Sister's Choice Quilts

Fun Weekend Sewing

I have needed a new mat for my laptop computer for the longest time. I've made do with doilies or old table mats, but I got the notion to make myself something cute this weekend. 

I've been watching some of Lori Holt's YouTube videos on scrap busting and that led to me browsing through a few of her excellent quilting books, which are chock full of cute quilt block patterns. I literally pulled scraps from my stash bins and picked out three of her adorable block patterns and started sewing. I love how the apple and apple core mat turned out. It is a shame to cover it up with my computer!

Here's a closer look. You can tell I did the quilting myself. It is so strange how the results seem better when the quilting is a lot closer together. Maybe the lines are easier to follow or something. I don't know, but it turned out pretty well.

The little dahlia mug rug is cute too, but I was really rushing to finish this one. My piecing is ok, but I should have slowed down when I was sewing down the binding. Oh well, it makes a cute set on my desk and I will enjoy using them over the next while.

My progress on the Red Sampler Blocks has slowed down because I realized that I need a heck of a lot more background fabric and have to wait for it to come in the mail. It turns out all those red sampler blocks have to be framed in background fabric. Yikes. Luckily I found what I needed online. While I'm at it I should buy the border fabric before it is all sold out! Thank goodness you can order just about anything online. Remember in the old days if your local quilt shop didn't have it anymore you were out of luck? Now you can hardly even find a local quilt shop.

Hope you had a good weekend. I finished a couple of books and should do a review of what I have read lately for you this week. 

Practice Makes Perfect

I tried again yesterday to make an acorn mug rug. I do like this one better than the first one I made. I think the coordinating fabric frame sets off the acorn better. Isn't that fabric adorable? It is Bee's Life by Tara Reid for Riley Blake. I do love a bee-themed fabric.

It turned out bigger than I typically like for a mug rug. It is more like a sandwich and cup of tea mat!

The block pattern is from Lori Holt's Farm Girl Vintage book and is called "Little Acorn".

Wish me luck. I am off for four days with my father...Yesterday my sister couldn't get him up out of his chair, which was not good.  We have ordered one of those lift chairs that are as big as a Volkswagen. I sure hope it helps. It arrives on Tuesday. It seems as if every day brings a new challenge.

Have a great weekend everyone.

Acorn Mug Rug

I was in the mood for a new mug rug yesterday, so using one of the cute block patterns from Lori Holt's Farmhouse Vintage book, I made up this little acorn block. Now that I've made it, I think it would be cuter if I had framed it in a fabric other than that background print. It is too much light fabric and I think the acorn design would stand out more if it were framed.

I may have to try out another version of this today and see what happens.

This is where the magic happens. My little desk with my new mug rug ready for a cup of tea (or a glass of wine, depending on the time of day). My nephew works at a garden center and gave me that philodendron plant for Christmas. It was a great specimen back then and has gotten even better over time. The leaves are so green and shiny. And how cute is my lamp? I got it around 15 years ago at a little boutique shop. It is really one of a kind and I never get tired of it.

Even though it is over 90° here in Northern California where I live, I have been in a fall frame of mind. I made a great recipe for our dinner last night, from the Half Baked Harvest website. Here's a link to Cider Braised Chicken with Carmelized Onions and Mushrooms. It was truly outstanding and had all the fall vibes. I will definitely be making it again.

This is the recipe author's (Tieghan Gerard) photo, not mine. But I have to say, that looks pretty much how mine turned out. I served it on a bed of a wild rice/white rice blend. I also cut the recipe amount in half and I still have enough to feed my husband and me for two nights. Tieghan has several cookbooks out, and if you follow her on Instagram, she puts out great recipes almost daily.

I hope your week is going well.

 

June Mug Rugs

The June blocks for the Mug Rug of the Month Club are done. Clearly, with all the things on my "To Do" list, they didn't take long. There was some confusion on my part when I got to the top of the strawberry unit, but I worked it out eventually. The pattern is Strawberry Social by The Pattern Basket. 

I hope to get them quilted and bound on Sunday and then present them to the girls.

