Category Archives: About Me

Pin What?

While doing some research for my post about quilt borders, I read something that changed my {quilting} life. It is a page of tips for quilt borders by Bonnie Hunter of Quiltville (probably best known to modern quilters for her Scrappy Trip Around the World tutorial). Her tips are extremely helpful for getting borders right, but it’s the part she wrote about easing in fullness that clicked for me:

Sew your borders to the long sides of the quilt first, pinning the centers and the ends and easing where necessary. If the border seems bigger than the quilt top, stitch the border to the quilt with the border against the feed dogs. If the quilt seems a bit bigger, then sew that on with the quilt next to the feed dogs to ease it in a bit. {Border Hints and Tricks by Bonnie Hunter}

Basically, she’s saying that the fabric next to the feed dogs gets eased in when you sew…I don’t know about you, but I’ve always been a half-~~assed~~hearted pinner. I pin to match points, but when I’m sewing straight edge to straight edge, I just line up the ends and go. Often, though, I get to the end and my pieces are a hair of a fraction of an inch out of whack. It’s not a lot, but it drives me crazy. I know I just squared that block up to a perfect 12.5″ and I know that sashing piece is cut to precisely 12.5″ so WTF? (My sweet niece Emma thinks that stands for Where’s the Fun?)

Well, now I know WTF the problem is – that damn easing in!

With Bonnie’s words on my mind, yesterday I pinned every single seam on a quilt top I was piecing, points or not. And guess what? Zero out of whack ends. All matched. All perfect. Like a pro.

I have seen the light.

Time

8 Replies

Time…there is never enough of it. I have a lot of things on my to-do list at the moment, but I’m having trouble focusing. Tonight I decided that some decluttering around the house and especially my sewing room would help. I went solid for an hour and then decided that I need professional help (not mental help but in the form of a professional organizer…maybe mental help for the fabric hoarding). So I spent five minutes Googling professional organizers in Dallas and then an ad for fabric caught my eye on the edge of the browser window. Click. Drool. Click. Click. Click. I spent thirty minutes browsing the sale section at one of my favorite online fabric shops. Moral of this story? The internet is evil.

Focus is actually my one little word for 2013 and so far it has motivated me to stop spending so much time doing nothing. 2012 was consumed by new baby things and as all mothers know, it is overwhelming to be responsible for a tiny and precious and delicate thing. Leaving the corporate world also had a huge impact on me. I felt untethered and the freedom of it was both exhilarating and a little bit frightening. Honestly, now I laugh with pure, unadulterated joy when I drive by the old office where I used to work. It’s a crazy laugh like a child hopped up on birthday cake who just opened a Malibu Barbie dream house.

I spent most of 2012 feeling adrift, not quite sure what to do with my new-found freedom and my new baby responsibility. So I did a lot of nothing. I didn’t sew very much, I didn’t blog very much. I watched TV and shopped and did so much nothing that I was just sick with boredom. After Ben turned one and was weaned, I got a little breather and I realized that I could do a lot of wonderful things instead of so much nothing. So I did.

People ask me a lot how I find the time or the energy to do all of the different things that I do. The truth is, we all have the same amount of time. I’ve made a decision to not waste mine so that means I rarely do things like watching TV. I don’t go to parties or events out of a sense of obligation. My time is mine and there is not a lot of it, so I only do things that make me happy. I’m selfish with it.. I spend as little time as possible doing the chores and tasks that have to be done to run a household. Even though I love to cook, I don’t love having to cook to feed people so I cook and freeze four or six weeks worth of food at a time. Every time I defrost a casserole or pasta sauce, it’s like a little gift to myself. Bills are on autopay, my husband does 90% of the laundry and a hefty share of childcare, and things do slip through the cracks. Our house is not as clean as my Aunt Irma’s where you could literally eat off the floor (cause she just mopped it) but I’m okay with that.

