Do.Good September

Amanda was in charge of our do.Good Stitches Bliss group for the month of September. She asked us to make scrappy Herringbone blocks from this tutorial.

The tutorial is well written and easy to follow. I didn't have a 6.5 x 24.5" ruler so I used my 12.5 square and that worked well. If I make another one  of these,  I would probably plan it a little more. I tried to just go scrappy as it came and wound up with some similar colors right next to each other that are not my favorite.

And for myself, I've cut into this little baby that's been hiding in my drawers. yummie!

Pinterest Report #5

This is going to be a quick one. Our house was taken over by Croup so there hasn't been much sewing or cooking going on. Just a lot of sick baby care. The good news is that we are on the upswing so things should get a little more interesting around here soon.

First off - the bad. The original pin:

Honey Garlic Pork Chops.  Mine came out totally bland and boring. But - I followed the directions! As I'm reading the comments and how much people loved them I see that everyone either baked them or marinated them. Neither was on the original directions. I baste them and Mr. FO grilled them. So maybe they would have had much more flavor if they had marinated or cooked in their own juices. I probably won't be trying again to find out. These were so boring no one even wanted the leftovers (unheard of in this house!!).

The good:

Baked Sweet and Sour Chicken with Fried Rice. Okay, I didn't get to make the fried rice because this was the night I had to take Evan to the doctor with his horrible cough. But I'm sure it's pretty good. It looks like other fried rice recipes I've made before.

The chicken though - was amazing! It definitely tastes like fast food chinese, but not greasy or aftertastey (yeah, i just made that word up).  I had to smack the vultures away from the pan in order to have enough for leftovers. It will definitely be made again. And we just ate it with the jasmine rice I had prepped for the Fried Rice. Totally yummie.

And again I have to plug a pin that I posted myself. If you like "high end" Chinese food. You know what I'm talking about right? The stuff from the really good sit down restaurants?  You have to check out this book.

I have easily made a half dozen recipes or more from it and every one has been THE BEST Chinese food I've ever made/eaten. If you want to try a recipe from the book, this is the one that hooked me:

Honey Walnut Shrimp. Seriously unbelievably good! Let me know if you make it, or any of the recipes i've pinned.

Sewing night and other small projects.

I went to a sewing night with PMQG at Round Bobbin the other night. There were 6 of us there and it was a lot of fun.

You may remember that I have been looking for the perfect fabric for my Neptune baby quilt. I wasn't feeling the Gray or White even though the Gray won out on the poll I posted.

Teal and Coral were suggested. I ordered Everglade but that wasn't striking me either (it will however look really good with Prince Charming so I know it won't be wasted).

So then I ordered Kona Flesh, but it is definitely too pinky for me. Not enough of the coral color.

So that was my number one job at the quilt shop, to find fabric for this quilt. Anna helped me find a great fabric, the grungy prints from Basic Grey for Moda. There is definitely some perks to shopping for fabrics in person and with friends!

It's hard to photograph well, but I think it's going to be great with those fabrics.

I didn't get to work on that quilt friday night. I spent my night doing my mock up block for the 4x6 bee. I had this block picked out for the summer session that never happened. Since I was lucky enough to get into the paper piecing group again, I tested my block in my colors. It's pretty time consuming, but I love it and think it will be a great block for my bee.

And this next one is kind of random, but I don't have enough to do a full Pinterest report and we did talk about it at the sewing night (haha!). I had a major Pinterest fail last week. Have you seen this pin about hemming jeans?

I was excited to try this and did two pairs of my jeans. It was super quick and I was thrilled. Until I washed them. These were good Gap jeans (though a few years old). They came out like this....

Three problems: holes(!), fraying and the hem flips up.  Reading over her comments some suggested serging or zigzag stitching the part that you cut. That would take care of the fraying and possibly the holes. But I don't know how you keep the hem from flipping up?  At any rate, I would recommend finding a good private tailor. Mine charges $7 for hems on jeans. Totally worth it as my jeans will now need to be capris or shorts. sigh.

