Fowl Play - Mug Rugs for Bird Lovers

It's Thanksgiving tomorrow! I'm getting all prepared. Potatoes are cooked and ready to mash, sweet potatoes are cooling so I can peel them and get the sweet potato casserole ready for the oven tomorrow, the turkey is almost thawed, and veggies are washed and ready to go. Our little family will be celebrating three November birthdays tomorrow, too, so there's no pumpkin pie for us. Today I'll frost our traditional extra chocolatey Thanksgiving birthday cake.

Is it only because it's turkey time that it seems like I'm seeing more photos of birds every day? Facebook seems to be filled with pheasants in the fields, chickens in backyards, roosters crowing at dawn, ducks, geese, and exotic birds as pets, cardinals and robins in the bare branches of winter trees, birdwatchers in the woods, and, or course,Thanksgiving  turkeys.

Thanksgiving is also a reminder that Christmas is coming fast. Some of us could use some speedy project ideas for a gift or two. Since I have birds on the brain, I put together this group of bird themed mug rug patterns to stitch up for the bird lovers on your list.

Garden Birds

Summer Swallow

https://www.craftsy.com/quilting/patterns/summer-swallow/467091 

Bluebird

https://www.craftsy.com/quilting/patterns/bluebird-mug-rug/155521 

Four Seasons

https://www.craftsy.com/quilting/patterns/four-seasons-mug-rug-set/168227 

Farm Fowl

Sun's Up

https://www.craftsy.com/quilting/patterns/sun-s-up-mug-rug-pair/229773

November Visit

https://www.craftsy.com/quilting/patterns/november-visit-mug-rug-pair/169467

Goose Gossip

https://www.craftsy.com/quilting/patterns/goose-gossip-mug-rug/183476

Whimsical Birds

Hen Party

https://www.craftsy.com/quilting/patterns/hen-party-mug-rug/155719

Run, Turkey, Run

https://www.craftsy.com/quilting/patterns/-run-turkey-run-thanksgiving-mug-rug/160950

Toy Bird

Just Ducky

https://www.craftsy.com/quilting/patterns/just-ducky-mug-rug/162464 

Wishing everyone a very happy Thanksgiving!

Log Cabins and Bean Soup

The Log Cabins

I'm been sewing log cabin blocks while dressed in a warm winter sweater, thick socks, and my fleece lined winter slippers. Our record breaking warm weather has abruptly been replaced by bitter cold and a brisk north wind, so I couldn't have picked a better project for this week. A log cabin with a big fire in the fireplace sounds so warm and cozy right now.

So far, I've been following the original plan, but now that the log cabin blocks are finished, I'm not completely sure that I want to finish it like this.

I'm using 9" blocks, so I have lots of options and space for experimentation. It doesn't hurt that I'm not feeling pressured to have this finished by any particular date.
  
A Recipe for Ham and Bean Soup

Winter weather and hot soup are perfect companions, so my kitchen soup factory is back in business. This week, I cooked up a pot of old-fashioned ham and bean soup - perfect comfort food for a day that requires fuzzy slippers and warm socks.

Grandmother's Bean Soup With Ham

• 1 medium onion, chopped 
• 1 T vegetable oil
• 1 15 oz can of chicken broth 
• 4 or 5 oz ham cut into 1/2" cubes
• 1/4 cup grated carrots
• 2 bay leaves
• 1 tsp dried parsley
• 1/2 tsp dried dill weed
• 2 cups water
• 2 15 oz cans of cannellini beans
• 1 T ketchup
• 1/4 tsp pepper
• salt, if needed (I found that the ham was sufficiently salty, so I added no additional salt.)

1. Heat the oil in a large, heavy saucepan. Saute the chopped onions in the vegetable oil until golden.
2. Add the chicken broth, ham, carrots, bay leaves, parsley, dill weed, and water.
3. Cover and cook on medium low for 30 minutes, or until the carrots are tender.
4. Add the cannellini beans, pepper, and ketchup. Continue cooking for another 30 minutes. Add additional water if needed.
5. Remove bay leaves to serve.

Enjoy! 

And keep warm!

"Love, Charlie". How to Adapt a Child's Artwork for Applique Quilting

The Background Story
 
"Love, Charlie" is the first little quilt I've based on a piece of child's art. I had so much fun, and the resulting mug rug is one of my very, very favorites. I do hope it won't be the last piece to be inspired by a child.