In this season of my life, I am being selfish as much as possible and I think more young moms should try it. You only get one shot at life so build a life that makes you happy.

Hello, there…

1 Reply

There has been a lot of thinking and writing about sewing happening at my house, but not much actual sewing in the last week. I have a big deadline that has suddenly gotten a whole lot closer because the month of May pretty much vanished from the calendar. It’s almost over, people! How did that happen? So this means I’m postponing the next lesson of my Learn to Quilt series for another week. We left off piecing blocks, which is a good place to be stuck for a a while. That’s how quilting goes. You usually get stuck at one stage or another.

I’ve been playing around with Adobe Lightroom for this first time this week and I must say that I LOVE IT WITH ALL MY HEART. Much simpler and cleaner than Photoshop. I whipped out about six weeks worth of photos in just a few hours on Sunday night (trying to make the cutoff for a free print deal on Shutterfly). I pulled in some photos I took of my vintage sheet quilt that I thought had turned out total crap and I was able to pretty them up in Lightroom.

I took that at the arboretum one Saturday. As I walked up towards that big white rock, a snake slithered out from under it and made my heart drop right into my toes. I screamed (it was a very ladylike scream) and every single hair on my body stood on end (and stayed like that for the next half hour). My husband graciously held the quilt for me instead. Dang snakes. *shudder*

On a Mini Break

1 Reply

My Learn to Quilt series is on a brief hiatus until next week. Toddler sleep regression was kicking my butt the last couple of weeks (that basically means your toddler stops sleeping through the night for no apparent reason) and combined with my own bad habit of staying up LATE, I have been pretty much a zombie. We are visiting my parents in Houston this week for some pool time and really just a break from our routine at home.

I do want to take this opportunity to share Bonnie Hunter’s post about Quilts for Oklahoma. Quilters are such giving people, and for so many families who lost everything in the tornadoes on Monday, a handmade quilt would be an amazing gift. The OKC Modern Quilt Guild is also accepting donations. See their post {here} for the details. Both groups are asking for finished quilts.

Tidy Time

1 Reply

A couple of years ago, my husband designated 4 pm as “Tidy Time” and he would fold laundry and put things away for about an hour. I know that he was gently trying to inspire me to clean the place up, but it really hasn’t stuck. (I blame the often cluttered surfaces in our home on the lack of storage in our 1950s house.) I try in my own chaotic way to purge and clean and put things away.

My destash sale was a big help (THANKS!) and I will definitely be doing that again to reduce the volume in the sewing space. It also forced me to tidy up some piles around the room.

In the process of tidying and sorting, I found mass yardage of Amy Butler prints to destash as well as a this cute mini I forgot I ever made:

I guess one of the perks of being neat is always knowing where your stuff is. My wallet was lost for a good part of the week. It disappeared one evening after I was doing some online shopping. I looked everywhere for it and felt very annoyed/frustrated/resigned to always losing things under piles of fabric. Tonight I found the wallet deep under my son’s book shelf.

Naughty baby and perpetual unfolder of fabric:

I finished two more WIPs this week (HOORAY) so weather please be lovely tomorrow so I can photograph them. (I started two new projects today (using scraps so they almost don’t count as new, right?) which sort of offsets my two finishes. Blast.)

Happy Easter

Meet: My Bernina 440 QE

22 Replies

Hello! Welcome to my stop on the Meet My Sewing Machine blog hop. I’m glad you’re here!

I own a Bernina 440QE (quilter’s edition) that I purchased in 2011. It was my upgraded-upgrade machine (meaning it was my second good machine since I started quilting.) I tested Berninas when I bought my first nice machine (a Pfaff Creative Expression) in 2010 but decided they were too pricey. Then in 2010, I met a few women at the Dallas MQG who had Berninas and brought them to our Saturday Sews. That was fine. I was still happy with my Pfaff. And then our guild started meeting at the Bernina store and that was the end of it. That machine had to come home and live with me! At that point, I felt like I knew enough about quilting and sewing machines to deserve such a fancy Rolls Royce of a sewing machine.

