Jane Sassaman

I love Jane Sassaman's fabrics and have been using them on the backs of quilts for teenaged girls lately.
On this one, (I showed the top unquilted before) the wonderful quilter, Suzette Fisher, quilted from the back and used the flowers as a guide. They appear as embroidery in the stained glass.

http://www.janesassaman.com/

princess and the pea

We have been preparing for a bridal shower Saturday for my nephew's fiance. I had a goal of knitting 7 dishcloths--6 are done and #7 is one baseball practice away from being finished.
I love how colorful they are. Together they remind me of the many layers in my favorite childhood story "the Princess and the Pea", probably not the most progressive story out there for little girls, but it had great illustrations of quilts and mattresses.

So, I have been knitting at baseball, fencing, tennis, while blinded at an eye exam, and two, count them two mamogram sessions in 5 days. The report was good, but I was knitting furiously between takes at the call back.
An odd look comes over people's faces when they ask what I am making, and I reply "dishcloth". A bit of pity that this is a waste of time. But, in the time they have been watching a practice, I have watched a practice, PLUS come out with 1/3 of a dishcloth!

county lines

The pattern County Lines by Mountainpeek Creations
http://www.mountainpeekcreations.com/274.htm
has become a new favorite of mine after my friend Donna introduced me to it.
I love that it can be made from what is on my shelves. I've made it with thirties repro reds with aqua sashing--the colors of my grandmother's kitchen! This one I made with fushia and orange batiks.

dragon teeth

Karla Alexander's second book, Stack a New Deck, is excellent for giving me ideas.

I made this quilt with humble materials, lots of thrift store shirts, with a few fabulous florals added.
Very primative looking. Kind of in the ugly quilt category, but I love it.

egg hunt

Today is the day of the big LeClaire Avenue Egg Hunt, and it looks like there will be no snow, wind, or rain!
I hung out over the porch railings some of my Easter Egg colored quilts. I hope it distracts the neighbors from our less than adequate lawn and garden care...

fabric

This week is the big expo here in the suburb of Rosemont. If you go, take the el as the River Road stop is just as close as the parking ramp, and the ramp cost $11.00 last year.
Last year I restricted myself after indulging the previous two years. This year I plan to take it easy too. I can do alot with the fabric already in my house. I re-read Bonnie's shopping the stash piece, and find that adding just a few new fat quarters can make my old fabrics look good again in new combinations.
This is a detail of a quilt I made in 2000. All from stash.

chocolate pudding

My oldest son has developed a craving for chocolate pudding since track practice restarted. I was making the Jello box stuff, and decided I could do better, so I went back to the cornstarch pudding my mother had us make. I have tweaked the recipe to make, what I think is a pretty good one.
I like to cook on the stovetop, but after many trials, find it scorches less in the microwave.

1/3 cup Droste Cocoa (I am a good Dutch girl)
1/4 cup corn starch
1/3 cup sugar
1/8 teaspoon salt



Wisk together in a 2 quart bowl so you have lots of room for stiring without it sloshing over the edge.

Slowly wisk in 2 cups of milk. (I've been using 2%)


Microwave on high for 3-4 minutes. Wisk. Microwave in one minute intervals, wisking between, until pretty thick--it will stick to the edges a bit at the done part. It takes about 3 1/2-5 more minutes in my microwave.
Wisk in 1 tablespoon of butter and 1 teaspoon of vanilla.



Let cool, wisking about every 3-5 minutes for the first 15, unless you, like my son, like pudding skins!
Pour into cups you have rinsed with cold water. (then the pudding won't stick)
Enjoy warm or cold!

Smocking

My mother makes these amazing smocked blankets for grandchildren. This one was for Seth. She starts with velvet, velveteen, or velour, draws a 1 inch grid on the back with marker or chalk, and then uses embroidery floss to smock from the back side. She has several different patterns that look like braids or basket weaves. I don't know this step--I plan to have a grid drawn on a light green velveteen the next time we are together so she can show me the smocking.
After the smocking is completed, she pins a cotton lining to the back and folds under the velvet and backing. She also tacks the top to back with floss, tied to the back and hidden in the smocking.


Aside: I have a problem in using alt-webring.com from both my Mac and my Dell. It happens in both Safari and Mozilla. Could it be the SBC DSL that is blocking it? Could it be a firewall? I was able to use it for months, and now it times out when I try to use it.
Any ideas would be welcome!
Lynn

flowers

My mother and I did handwork while we sat with my father in the hospital last week (knee surgery). I bound three quilts and she worked on a smocked blanket.
This quilt is for my sister Janna's birthday (and is 10 months late). My friend Erica had made a quilt with her florals--I really liked it and went to my pile of large scale florals. I took ideas from Stack a New Deck, but used my own methods.
I like how it turned out--I used a bit of fabric from my grandmother who died in 1948. She had just one grandchild at the time. Eventually there were 26 of us. I used some of that fabric in a quilt for my mother 5 years ago and plan to use the rest in one for my younger sister.

the lions' den

This year's Bible Story Theater at our church was the story of Daniel. I was in charge of the lions' costumes--the 4 and 5 year olds. We had a great sweat shop that did most of the work.




