Will Work for Fabric

And the winner is....

The winner of the little blue and yellow quilt is......(musical accompaniment please) Jane !!!!

Holly has a bunch of giveaways going too, so go visit her....you gotta be in it to win it.

And of course, I feel like a winner because you were all so nice to visit me and even try baking the cake---upstateLisa will attest to the yumminess of the cake!

And look, I got a little package yesterday of protective gear.....

ok, it's armor for the tools of the trade---but hey they need protecting too!

I met this kool, kooky, kind lady while teaching at the Homespun Hearth retreat.  Her name is Gracelyn May and she is the genius behind these tool protectors,  She was so thoughtful and brought these to the retreat for her new friends....mine arrived in my package of class materials from the retreat.   How lucky am I?

Hope you get a little surprise today!

Hugs and Stitches!

Megan

P.S.  I ran spell check on this post and the tool suggested "gumminess" instead of "yumminess"----that cracked me up----do you think I should take it personally? 

THANK YOU!!!!

What a wonderful day I had today reading all of your comments on the dessert and quilt. 

So to address some of your questions/comments:

    1-  No, the cake is not included with the quilt....this is what is left of the cake: 

    2-  To Lisa, the LakeHouse fabricholic:  you are among friends...don't fight it, go with your heart.

    3- to those who commented that everything matched---my sister has always said:  accessories are everything!  most times, I'm thinking jewels, but sometimes a little quilt works.

Now be sure to go to Holly's blog and see her recipe and leave her a comment---tell her what recipes you liked/loved/can't live without.

And tomorrow, it's back to quilts....and stay tuned, the winner of the little quilt will be announced on Friday.

Hugs and Stitches!

Megan

Mellow Yellow....

I'm so happy to be able to share a recipe and a friend with you.

And many thanks Holly for hosting this event and a very nice intro--and if you've seen us in action at Market, you'll know we definitely take turns being Lucy! can you say Vitameatavagamen?

But back to the dessert....I have a friend, Peg, who shares with me the most wonderful and simple recipes, and thankfully, gives me the shoulder to cry on and her honest opinion....when I need it most.  And what have I given her in return.....I taught her the importance of a stash and took her to Lancaster PA to start her very own!  How much did she get?  2 words:  Car-top Carrier!

So this is Peg's recipe for Lemon Blueberry Cake.

Cream together 1 stick of butter and 1 cup of sugar.

Beat in 2 eggs.

Combine with 2 cups of flour, 2 teaspoons baking powder, 1/2 teaspoon of salt.

Mix above with 1/2 cup of milk and 1 tsp vanilla.

Stir in 1-1/2 cups of blueberries(fresh or frozen).

Pour into a greased 8" square pan.  Bake at 350 degrees for 45 minutes.

While cake is still hot, poke holes in it with a toothpick.  Make a mixture of 1/4 cup of lemon juice and 1/3 cup sugar.  Pour over top of cake.  It goes in all the holes and makes the cake really moist.

Be sure to take a piece out for yourself before the family knows the cake exists....it goes quickly!

The plate in the photo is from a recent trip my MIL took to Norway.  She goes back every few years to visit relatives, etc.  and brings us back some trinkets.  Don't you just love blue and white and yellow?  So cheerful!

The little quilt is a prize for one of you to thank you for coming to the party....just leave a comment and I'll do a random drawing....you know how it works.  Of course all of these fabrics are LakeHouse but if you want to make one of your own, here's what I did:

1. Layer 2-- 4" squares right sides together.  Draw a diagonal line from corner to corner.  Sew a quarter inch seam on both sides of the line.  Press to set seams and then cut on drawn line and press again.
2. Layer these 2 blocks right sides together with opposite colors touching.  Draw a diagonal line perpendicular to the sewn seam line.  Stitch a quarter inch seam on both sides of the drawn line.
3. Press to set seams.  Cut on drawn line and press block open.
4. Trim block to 3" square.  Arrange and sew together. 
5. I added a 1-1/2" border.

 

I added buttons instead of quilting the inside of the quilt.   I just love to buy old buttons when I see them.

I've started to work on these little quilts thanks to inspiration from Kathie and Lucy, it's a great feeling to finish a project...and who can't finish a 12" square quilt??  Not really making a dent in the stash, but fun anyway.  Look for more in future posts!

Hugs and Stitches!

Megan

P.S.  I got a chance to taste test Holly's recipe for tomorrow....Super Yummy!  Had to put on the stretch pants and take a nap afterwards.

What's that noise?

Before I left for Colorado, my dear friend Sister Mary Awful, sent me a little card...

The inside says....that's why they're praying!  what do you think she means by that? 

Well, thank goodness for friends like her to watch over me. She was kind enough to make the trip to PA while I was in CO to get our machines serviced.  Even though I have only had my Bernina 440 for about 8 months, I put alot of miles on it, so I figured, she needed some TLC.

And let me just tell you WOW!  what a difference!

Now that purring in the sewing room is not just the kitties but my tuned, oiled, cleaned machine.  And I have to admit, with it running so smoothly, I feel like purring too!

So take my advice and get your machine professionally tuned-up, you'll miss it for a few days, but then maybe you'd get some of that handwork done!

Hugs and Stitches!

Megan

What am I going to do with these?

I stopped by a cute little shop in Lafayette Village (NJ) and picked up a few little things including this shelf-thing (shadowbox, shelves, whatever)  isn't it cute???

Of course, I have no idea where I will use it, but the woman in the store told me---"you know, the big thing now is to not put anything on the shelves, just hang it as is"----whoa, she doesn't know me at all!