There are two aspects of the Bernina that I ADORE. First, is the BSR – Bernina Stitch Regulator. I couldn’t free motion worth a swear word on my Brother, but was decent on my Pfaff. With the BSR, I can pretty much do any design I set my mind to and it looks pretty profesh. (You know, professional.)

The second thing I love about my Bernina is what they call the Barbie case and all of those Swiss-made all-metal presser feet inside. Droooool.

The foot I love most is #37, the 1/4″ foot. It sews a perfect scant 1/4″ seam. It was very smart of Bernina to make the foot numbers so prominent on each foot. None of my previous sewing machines were so user-friendly. There is one feature I would love to have – an automatic thread cutter. The Berninas are also kinda noisy compared to many other sewing machines. Maybe that’s due to the all-metal feet and parts. Even so, I would recommend this machine to a friend. In fact, most of my friends have one. At retreat, we sit at the Bernina Table. It’s the cool kids table.

The Bernina is a majah (said like a Spice Girl, specifically Victoria Beckham) upgrade from my first beginner baby machine, a Brother something-or-other. It was a $200 super basic machine that quickly fell apart when I started making a quilt every other week (no joke. I did that.) I also own a Brother serger that is rarely used, and I do have have a few other dream machines I’d like to own if I had the space.

Janome Horizon MC7700-QCP

These machines were in all of the workshops at QuiltCon so I spent an entire day sewing on one. And it was a dream. Super quiet, all of the bells and whistles. This would definitely be a delight to sew on every day.

Juki TL-2000Qi FS

I’ve never even tested this machine, but I’ve heard good things. It would be my quilting machine and I’d use my Bernina mostly for piecing.

Long-arm of Some Variety

I’ve gotten to play on a long-arm a couple of times, and I would LOVE to own one. That would necessitate a MUCH larger sewing room, but a girl can dream.

Speaking of sewing rooms, mine is ~~jammed full of stuff~~ very nice. I have three windows so I get lots of natural light and hardwood floors that make it easy to sweep up sewing messes (charm pack dust, thread explosions, etc). I keep most of my fabric stashed away in the closet, but I like to display pre-cuts and neatly folded fat quarters because they just look so pretty.

{Moda fat quarter bundles in aqua DVD holders from the Container Store}

{My cutting table from Martha Stewart’s collection for Home Decorators}

{Vintage shelf with pre-cuts. I store a lot of stuff in various glass jars like these and these.}

{My sewing chair – a vintage one that I painted and reupholstered}

{CD storage unit from Pottery Barn filled with fat quarters}

That’s my machine and my sewing space all in one. Thanks for stopping by and don’t forget to visit the others stops and sign up for the linky party.

SUNDAY, MARCH 17
Erin @ Sew at Home Mummy
Angela @ Heart of Charnwood
Shannon @ Crafty Turtle
Amy @ Stitchery Dickory Dock

MONDAY, MARCH 18
Ebony @ Love Bug Studios
Jaclyn @ Jaclyn Quilts
Amy @ Diary of a Quilter

TUESDAY, MARCH 19
Kara@ Me and Elna
Nerissa @ Nissa Made
Elizabeth @ Don’t Call Me Betsy

WEDNESDAY, MARCH 20
Carly @ Citric Sugar
Celine @ Espritpatch
Patti @ A Yankee in Queen Liz’s Court

THURSDAY, MARCH 21
Stacey @ The Tilted Quilt
The Jolly Jabber Staff (Chelsey, Kimberly, Debbie)
Rachel @ Sew Happily Ever After!

