rarely seen, which was v. nice. hopefully we will go out again soon, have dinner, bring a cheesecake, you know, the usual stuff...

follow all of that with work, work, sewing class, kate nash show (yeah!), work, evil, fat, cocky mouse living in my house leaving messes and eating alfie's food.... well it was a lot. this is what i got done...

granted, they are sewn now, into the basic rectangular shape that will be the curtains for the bedroom. i am debating on whether i should line them or not. they are basic 4 inch patchwork. i would like to have some light shining through them. i envision the usual, you know, stained glass style colors gliding through in the final burst of sunlight in an autumn evening... but then you would see my sewing on the back. not that anyone will see it... but i will. bah. what to do...

with all of this, i look back and think, wow you are lame. look at anna maria! i just read her latest blog post about quilt market. even i'm tired! so much work, and i am complaining about a mouse! but i suppose that is why she is heaven... sigh.

quilts and sunshine

ahhh. it's 65 degrees outside today, the sun is shining, the trees are beautiful, truly a perfect fall day.

 

took alfie to the small park, his new found love of sniffing the leaves makes you feel good. i love to hear his little paws trample through the dry foliage, and i think he does too.

of course, now i have learned, taking said beagle along with a bagful of quilt that you want to shoot in the fall sun, not so much fun. he couldn't stop for more than a second before a new whiff of excitement hit. so to my chagrin, i finished the excursion, them came home, grabbed my bike, and headed out on my own...

not so bad though, riding my amsterdam cruiser down crisp lanes, erm, or something like that. (it's the city, you take what you can get in the way of nature.) but what's important, is that i have a new quilt! yeah!

it's not so much a quilt, as maybe more of a play mat. measuring in at 32x36. i finally dove in and used some of my jennifer paganelli dance with me. not for lack of love, perhaps more for intense love of never wanting my 2 yards to go away! it was one of my first purchases when i dove in to quilting, and i love it more than life itself. but one must move on, and since i only used, say, 3/4 of a yard, there is plenty left! yeah!

the playmat/quilt/whathaveyou, is a version of a log cabin quilt, one cabin in the middle, two porticos on the sides, and some steps playing up the corners...heheh. i kind of winged it, knowing only that i wanted to do another log cabin, having so much fun with my fifties kitchen quilt, but i didn't want to do the same thing twice. (you live once! move on!)

but i think it came out really swell. so swell in fact, that i swear upon the quilting gods themselves, that i am going to make a pattern for this mo-fo! pdf fancy pants. of course, i have no clue how long that is going to take me, but i'm gonna do it. (i mean it, laura!)

back to the sunshine! yeah!

don't you think alfie looks like he is in an old issue of better homes and gardens? you know, minus the fact that ours is not a better home.

daylight savings

tonight's the night. change those clocks back. in one way i am way happy about it cause frankly, i cannot deal with this whole getting up in the dark thing. it depresses me. guess that's why my stint working at a bakery was not my happiest time in life, working from 7-3? blech.

of course, the bummer is too that now it will be dark really early. i have to ride my bike home from work in the dark chill. in the fall, through christmas, i don't really mind the early nights. it's kinda novel again, like the idea of snow. it's time of year you can make pies, and roast chicken, and snuggle up under super awesome new quilts you made, drinking cocoa, watching modern family and think the world is ok.

ask me again in january.

Hey you...Blogger's Quilt Fest!

so, through my perusing of the universe of quilting blogs, i found the lovely Blogger's Quilt Festival!, from amyscreativeside.com. the minute i saw it, and all the awesome quilts on it, i thought, i have to show my garden quilt!, why? because though it is not perfect, i am so ridiculously proud of it!

it was my second quilt. ever. my first being a crib sized quilt that i made in a beginner's quilting class at Spool, my favorite place in philly. i dunno, something clicked when i made that quilt, and then, when i found anna maria horner, well let's just say, the stars converged, the earth orbited the moon, it was crazy and everything made sense!

  

it's made up of a lot of anna's garden party. it has to be my all time favorite fabric collection. (yes, yes, i know i have only been quilting for a year, but i am confident it will always be my fave.)

of course, making this quilt was not easy. like i said, it was my second quilt, and i went from crib size to full size. add to that that my sewing machine was on its death bed this year, clinking and clacking to the bitter end, and a ton of cutting on a tiny cutting mat at the dining room/kitchen table, now the "sewing room", and you get a ton of work!

but now our bedroom is a sea of color, with me adding more every day. and that small quilt on the wall above the bed, that was my first quilt, beginner's quilting, which i am, prouder than proud to say, is now a class that i teach!

isn't is nice when things make sense.