I also helped design the costumes for the angels (high schoolers) and the fiery furnace flames (1st and 2nd graders)--but other people did all the work.

scot's plaid

I love this quilt--I made it about 8 years ago from my 1 1/2 inch and 2 1/2 inch strips drawers. Who knew I had this many reds?

new stuff

I am getting used to a new computer and a new camera. I have a wonderful memory of my grandmother, sitting at the new telephone when we moved from operator phones to dials in about 1963. She just sat there, overwhelmed by this new technology.
She did master it, though. And I can too!
This quilt is for my father's 75th birthday which was last March. I gave it to him quilted for Christmas. And, I hope, bound on his 76th birthday! My family accepts the same quilt at different stages for different occasions. I'm lucky they like me.

neutrals

I love collecting neutrals and have an extensive selection that I pulled from for this quilt. Lots of them are conversationals. I also like to push neutrals to include lavender, green, and pink.

Foster Avenue Beach

A favorite place of mine in Chicago is Foster Avenue Beach. Many years ago, our city in its wisdom, saved most of the lakefront to have public access and be free of buildings. A few politically connected buildings have been built, but for the most part, the lake is open and beautiful.
Foster Avenue Beach is a family beach--we like to get there by 10 and leave by noon, ahead of the sun.
These pictures are taken in the spring, but it is beautiful in the winter too--I plan to head there tomorrow.

mystery quilt

I wrote a mystery quilt for my guild's newsletter many years ago, and it has floated upon the web ever since. Every few months I get a photograph from a person or group who has used the pattern.
This is my favorite photo--I used it for my computer wallpaper for a long time. It is a group in Norway.
Here is one place where the mystery is posted. (It was written before uploading of pictures was possible, so it took some work to visualize the steps.)
http://www.quilt.com/UserPublishing/SummerMystery1.html

Below is one I made (expanded) from the pattern.

aunt janna and mini me

Our camera is broken, so I am mining the data base of old photographs. Here is my sister, Janna, and our niece, Faith, on Christmas 2003. As we got ready for church, we noticed they were dressed alike.
The quilt in the background is an anvil pattern I made for my sister, Beth, a while back.

cat quilt

Here is the first cat quilt I made--Catherine is working on a free form style that looks great--check out her progress.
This one is all reds. It is being held by a couple of kids attending Eve's Christmas party. I am chaperone to about fifteen 12-14 year olds who are at this moment using a kareoke machine someone brought along. My husband was able to escape with Seth and Paul was very happy to be invited to a friend's house for a movie. I would go sew but that would be in the attic where I would be too far away from the action and too cold.
The girls are very sophisticated and clueless. The boys are unsophisticated and clueless. They are a good group of kids and I am glad to see them enjoying themselves. And I will be even more glad at 10 pm when they go home.

Oh, good Christmas Story--Seth asked at about age 4 when it would be Christmas Seth, he had enough of Christmas Eve. A similar thing happened when Eve was about that age, she asked our pastor if they could change our church's name from St Pauls to St Eves. Sibling rivalry pops up in the best places.

winter in the city

Now, I grew up on a farm in Iowa, and there is no more beautiful place on earth than that place in Sioux County, but there is a magical beautiful to life in the city too, especially in winter. Here is my house and my gargoyles with tinsel collars.




And here is one of my favorite sites in Chicago in winter--the neighborhood children turn their front steps into sled runs. I had never imagined such a thing before I moved to Chicago.

St Nikolaas Day

Yesterday morning the shoes were filled with chocolates--Seth (8) asked the question we have anticipated, "How come St Nikolaas only came to our house on the block?"
I said we are the only Dutch family on our street, and the other families celebrate their own traditions. Satisfied him for now--the older kids know that whoever questions openly gets only sticks in their shoes.

Beth's Roman Stripe

My sister, Beth, loves to quilt, but her busy teaching and lecturing schedule leaves little time. She fits in quilting one hour a week during her daughter's guitar lesson.
She made this top many (17?) years ago, and for Christmas last year, my mother had it quilted and I did the machine work of the binding. This gave her another hand-work project of getting the binding done over the year.
My mom has had several of my tops quilted as presents for me--a wonderful gift.