The Plan

Yesterday I washed all of my 30's fat quarters and decided to try out a design I have been looking at for a while. Here is the first block that I made last night to try it out. Wow, I guess I have not realized how much work goes into an hour glass block. Well, at least done correctly, which I never used to do... I now realize how important it is to TRIM blocks as you go, otherwise they get too off.

So, my question is what color do I use for the sashing and borders? I know that I want to use a Kona cotton because I think that would make it look like a 30's quilt, but which color? I am thinking about Robin Egg, Grapemist, Peach, Thistle and maybe Buttercup or Pistachio. If anyone has any ideas what would look authentic or just a good color to use, feel free to comment...

Back to Sewing

I finished these house pants for my SIL this morning. I love these! Heather Ross makes the cutest fabrics! I am very much looking forward to her to come out with another fabric line soon.

I thought I would also show you a picture of what has been waiting for me in my stash for several months now. I thought I would try making a 30's prints quilt so I collected these fat quarters when I was back in the States. I think today I will wash them and get ready to cut into them. I've also got some Kona Snow to use as a background fabric. Let's see what happens...

Christmas 2007

I haven't posted in a little while. My sewing machine was broken, but is now fixed and ready to go again. I also was very busy getting ready for Christmas at our place this year. We were hosting and I planned a German food Christmas feast. I wanted a chance to do something different and used it as an opportunity to learn some dishes that I have been wanting to learn... Here is what was on the menu:

Smoked Trout
Cucumber Salad
Beet Salad
Wienerschnitzel with Swiss cheese and cranberry jelly
German potato salad
Sauerbraten
Spaetzle (a type of noodle)
Red cabbage
Roladen
Sauerkraut
Applestrudel
Blackforest cake
Stollen
And also some christmas cookies including, peppernuts, almond cresents and lebkuchen.

Everything was made from scratch including the homemade pickles in the roladen! The only thing I didn't make was the sauerkraut. I have yet to learn how to do that. A lot of what we had was from our own farm and garden, so I really enjoyed the accomplishment at the end of it all! As you can see some of the attendees fell asleep after dinner! Poor things!

The Christmas tree is the first one I have put up in my adult life! Did someone say bah humbug? No, really, I enjoyed it and I had such beautiful ornaments sent to me last year from my aunt and mom that I just had to put one up this year!!!

Anyway, I hope everyone had a Merry Christmas as well and now back to sewing...

Cherries!

We've been having lots of great weather lately so I've been spending a lot of time in the garden. I have a lot of seedlings that I have been nursing along and dh has been busy building me two little garden plots in front of our house. We also have a large garden plot at the farmhouse that we keep up and I also have the space along the river that I will use to plant melons, pumpkins, squashes and zucchini this year. We try to live as self sufficiently as possible, so there is a lot of work put into gardening and preserving.

Last night our neighbor brought over our order of the first crop of cherries from his orchard, which are all organic. Here I am busy pipping and canning them until very late last night. And this is only the first lot! We will get the dark fleshed cherries in another two weeks or so.

Saturday dh needed me to drive the tractor while we were laying water pipes. That was my first time driving the tractor, which surprisingly was not as difficult as I thought it would be, but I am still a little rough with it. Now he wants to finish the job today. As I was driving on Saturday I kept wondering if I would have ever been able to predict that this would be what I would be doing one day. It's just all so surreal sometimes to be living on the other side of the world and for this city born girl to be driving a tractor?!!