In other news, my oven decided to bail on me. It won't hold a consistent temperature, doesn't heat up to the set temperature, and is generally frustrating the heck out of me. One of the activities that Eva and I do regularly is bake, and without an oven, neither of us is going to be very happy.

My husband put an oven thermometer in there, we set the oven to Convection Bake, set the temperature higher than we needed, and let it preheat for a long time. With all that tinkering, we hoped we would be able to successfully bake a Cinnamon Streusel coffee cake. The last thing we baked, Snickerdoodle Blondies, had to be thrown out because of the bad baking situation. And they were for the end of the year school potluck party. Someone was pretty unhappy about that.  To avoid a similar situation, Eva plopped herself in front of the oven for the 40-minute baking time of the coffee cake. She had a flashlight and would peer into the oven and check the thermometer every few minutes. If it was off the 350° mark she would call me over and I would tinker with it.

I think it came out pretty good. I am taking Eva with me to my dad's house this weekend for a much-needed visit, and she wanted to take him a baked treat. Fingers crossed it tastes good! 

Have a great weekend everyone!

 

Busy Week, Busy Time of Year

Ok, so I am pretty sure this is the cutest mug rug I've ever made. I used an apple block pattern from one of Lori Holt's Farm Girl Vintage books. How adorable is the apple core block? This is teacher appreciation week and we wanted to give Miss Kelly a little token of our affection.

Eva is in a play this weekend. The Enchanted Bookshop. She has two roles, "the Lady in Red" and "Little Red Riding Hood". We were asked to bake cookies to be sold at intermission and to display them in a way that relates to our kid's part. We filled a big basket with Oatmeal Chocolate Chip cookies (pretty perfect recipe if I say so myself) along with a propped-up picture book of Little Red Riding Hood. I think it makes a  nice display. We made 100 cookies and placed them in 50 cello bags. If they sell for $2 a pop, that will be a $100 donation for the school.

Goodness, have we been busy. Lots of trips to her charter school over the past two weeks. It is about a 25-minute drive, so it's a major back and forth. She had state testing last week, every day, and rehearsals for the play every day this week. I won't be sorry to see the end of this school year!

I am taking a break from seeing my dad this weekend. My sisters are covering for me. We will attend Eva's play on Friday and Saturday and with any luck do absolutely nothing on Sunday.  Happy Mother's Day to all of you moms out there. I feel as if I don't have to do anything on this holiday because my mom and mother-in-law are no longer with us. Book of the Month Club did something kind of nice, I thought. They have had a very active ad campaign promoting that a subscription to their service would make a nice Mother's Day gift. They were sensitive enough to realize that not everyone has a mom anymore and that this could be a tough holiday for some. They told the folks on their email list that if they didn't want to receive these ad emails for Mother's Day to click a button in the email and they would not see any of them. I thought it was thoughtful.

Happy Friday, and enjoy the weekend!

February Mug Rug of the Month

Happy New Year! I started the year out right by putting away most of our Christmas decorations and getting up into the sewing room. They say if you start the year as you plan to continue it, you have a chance of doing just that. Fingers crossed I will be doing more sewing this year.

So here is the February Mug Rug of the Month. I am so done with the octagonal shape I had been using since fall. I wanted to work with small pieces and used my Little Crumbler template by Miss Rosie's Quilt Co. That template is great. You can make units as small as 1 1/2" and as large as 4". I went with 2" for my shapes. Four rows of ten units. 

The rectangular shape makes it so fast to machine sew the bindings! My January mug rug is in the picture below. Cute, but ugh, that shape was a pain to get right.

Every now and then, particularly in February, I get emails from readers wondering about the pattern I used for the heart runner in my blog header. If you are interested in how I made it, check out my post from February 5, 2018. 

I hope all of you had a terrific holiday. I have to say 2021 ended very nicely at my house. We had a fantastic visit with our son, and just hated to have him go home. He must have brought the Irish weather with him when he came to California because it rained practically the entire time he was home. He had a couple of nice days when he went into San Francisco and took photographs. I was happy that he could spend some time with my father as well. 

This week I will be attempting to ease back into a "normal" schedule!  We will see how that goes.