A Quilters' Gathering

I live a few towns away from Nashua, NH where "A Quilters' Gathering", an annual quilt show with classes and vendors is celebrated every year.  I spent a few hours there on Saturday looking at all the beautiful quilts, getting inspiration and spending money on some fabric and a pattern.  I didn't take many photos of quilts, but here are the few that I really thought were interesting.

A nice applique quilt with a beautiful edge treatment.

And a close up of the flowers.  The largest flower is about 10" across.

A wonderful arrangement of grandmother's flower blocks.

And some beautiful quilting on this quilt.

There are only 6 different blocks in this quilt.  Each row is a single block pattern done in different fabrics and  values in the design to show how different an individual block can look using different color placements.

A beautiful scrappy quilt.  What a great way to use up colorful scraps.

A gorgeous wedding ring quilt.  A wedding ring is on my list of quilts to do in the near(ish) future.

Gayle's beautiful Star Berries quilt.  I hadn't noticed the scalloped edges on the top right and lower left before.  Pictures don't do this quilt justice.

Congratulations, Gayle.

Irises are my favorite flower.  I really like the quilting on the background of this.

Well, there you have it.  This is certainly not all of the quilts, but some that I particularly liked.

Kousa Dogwood Fruit Jelly

I'm not a cook.  Sure, I can cook edible, sometime even delicious food.  But, I don't love to cook.

OK, that being said, I made jelly this weekend.  Well, I made very sweet syrup that was supposed to be jelly but didn't jell into jelly.  And I don't know what I'm doing wrong.  This is my second attempt at jelly.  Have I tried something with a definite recipe?  No, that wouldn't been nearly challenging enough.  My first attempt was hot pepper jelly.  I think I mostly had a recipe for that.  It looks wonderful, has a great flavor, but didn't jell.  My next attempt was to make jelly from the fruit from our Kousa dogwood. What is that, you ask?

Well, this is what the tree looks like loaded with berries.  The berries have a leathery, bumpy red exterior with a pumpkin colored sort of fibrous interior.  I tried the berries and they are OK, but it's something you'd want to pick and pop into your mouth like cherries.  But, we've got this abundance of fruit, so we (DH and I -- mostly DH) thought we should do something with them.  We've heard that you can make wine, but I haven't done that for years, and that takes some time.  So, jelly seemed like a better solution.  After failing at jelly once, I couldn't possibly fail again, right?

This is what we picked for the jelly.  This is a small fraction of what is on the tree.  But, having never done anything with this fruit, I didn't want a whole lot more in case this turned out inedible.  This is nearly 4 pounds.

Upon the advise of a friend, I rinsed the fruit, boiled it with about a cup of water and mashed the fruit with a potato masher to break it up.  I then put it into a metal sieve and mashed it with the bottom of a ladle.  At that point it looked mostly orange and cloudy.  I took that pulp and juice and put it into cheesecloth, secured it closed with a rubber band, hung the rubber band over the cabinet handle and let it drip into this pot.  I came up with about 3 1/2 cups of liquid.

I added some more water to bring the juice to 3 3/4 cups and put that in a sauce pan with 7 cups of sugar and 1/3 cup of lemon juice, brought it to a boil and added two packets of liquid pectin per the recipe.  I used the recipe for strawberries from the pectin packet.  Then I boiled the pectin and juice for another minute and got ready to can.  I got these seven jars of jelly, another 8 ounce jar and a partial bowl that I refrigerated.  I let it cool and waited.

I got wonderfully clear syrup.   It did not jell.  Again.

Off to the internet to look for suggestions.  I saw a number of people suggesting what the Certo pamphlet suggested - to reboil the syrup with additional sugar and lemon juice.  I also saw a suggestion to put a plate in the freezer and drop a bit of the boiled liquid onto it to see if it jells before taking it off the heat.  So, the next day I took the syrup that I had put in the jar and bowl and stored in the fridge and reboiled it with a few more tablespoons of sugar and another tablespoon of lemon juice.  The few drops of liquid on the cold plate looked like it was jelled harder than the original syrup, but I couldn't tell for sure.  Poured it back into the cleaned jar and bowl, sealed them up and put in the fridge again.  The next morning ... JELLY!  I'm not a total jelly novice any more.

The jelly tastes somewhat like plums.  It's pretty good on toast.  I'll probably make more next year if we have an abundance of fruit again.

Florabunda Blocks Finished!!

I finished the center block of Florabunda earlier this week.  And here it is...

I have to give credit to my husband for picking out the fabric for the basket.  While we were on vacation, I dragged him to 2 quilt shops looking for fabric for this basket and two purples that I will use as sashing for the quilt.  I found a plaid that was 'basket-ish', and he went poking around the shop and found this basket weave fabric! 

So, as I was approaching the end of the stitching on this block, I started to panic because I don't have another hand work project lined up.  My original idea was to baste the iris quilt top and start the hand quilting on that.



