Lilysunshine

Now, if you read my blog regularly, you would have noticed that I didn’t blog last week about the sampler quilt-along. I had done my blocks in time, using my brand new sewing machine to make them: they were finished on Saturday. Weekends are bad blog-wise, because I can’t really upload pictures. Well, I can, but that means negociating with my husband who loves to play computer games: if I upload pictures while he is playing, then his game becomes unplayable. I’m a good wife and I love my husband dearly, so I let him have the whole t’internet for the weekend (and also, I often can’t be bothered doing bloggy stuff on the weekend – I don’t know why).

Back to the matter at hands. I will spare you the pictures of the fabrics being cut as I forgot to take some for this week’s blocks!

Blocks for week 5

It was good that my sewing machine arrived 2 days after those blocks were posted on Amy’s blog and before I had started working on it. When I saw the first one, I dreaded sewing it all by hands!
I replaced the solid by those little rose buds – I was going to use the dots, but I’m starting to run low and I thought it would be nice to use those roses where I would use the dots before, as we were halfway through the whole quilt along. I liked this block quite a lot (even if it’s not perfect!) and I’m thinking about making a whole quilt with just this block. I’ve got the fabrics and all and I’m hoping to start working on it when this quilt is finished!
For the second block, I was faced with a dilemma: follow the instructions to the letter and not respect the directionality of my orange fabric or adapt the instructions to my fabric. The eagle eyes will notice that I adapted the block to my fabric – I just couldn’t live with the fabric being in the wrong direction (call me mad, I don’t care!)

Week 6 was a big challenge for me, as we entered the territory of odd sized blocks. 2 7/8 inches? Erm? What?!
Blocks for week 6

But let’s start with the “easy” one, the one with the owls in the centre. This one taught me that I REALLY need to work on my seam allowances. Or get a 1/4 inch foot for my machine. Or both. Probably both. I ripped the seams for the stripey blocks a good number of times. I stopped before I started to pull my hair out – Not perfect, but good enough to live with it. Once this hurdle was passed, it was pretty straightforward to put together.
Now, the second block. The one with the weird numbers. 2 7/8 inches squares? 5 5/8 inches square? My mind went into freeze for a little while. I’ve only been using imperial measures for a couple of years and some things just don’t compute for me. So, what happened? I cut half of my pieces wrong! I realised I was wrong just before I cut the big 5 5/8 square. By then, I had 4 of 2 3/4 inches squares and a bunch of 2 3/4 inches strips. Yup. 1/8 too narrow. Much cursing was used. I also ran out of the fabrics I had. Even more swearing. I took a break and came back to it a little later. I had ordered some fabrics in the meantime, but this block could still be salvaged with what I had right at this moment. I just grabbed my stripey fabrics and cut 2 strips from it and I managed to get 2 more strips from the remainder of the green flowery fabric.
Honestly, it turned out MUCH better than anticipated – like eleventy billion times better. It’s even almost lining up. Will I make this block again? Not anytime soon! But I’m glad I did it (and now I’ve got plenty of little bits of 2 3/4 inches of fabrics – thinking about cutting them to 2 1/2 and making little patches block, would be nice for a matching pillow or something?)

Only 4 blocks to go! It’s already quite big!
All my blocks!

I’m loving it – so fresh and happy! I can’t wait to see it finished!

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I signed up for this to motivate me finish some knitting instead of playing too much with my sewing machine. It worked! 2 knits finished this week (one wasn’t even started yet!) and I’m REALLY pleased with how they turned out.

First, Arielle. That was quite an undertaking with this tiny thread and tiny needles. It wasn’t a boring knit per se, just long!
Arielle!

I didn’t do any modifications at all, I just followed the pattern blindly. I’m quite a seasoned knitter and I found the way the pattern was written (especially the increases and decreases) quite unsettling. I had to read the instructions a few times to make sense of them, but I did eventually and everything worked out fine. I didn’t enjoy the ridge button band as the rhythm of it was quite hard to get into. But I have to say that it made sewing on the buttons quite easy: I just had to count on which ridge the buttonhole was falling to sew the button right! Easy peasy!
The only tiny modification I made was to not sew the sides of the bottom border. I was going to, but I quite like it like that. And it gives a little bit of breathing room in the hips department which is welcome.
I’ve worn it once already and I like how flattering it is. And the deep cleavage is perfect to accommodate my big mama breasts!