 

 

In an on-going effort to clean out the NQF drawer and maybe finish another project for the guild show, I cam across these blocks....

I know I had a plan when I made these....wish I could remember what it was!  Did you ever find a UFO like that?  Note to self:  put a sketch in the bag with the blocks and fabric.
Well, won't it be a nice little surprise what I come up with now?

Hope you find a nice little surprise this weekend...

Hugs and Stitches!

Megan

Little Wishes

We all have our wishes, big and small.....

One of the twins expressed his new mealtime wish last nite.  We were having a discussing about who gets the last piece of Mile High Birthday Pie and the discussion went into....pie, what pie....what's pie---3.14 blah blah blah,....or 22 divided by 7....and all the sudden, the proclamation comes forth from the youngest member of the household----"Hey----no math at the table"!.....my little wish is for more days like this of the whole family sitting down to dinner silliness.

Our guild Quilt Show is next weekend and we do a fund raiser area called Little Wishes.  The goal each time is to have over 100 little quilts to auction/raffle off  ----you know, tickets, coffee cans, draw the name, yippee!....It's a great fund raiser, because all the little quilts are donated so almost everything collected is profit.  So I'm trying to finish up a few orphan blocks into some Little Wishes quilts to pass on to the guild.

this one uses some leftover block from a quilt Kathie and I did for McCall's Quick Quilts magazine.  And we even made the cover! 

I bet if I look I can probably find a few more things to go to Little Wishes and if you are in Westfield, NJ next weekend....stop by and take a chance!

Hugs and Stitches!

Megan

A trend developing here

Yesterday was my first born's birthday....honestly, a little tug on the heartstrings as my little boy turns 20, how did this happen, did I miss something?  I am so proud of the man he has become.  He's smart, adorable and he has a good heart----what more could I ask for (a job perhaps?)

Well, Mr 20 year old does not like cake, so he has always had Mom's Apple Pie for his birthday cake.  So we went apple picking on Sunday (nothing but the freshest apples for my little angel!).  And yesterday I baked a pie and realized....yikes, I bake the same way I sew.....

What a mess!  But as with my sewing, I like the feeling of accomplishment when the project is done and I can clean up and start anew.

So mission accomplished....we had Mile High (I went a little overboard on the apple peeling) Birthday Pie.  Yummy!

And speaking of food.....my little pineapple quilt from last week is finished!

Oh my goodness....is this a trend, am I actually finishing things?   Ok, so it's only a 12" square quilt and a pie but don't stop me now, I'm on a roll!

Hugs and Stitches!

Megan

I'm surrounded by genius!

Do you have these kinds of days in your house???  I find it best to steer clear of arguments between the twins, but really have to smile when I hear it from the other room.

Today was the first soccer game and in the sports bags were 2 shirts, shorts, socks, etc.   One twin is about 12 lbs more than the other, which is alot at 10 years old but everything you get from the team is basically the same size.....

Twin B takes a set of everything and gets it all on but the shirt and then Twin A goes into the bathroom to get into his gear.

Then the discussion/argument begins:

Twin B: " Hey I'm number 12 not number 11"
ranting follows and arguing in the other room, "he won't give me my shirt"

Mom(in a cheap imitation of Tim Gunn):  "work it out!"

Twin B: "wa, wa, wa, (stamping and carrying on) this shirt doesn't even fit over my head"

Silence for a moment

Twin A:  "dude, you're putting your head in the arm-hole"

End of discussion

I'm surrounded by genius....

Hugs and Stitches!

Megan

Tumbling....

No, not gymnastics....tumbler blocks!

I went to a little "cutting party" the other day, really it was excuse to spend time with our wayward friend Lorre, visiting from across the pond. We cut tumblers for me and triangles for them.....I'm a project behind them, they already did tumblers and are now onto Triangles...

Love these templates, Kathie tells me I'm supposed to take the paper off the outside of them so you can see what your cutting.  DUH!  what was I thinking.

It  reminded me of a kooky college friend who tells the stories of early days of marriage and trying to find her way around the kitchen.  Apparently , when the package of frozen vegetables say to put "entire box of peas into boiling water", she did just that!

So anywho.....dear Patty brought a bag of leftover tumblers (what did we do before Ziploc bags???)

And, oh goodness, when I emptied out, there must be hundreds!

Thanks for the tumblers Patty!  ...and thanks for hosting the cutting party Kathie!

It's so nice to spend time solving world problems (or at least how to handle those pesky children of ours) over a cup of coffee and a pile of fabric.

Now I suppose you will expect to see a finished tumbler quilt?

Hugs and Stitches!

Megan

How do you work??

I don't know about you, but I can't seem to paper-piece without making a mess.

But for me, part of the reward of finishing the piecing is that I get to sweep up with mess and start anew with a clean slate.

I was asked to demo paper-piecing at my guild meeting, so I did one block there and couldn't leave that poor little thing by itself, so I made 3 more, added some borders and called it Done! 

I can't bear to have another "Not Quite Finished" project.  I want more "Wow, I Did it" projects.  ok, so it's not quilted yet, but that will get done tonite during our Movie Nite. 

I have to tell you,  I was not a big fan of the whole projection system and screen and blah blah blah man things that have to go with it, but I had a moment of weakness (was I sewing at the time?) during a trip to Radio Shack to buy batteries or something and we got the whole sha-bang. 

But now, we make Friday nite Movie Time, and we end the week with time together.  Who knew family time would come in the form of a simple machine and a little red envelope from NetFlix?

Hugs and Stitches!

Megan