Pretty Little Pouch

My Pretty Little Pouch for the swap is all completed and ready to go. This was my start on the 'front'. I used this tutorial which was perfectly easy to follow and modify (I added more twisters on mine).

 That's Kona Charcoal and then I used scraps that I had in rainbow colors. I wanted the back to be more colorful so I cut triangles out of the rainbows.

I'm always looking for an excuse to use the fancy stitches on my machine so I added a row of stitching to make it a little more interesting.

And I chose a nice light fabric for the inside because it's always easier to find your stuff when the inside of a bag is light.

Now I just have to decide on my 'extras' and this baby  is all ready to be mailed next week! I hope my partner likes it!

Getting to long arm

My quilty friend Denise (My Life In Quilt) had generously invited me to use her longarm probably about a year ago but I had not gotten around to doing it until last weekend. I finally set up my babysitter (aka Mr. FO) and headed over to her place for a fun day learning to long arm.

With all the yummie food and the chatting I'm surprised we managed get any work done! But we did load up my muslin to work on and I have to say really liked it! This surprised me because I really don't like the quilting step on my home machine. It's probably my least favorite part of the process.

Here is what I did with my first attempt.

I started out with some free motion to get the feel of the machine.

I attempted some pebbles and feathers which were laughable but fun. Those are Denise's pebbles that look like actual circles.

Attempted a word.

And then she got out a pantograph for me to try.

And finally the boards (which I don't know the official name of) but they are plastic and you follow the pattern on them.

I have to say, I really loved it and now I'm scheming on how to get my hands on my own! It definitely would not be my least favorite part of the process if I had one of these guys. Big thank you to Denise for such a fun day!

What about you, what is your least favorite part of the process?

Pinterest Report #4

This one is all recipes again. But before I get started, have you seen this website? Pinstrosity.blospot.com?  So funny. They post peoples attempts at making stuff from Pinterest. This post in particular had me laughing out loud at my computer.

So, what did I do this week?

Southwest Egg Rolls with Avocado Ranch dressing. These were  big hit. And surprisingly, they are meatless! Mr. Fabric Obsessed doesn't usually go for meatless and he was very satisfied with these. And I've been using the dressing for my salads since then. One thing I will say is that it makes a lot! I wound up freezing half of it so hopefully it freezes well. I'm looking forward to having it again.

Grilled Balsamic-Garlic Pork Tenderloin. Also another big hit. Although like she says in her post, it's hard to mess up Pork Tenderloin!  This one was even good re-heated (since there is only two of us we had leftovers). Another recipe I will make again!

And finally:

Tequila Orange Grilled Shrimp. This one had me nervous as I was making it. My fingers were burning from chopping the jalapenos (next time I will wear gloves!). And the pepper smell as the sauce was reducing was catching in the back of my throat and making me choke. I totally thought it was going to be too hot for me to handle. But it was surprisingly good!! Just warm spice-wise and really good. Even Mr. FO went back for seconds. Another one for the recipe book! Since I love making shrimp, I can never have too many recipes.

Some quick finishes

I've gotten a couple quick finishes done the last week. Mostly because I'm avoiding quilting a top that I can't figure out what to quilt on it! So here is what I have done.

I made two of these bags.

These are the ever popular Jane Market Tote with one change. I sewed the handles inside rather than on top.  I had this fabric and used it for powder room curtains (photos will follow once they are hung). I had way too much of it so I actually made two of the same bag. The only difference is I left my label off one.

What do you think of this fabric? I'm thinking of giving the extra bag to my daughters summer camp teacher as a thank you gift. But even the inside has the dogwood fabric on it.

The other small project was to recover my ironing board again.  Here is it in the first fabric I used all browning and gross.

And underneath is the original board. My husband and I call it the first ironing board because it's so old.

It came from his family farmhouse and we have no idea how old it is. Case in point, when I first did this, I tried to re-pad it as well and found this underneath.

Yeah. That's bolted in! I wasn't and am still not messing with it.

So I got myself a fun decor weight fabric from Joann's and used this tutorial to re-cover it.

I have to say, the tutorial is great. Very straightforward and easy to follow. And I think it left a nice clean looking cover! I'm excited to iron again!