I was so good with my knitting that I decided to cast on for a little jumper for Lucas. Winter is still a wee while away so I chose to make a 12-months size. It was such a quick knit!
Ready for winter

The pattern called for stripes, but I had this yarn that a friend had given me – in just one colour. It was the same gauge and a perfect blue for a little man. I knit that in 3 days, with just one modification: I did a garter stitch border at the bottom instead of a hem, because I don’t like hems. It turned out slightly bigger than what I anticipated, but Lucas is on a tall side, so I’m sure that’s for the better!
Oh, and it was a good stash busting project too!

Now, I’ve started a sweater for the big man in my life – but that’s another kind of fish. I don’t like the yarn that much (he chose it) and it doesn’t make for a pleasant knit. I had started a jumper for him last Fall, but I gave up with the arrival of the baby and all. But I’ll keep that for another time! Now, since I’ve been so good, I’m going to reward myself with some sewing on my wonderful sewing machine! HA!

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It’s been a while since I last posted a recipe. So I’m going to post 2 tonight! Ha! They fall under the ‘what can I make with what I have in my cupboards / fridge’ category. And were so yummy that I will definitely make them again.

Let’s start with a little bit of Chinese inspiration. We love Chinese food here (well, any food from the Far East and we are a happy bunch), so it’s always a source of inspiration when I try to come up with dinner ideas. We had received in our veggie box some cabbage and plenty of carrots. The hubs is not a fan of cabbage (bad memories from a grandma who used to boil green veggies to death), so I had to find a way I was sure he would enjoy it! I also had some frozen raw prawns and a quick idea started to germinate.

Here is what I did. I finely sliced a white onion. I heated up some sunflower oil in a frying pan (a wok would work fantastically well here) and started to fry my onion in that. I added 2 generous tablespoons of chinese spice mix (yep, lazy can be good in the cooking area, too). I then added my thawed prawns, 2 medium sized carrots finely sliced and half a cabbage shredded. I fried that for 3-4 min, then I added about a teaspoon of sugar, 2 big tablespoons of white wine vinegar (if you have rice wine vinegar, I guess that would be even better). I fried that for another 3-4 min. Then I added half a chili, finely chopped. Gave a good stir, added a good splash of soy sauce and dinner was ready. Next time, I’ll add some noodles, probably, to make it even more filling (we are good eaters here). It was delicious and my husband said he enjoyed the cabbage this way! Score!

Our veggie box also came with 2 courgettes (I think Americans call them zucchinis?). Now, I’m not a huge fan of courgettes. I find them difficult to digest most of the time and they can be a little bit overpowering when mixed with other vegetables (I feel the same way about cucumber, oddly enough). I used one courgette in a lunch soup for me and the baby but I still had one left. What to do with it?

I had bought some Italian sausages from our local butcher (with sundried tomatoes, chilis and various delicious herbs) and I started to think about a pasta meal…
Suddenly, inspiration struck and I got cooking. I finely sliced a white onion and made some spaghetti-looking bits of courgette (I’ve got a nifty tool similar to this one that came very handy – I got mine from John Lewis but I can’t find it on their website). I left the core of the courgette out (who wants to eat all those pips anyway?). I fried that in some vegetable oil, added the sausages that I had cut in bitesize chunks. When everything got coloured, I lowered the heat and let cook for a good 15min (so that the sausages were perfectly cooked: raw sausage meat = wrong!). In the meantime, I cooked some pasta. When the courgette and sausages mix was well cooked, I added 2 extremely generous tablespoons of creme fraiche, stirred for a couple of minutes and then served. It was absolutely yummy! A good way to prepare courgettes (and I didn’t feel like I was eating them for hours afterwards!). I will definitely make that again when those vegetables are in season.

So? Hungry yet?

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Lately, I have been on a sewing kick, but not a quilty kind of kick, more a proper sewing kick, to make other stuff than huge blankets.