I love this quilt!!!  I'll do a whole blog post on it some time later.  This was started quite some time ago and was nicknamed the 'forever' quilt.  Anyway, my plan was that hand quilting this was to be my winter project.  But, money is a tad tight and I don't have the extra cash to get backing and a king sized batting for this beauty, so it will have to wait for a while.

So, what to do.  I decided to find  my sewing machine under all the clutter that has accumulated on my sewing table for the last 6 months or so and become reacquainted with her.   I found some small UFOs that needed some attention and got them completed.  I could machine quilt the maple leaf quilt since it is all prepared and everything, but that doesn't give me something to do while watching TV and wouldn't have given me the happy jolt of finishing a project.

This one was some extra blocks from my maple leaf top that I put together and machine quilted.  All it needed was a binding.  I've never been happy with my mitered corners on my bindings, so I used this as a learning exercise to try a different technique.  My conclusion is that I like this, but I need more practice.

OK, don't look at the miters too closely.  Like I said, I need practice.  Yes, the leaf placement was intentional.  I think I'll use this as a trivet for the table.

The next jolt of happiness for finishing a project came from these pot holders.

Aren't they cute?  Again, left over flowers from another project put together for something useful.

Then I started a new project - a pin cushion/thread catcher.  I've had the pattern for quite some time and have been planning to make one of these  since April.  I'm still not quite done.  I have the hand stitching to do and I have a plan on when that will happen.

More Updates

I got a nice note from a follower with a nudge to post more frequently.  First of all, I have a follower?!  Wow.

Not much going on quilt-wise.  Nothing speedy anyway.  I'm still working on the center block of Florabunda.  This is what I've got so far.

I realized on this block that most of my projects go in sort of a 3-legged wave.  The first leg is like the down hill slope of a roller coaster.  I'm excited about the project and am anxious to see how it is going to look.  I choose fabrics and stitch on it as often as I can.  Then, I either get bored or stuck and I'm on the up hill climb on that roller coaster.  I either know how it is going to turn out, or I can't imagine how it will go, and I drag my feet and find other things to do or excuses not to do this.  This is the phase when lots of projects turn into UFOs.  I've managed to power through that phase on this particular block and am now onto the coasting into home stage.  I've pretty much decided on how everything will look and am looking forward to the next ride - that is, I'm looking forward to getting all 13 blocks together with sashing and seeing this come together as a quilt rather than a set of blocks.   This picture was taken a few days ago and I have all the petals of the center pink flower sewed on and all but one of the missing 6 leaves done.  I'm guessing it will be done in a week or so.  Then maybe I'll have more exciting things to blog about.

Life is Moving Fast

I don't remember the last time I posted a blog.  I suppose I could go and look, but it doesn't really matter.  Life has been busy.  In the last 2 months, our daughter graduated from college and we attended both ceremonies and went to two of her gallery shows.  She had knee surgery, we celebrated our 31st anniversary with an overnight trip to the cape and another wonderful lobster roll, celebrated Mother's day, Father's day, my husband's birthday, my daughter's birthday, moved daughter into an apartment, kept a business running and are winding down on our office remodel.  Quilting has sort of taken a back seat to the rest of life, although I have been trying to do a little stitching in the evenings for the past week or so.  We're on a push to get the office/basement updates completed before the 16th because we're having a party that day and relatives staying in the house.  Right now, the spare room/sewing room/guest room looks like an episode of Hoarders.  That is where everything from the basement and office went (well, all the small stuff) while we did the remodel.  As of today, we have new walls, new carpet, new ceiling, new lights and outlets, painted walls and stained woodwork, and new desks.  We're waiting on the delivery of some cabinetry and plugs for telephone and computer that should both arrive this week.  In the mean time, I'm struggling to try to get the house back to what used to be normal.

Having our office in the kitchen makes everything cramped, but I have a terrific view.  We have two bay windows meeting in the corner of the kitchen which gives me a wonderful view of the back yard and my cherry tree.  The birds are out in force and I've really enjoying watching all the babies being fed and taught to look for food by parents.  I've also seen more new birds this year than I have seen lately.  New to me this year are red starts, orchard oriels and red breasted nuthatches.  Today I saw a lot of a new cardinal family and seemingly dozens of titmouse.  I made sure that I picked cherries yesterday because we are getting lots of birds, squirrels and chipmunks visiting that tree for juicy treats.  I get most annoyed at the robins because they eat half a cherry and move on to the next.  (I'm sounding like a crazy bird lady!).

Happy Independence Day!

More Florabunda Block Pictures

This is a shot at the quilting retreat with all the Florabunda blocks together.  Block 12 wasn't quite complete at that time.  I've decided to change two of the blocks.  I don't like the colors of the leaves in either, and one block doesn't have any pink in it so I'm changing the color of the flower centers.  Otherwise, I'm very pleased with how they look together.

After those two blocks are finished, I can start with the 24" center block.  I think I have an idea of the flower colors, but no idea for the color of the basket.  I guess I'll have to play for a bit.



Florabunda Block 12 Completed

I've been doing a little stitching nearly every evening, but finally sat down to finish the last of the 12" Florabunda blocks last night. 

Next is the 24" center block.  I'm excited to see it all come together!