FRIDAY, MARCH 22
Erika @ Sews it All (Bernina)
Lisa @ Vintage Modern Quilts (Bernina) {ME!}
Adrianne @ On the Windy Side (Bernina)

Wonky Cross Blocks

2 Replies

My friend Amanda over at Panda Bear Quilts is requesting help to make quilts for her nieces who just lost their father. She is asking for wonky cross blocks which are simple and fast to make. I whipped up these four in about half an hour.

If you would like to help Amanda, you can read her blog post {here}.

Stranded on the Moda Fabrics Island

1 Reply

That doesn’t sound bad at all, does it? I am taking part in the funny and silly notions month happening on Moda’s Cutting Table blog all month long. Hop on over to read about my favorite notions.
{P.S. Ryan Gosling is on the island, too.}

Chocolate Chip Cookies

Leave a reply

Every time I share pictures of my chocolate chip cookies on Instagram/Facebook, I get lots of recipe requests. So here it is, along with answers to frequently asked questions.

{from an old Better Homes and Gardens cook book, the newest version differs slightly}

Ingredients

1/2 cup shortening
1/2 cup butter
1 cup packed brown sugar
1/2 cup granulated sugar
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
2 eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla*
2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1 12 ounce package (2 cups) semisweet chocolate pieces**
1 1/2 cups chopped walnuts, pecans, or hazelnuts (optional)***

Directions

1. In a large mixing bowl, beat shortening and butter with an electric mixer on medium to high speed for 30 seconds. Add brown sugar, granulated sugar, and baking soda. Beat until combined, scraping sides of bowl occasionally. Beat in eggs and vanilla until combined. Beat in as much of the flour as you can with the mixer. Using a wooden spoon, stir in any remaining flour. Stir in chocolate pieces and, if desired, nuts.

2. Drop dough by rounded teaspoons 2 inches apart onto an ungreased cookie sheet.

3. Bake in a 375 degrees F oven for 8 to 10 minutes or until edges are lightly browned. Transfer cookies to a wire rack; cool. Makes about 60 cookies.

*I add a few extra drops of vanilla because it’s tasty.

**Depending on the chocolate chips I’m using, I usually put less than the recipe calls for. Sounds crazy, I know. See the reason why below.

**I never put nuts in mine because I’m allergic and my husband doesn’t like nuts in cookies. I married the only native Texan that doesn’t want everything smothered in pecans. Lucky me.

FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS

How long do you bake them? For exactly 10 minutes at 375 deg. I have a gas oven so you may need to experiment if you have an electric oven. I use a plain cookie sheet (no baking stone or air filled ones – those never work well for anything I bake) like this one.

Do you really use an electric mixer? Um, heck no. I don’t have the upper body strength for that. I use my trusty ol’ KitchenAid stand mixer. {Use the paddle attachment.} Mine is plain silver but I imagine that it’s aqua whenever I use it.

Do you defrost the frozen cookie balls before baking? Nope, but I do let them sit on the cookie sheet on the counter while the oven pre-heats.

What scoop do you use? I use this scoop. It makes cookies that are a little more than 2″ in diameter – perfect for when you want just a bite and also for little ones.

After you scoop them, do you put them in the freezer on a tray prior to putting them in the bags? I used to, but I found that its easier to put all of the dough in an air-tight container (I am partial to these Frigoverre ones. They are glass and we use them almost exclusively instead of plastic Tupperware. No staining, better for the environment.) I let the dough chill overnight and then scoop them right into the plastic bags the next day.

How much cookie dough does this recipe make? If you can avoid eating too much of the dough, you will get 6 1/2 dozen cookies out of a double batch. That sounds like a lot, but they go fast, especially when your husband gives them to neighbors who do favors for him like lending him tools, etc. Go ahead and make the double batch.

What type of chocolate chips do you use? I love the 60% cacao Ghirardelli chocolate chips. They are dark and rich so I put fewer in than the recipe calls for. I also like the shape of them – they’re bigger and flatter than traditional chocolate chips. Plus, they come in huge bags at Sam’s so I can keep lots on hand.