I had this idea of making project bags (kind of like a tote bag for a crafty project) out of a couple of fat quarters. I didn’t have a pattern – I don’t even pretend that it is a really original idea.
So I grabbed a couple of fat quarters: one from my personal stash and one from my business stash (because it worked SO well with my first choice of fabrics) and got started.
My first ever project bag

Fabrics: 1 FQ Paisley from the Bloom and Grow range by Riley Blake and 1 FQ Essential Dots by Moda in Red.
It’s about 11″x18″, so it’s the perfect size for my knitting projects: big enough to fit a magazine or pattern book, a couple of balls of yarn and several bits of the project. And it looks SO pretty.
My only ‘mmm, could have been better’ about it is the way I did the handles. I decided to make them short and fat and it doesn’t quite work. They should fit over the handles of my stroller, but they are not the most convenient things ever.
It was all handsewn, so where people with sewing machine would topstitch, I used a contrasting thread of embroidery floss and made a running stitch along the top and bottom of the border and on each side of the handles.

Despite the relative slowness of handsewing my first bag, I started another one! Mainly to see if I could sort out the handles issue. So I grabbed another couple of fat quarters (actually, I had half yards of the fabrics I chose for my second bag) and I got going.
My second bag!

Fabrics: 1 FQ of 2-D Zoo by Michael Miller and 1 FQ of dots from the Hello Betty line by Chloe’s Closet for Moda.
I LOVE those fabrics together. This time, I made some long and thin-ish handles and they worked out perfectly. I LOVE this bag (I love the first one too!). I didn’t topstitch the handles, I had reached the end of my hand sewing mojo.

BUT! Something incredible happened. My husband, being the wonderful, fantastic, incredible husband that he is, surprised me by buying me the sewing machine I wanted. It arrived on wednesday and if it was a man, I might think about cheating on my husband with it. It is THAT good. (Maybe I shouldn’t write that, my husband reads my blog!) So, I thought that the best way to get to grips with my new toy was to make stuff and a bag (and a little purse) seemed easy enough to start with!
My first ever machine sewn bag (and matching purse)!

The sewing is not perfect, lines are sometimes a little bit on the wonky side. Though, I LOVED sewing those long straight lines with the machine, so much faster than by hand! And it makes things look so much neater. I decided to use one of the fancy stitches to sew the bottom of the border (instead of topstitching) and I’m SO glad I did: it looks so pretty and gives it this little extra je-ne-sais-quoi.
This bag and this purse will soon be on their way to France to my mother. She loved the one I made for Mother’s Day and had asked for more, so I hope she will like this little addition to her collection!

I think that’s enough bags for me for a little while! Now, I’ve got to go back to my quilting projects and it’s going to be fun to use my new sewing machine for that! Yippee!!

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I actually finished my blocks for this week 2 days ago, but I haven’t been able to sit down and write about them until now – I did do quite a bit of knitting (I can finally see the end of my Arielle!).

This week’s assignment was a log cabin block and a mosaic using half-square triangles. I was pretty excited about the mosaic one, not so much about the log cabin. I am not a fan of log cabin blocks, and I really dislike the wonky ones. I do like the normal log cabins when they are not over the top with prints and when the quilter achieve some nice contrast and / or value effect.

It took me forever to decide which fabrics to choose and then it took me forever to have all the cutting done. I decided to go the green way for the log cabin, starting with a little bit of fabric that was left over from the previous weeks. For the mosaic, I decided that it would be nice to use the orange background one for the middle contrasting squary bit.
All cut up

As you can see, I replaced the solid with my dotty fabric.

Those blocks took forever to sew – while painstakingly hand sewing them, I was dreaming about the sewing machine I will buy hopefully towards the end of the summer. I’ve got plenty of quilt tops ideas, but I’m seriously slowed down by the lack of machinery.
But, I managed to sew them all up. And they turned out quite nicely. My corners and alignments are not perfect on the mosaic one, but I will probably be the only one to know / notice. And I have to say, I quite like my log cabin!
My blocks for week 4

I like how the prints work together in the log cabin. You would think that they shouldn’t work, but they do. I think that’s because of the pale blue in the outer strips that reminds of the stronger blue in the centre strips. And the mosaic is just cute.

All my blocks

I had to be quick to take this picture, because Lucas REALLY likes the owls print! I’m thinking about getting some in blue to make him some stuff.
I really like how all the blocks are working together!

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