 
Two years ago, Charlie made this painting in his art class. This lovely boy is the very talented son of one of my daughter's coworkers. I've sort adopted the family, and I designed the Tooth Fairy Pillow for Charlie when he lost his first tooth.

The Process

Step 1: Make a photocopy of the section of the artwork you want to use. Reduce or enlarge it to fit the size you need for your quilt.

The painting is greatly simplified, but it is definitely recognizable, and it retains much of the flavor of the original.

Step 2: Use a light table or a sunny window to trace a simple outline of the drawing onto paper. Working with fabric is quite a bit different than working with paints or a crayon.The artwork will more than likely need simplification and a bit of reshaping. The antlers were too skinny for fabric pieces, so I enlarged them and rounded them out. I eliminated some details.The black outline of the deer's head and the little white accents on the nose and ears were some of the details that I left out. The mouth ran into the chin, so I changed the shape just a bit.

Step 3: Back to the light table or the window. Flip the original drawing upside down and trace it onto a fresh sheet of paper. This will give you applique shapes that are already reversed and ready to use.

Step 4: Make dotted lines to show the overlap of the different pieces you'll need to cut for the appliques.

Step 5: Trace all the pieces you'll need onto a piece of paper or card stock and label them. You can trace them onto the paper side of your fusible web for quick fuse applique from here. This also works with freezer paper for turned applique.

Step 6: This step is optional. I always draw my pieces on card stock so that I can cut them out for tracing onto my fusible web. In this way, I know that I can make numerous identical copies of my pattern very quickly.

Finishing Touches

I embroidered the mouth, nose and eyes.

And finally, I embroidered a message to Santa. This wasn't part of the original painting at all, but when I looked at that little deer's face with those big eyes and that quirky smile, I knew this little guy wanted something.

What a blast! I do play and enjoy myself in my sewing room, but this was the most fun I've had in weeks. Charlie's deer was the lighthearted and very sweet pick-me-up that I've been needing.

I'd like to play around with other children's artwork to see how they might turn out. If you'd like to send me photos of your favorite child's drawing, I can see if anything else might adapt as nicely to applique as Charlie's deer did. No promises for using your photo, but I'll definitely respond to all emails.

Send photos to my email: klee2strings@gmail.com

Happy Last Weekend of October! 

October Halloween. https://www.craftsy.com/quilting/patterns/october-halloween-mug-rugs-pair/166809

When Sewing Doesn't Go Well..

What do you do when you are frustrated because your latest project isn't turning out the way you'd expected? 

I bake. Sometimes I cook up some soup, but usually I bake.

The new quilting idea had looked wonderful on paper in black and white, but it didn't translate at all well into my chosen Christmas fabrics. Instead of agonizing over it, I took refuge in the kitchen. I baked zucchini bread one day and chocolate cake the next. 

The baking led to a discovery that made me wonder if my mom is still looking after me. 

I had picked up a huge zucchini earlier in the week because it reminded me of my mother's garden. She grew zucchini every summer and she grew them big. She used much of it to bake zucchini bread. I went searching for the perfect recipe, but I really wanted my mother's bread. I found a recipe with a five-star rating on All Recipes titled, "Mom's Zucchini Bread".

It was worth a try.  I cut the sugar down to 2 cups and added 1/2 cup of raisins to the recipe because Mother's zucchini bread had always contained raisins. The result was wonderful. My new recipe tasted exactly like I remember my mother's tasting. Moist, perfectly spiced, and sweetened with raisins. Positively scrumptious!

The next day, I was still unable to focus on sewing, so I baked a chocolate cake from a well loved recipe in my go to cookbook for baking. I've used this cookbook over and over since I found it in a used book sale in 1980.  It was so well loved that the pages were falling out. My wonderful baking book would soon be destroyed if I didn't do something to save it. Since I had nothing else that needing doing, I removed all of the pages, punched holes in them, and placed them in a big purple binder.

That's when I found this stuck between two pages. It's my mother's zucchini bread recipe in her own handwriting. I must have placed it there years and years ago and totally forgotten that I had it.

Mother's zucchini bread recipe.

The main differences between my mother's recipe and the one I found in All Recipes are that my mother's contains only 2 cups of sugar and it has raisins. These are the exact two changes that I made!

Compare the two recipes by following this link to All Recipes:

Happiness is a slice of warm zucchini bread. 

With raisins. 

Thank you, Mommy.