420

That is the number of pieces (triangles, trapezoids, and parallelograms) I cut yesterday for my next quilt.

 Fabrics are all from past projects.

Mystery Triangle

No this isn't the Bermuda Triangle.  How does one sew these pieces together to form a triangle without having to sew a Y seam?  I saw someone's cute "Hopscotch" quilt that stated no Y seams to sew. Of course I had to figure out how that works. One mystery solve. 

Waggly Tail

How much is that doggie in the window? arf, arf
The one with the waggly tail...


This song kept going through my mind as I quilted this triangle quilt.
There is no batting in this quilt since the back is the minkee material.
The top white minkee triangles gave me some difficultly in piecing since the material stretches, but I was very surprised at how easy it was to quilt with just the minkee as the backing using my Davis NVF. The back is a solid black, and decorative stitching on binding was done with my Singer 224.

....I do hope that doggie is for sale...arf, arf.

This quilt has be donated to a victim of Hurricane Sandy; may they stay warm.

Doggie Biscuits

I made doggie biscuits for the first time today for my picky eater dog. The recipe passed the test- she ate one!

Doggie Biscuit Recipe
2 eggs
1/2 cup canned pumpkin
2 tbps. dry milk
1/4 tsp sea salt
2 1/2 cups brown rice flour
1 tsp dried parsley

Preheat oven 350

Mix eggs and pumpkin until smooth, then add all other ingredients.
Briefly kneed and then roll dough to 1/4-1/2". Use whatever shape cutter to form biscuits.  Bake on ungreaded pan for 20 minutes. Remove to turn biscuits over and then bake for another additional 20 minutes. Cool before feeding to dog.

The Odd Scrappy

I was given some fabrics by someone who heard that I was going to make some donation quilts. The gal inherited the fabrics after her mother had passed away.  The gal thought that she would make a quilt with her mother's fabrics, but she never got around to making that quilt and the fabrics sat for years in a closet. The recently discovered fabrics were passed to my mother who then sent the fabrics to me.

Since there wasn't enough off-white fabrics in the stash, I added some of the off-white fabrics that my mom had given me earlier this year to make the half squares. I didn't have enough half squares to continue with the pattern; so, I used one of the paper-piecing stars that I made earlier this year to fill in that section. The materials for the backside of quilt was also from the gal's stash.

 This quilt will be a donation to the local guild. The guild members donate quilts to those in need locally.

Recycling Again

I made another denim quilt with jeans that were given to me. First step was making the denim circles. Yes, I just draw lots of circles and then cut. Yes, I know about the rotary circle cutter that eliminates the drawing and just does the cutting.  I'm cheap! And this works!

 I spent some time playing with the arrangement of the denim. A game of dots!

 Started sewing the circles together.

Decided to add doggie paws to dress up the back of the quilt.

My mom had sent me some pretty red fabric that I decided to use for this quilt, but then I realized that all those red squares just looked too boring. I needed another color square for the red circles. So, I dug around in my stash of fabrics and found a yellow.

And then the marathon sewing started. I used the Singer 224 and the Singer 201 for this project.

Did something different for the binding on this quilt. I added a yellow border strip to top of quilt to add an additional decorative look to the binding. This is a two inch folded strip of fabric that is added on top. The binding was attached to back and the folded over to top and stitched down with the decorative stitching. I like this look!

 Front and back of finished quilt. This quilt will be one of my donation quilts for the year.  My son's school is having a silent auction. This will be my contribution for the event.

Natto

One of my favorite foods is natto. It's stringy. It's fermented.
They say it's an acquired taste, but in my opinion you either like it or you don't. Natto is made from soybeans fermented with bacillus subtilis. The Japanese like to eat natto for breakfast on top of rice. No Special K or Cheerios for them; their mornings start with a rich diet of healthy protein. I like to eat my natto with a fried egg, soy sauce, and grits. An East meets West recipe. This is what I had for breakfast today...yummy!

Natto can be purchased in an Asian grocery store here in the States. It comes in a cute packaging that has soy sauce and mustard that is stirred into the natto before eating.

Warming up the Kitchen

I awoke to a chilly kitchen this morning since I left the windows open last night in the kitchen. The chilliness is a hint that Autumn is just around the corner. So, I made popovers to quickly warm up the kitchen and satisfy my craving.

Popovers
1 popover pan or muffin pan
Oven 425
Mix 1 cup of flour, 3 eggs, 1 cup of milk with whisk, but don't over mix.
Heat pan for 2-3 minutes, take out and place a slab of butter at bottom to melt.
Fill prepared pan half way and bake for 10-15 minutes.
Serve with your favorite jams or apple butter.
Snatch them while they are hot and before they sink.
Enjoy!

LINK # 2

Just out of the dryer, a wrinkled Link! This time, I quilted this lap size quilt mainly in the ditch minus the corners. All quilting was done with the Davis NVF. The binding is leftover red and blue fabrics with an arrowhead decorative stitch from my Singer 224. This quilt doesn't have the spotlight rays running across Link like the mini wall quilt that I had made for my son a couple of weeks ago. The rays on this quilt extend out from the corners and end at the colored squares.




After comparing the two differently quilted Link quilts, I can state that prefer the smaller (first quilt) quilt's look with the rays across Link. I just love the abstract appearance of the quilting lines against the pixel squares since the quilting gives a feel of Link being captured. Plus, the back of the quilt has a much more interesting pattern than this quilts back.

What Did I Do Today?

You're looking at it! I spent the day learning how to navigate the new Blogger format. Yes, I'm one of the last to convert over to the new format.  For a very short period of time, I had made the dutiful change, but got frustrated with figuring out the format. So I just went back to using the old format, but today I decided to take the time to learn the new format. I played with color options and templates for hours. I went from a deep purple to this much softer blue background, and I finally found the location of the readers list. One can easily get lost! Well, I conquered that project; now, I'm off to finish LINK.