Little Posies-2009 Summer Freebie Quilt

Here is “Little Posies”

It is a very simple quilt.  I know lots of you doing wool applique might not be experienced quilters so I thought we would keep this design as simple as possible.  I used “instant antique” on all of my light fabrics.  This give the quilt an all over aged look and the scraps of fabrics look like they belong in the same family.  We will have pricing on a finishing kit for this soon… I used 2 #12 green perle cottons and O575 and 893 I then matched the flower colors and then stitched the centers with O511.   I used 20 blocks for my quilt.  Take and Happy Quilting!

Honey Mustard Layer Salad

Here is the recipe as promised.

I found a recipe for a layered salad made in a beautiful glass bowl.  I don’t like ham and salami on my lettuce so I changed a few of the ingredients and made my own dressing for it…so here is my version.  Jeanine liked it so much she packaged up the leftovers and told me she just knows I will forget it in her cooler and she will end up with it.

Honey Mustard Layer Salad

4 cups of shredded greens- i used fresh spinach and green leaf lettuce from the farmer’s market      

1 lb of bacon, cut up in small pieces and fried, place on paper towels to squish off the grease        

4 hard boiled eggs-sliced 

1 to 2 cups uncooked  small pasta shells-cook according to package and drain,rinse with cold water and drizzle with oil  

1 package of frozen peas    

1 cup shredded Colby-Jack cheese    

fresh parsley- I used it from my garden! I knew i grew parsley for a reason

Place the lettuce in a 2-1/2 qt glass bowl; top with pasta shells and eggs.  Sprinkle with salt and pepper.  Top with bacon and then peas.  Make dressing  and spread over top of peas.  Spread cheese over dressing and add parsley.

Dressing:

1 cup miracle whip light     

1/4 cup sugar

1/4 cup honey

squirt of regular mustard

squirt of horse raddish mustard or Grey Poupon

couple tablespoons of vinegar

1/4 cup canola oil

1 T. poppy seeds

Mix well together with wire wisk.  

Dressing are not as complicated as you think…I just eyeball most of these ingredients and it always turns out fine…less stuff to wash this way…..I also tossed this salad in a bigger bowl just before serving it.  It is not as pretty as leaving it in the bowl, but on the boat it was a lot less mess this way.

boating fun!

We had a wonderful weekend boating!  Our first outing since Nick’s many surgery’s…My brother, Mike and his family joined us for their first day on their new boat on Saturday. Here I am with my 1 year old niece Addison.   Saturday night we watched the Packer game with our “dock” neighbors and few other friends….Sunday we spent the day relaxing out on the water at Waverly Beach.  I made a great salad on Sunday that  I will share the recipe with you in my next post.  I found a little time to sew, but did not get enough done to show you any of it yet!

michigan treasures

Here are my treasures from MI.  I found them at a great antique shop in Marshall MI.  Grannies Attic.  Terry was very helpful and she has a huge store filled with everything you could want.  I collect this pottery below…I call it “peasant pottery” cause it is alway affordable and i just like it.  I am always on the lookout for quilts, so here is a well loved scrappy hexagon quilt.  Would you believe I paid under $250 for all of this!!!! So visit Grannies Attic if you get a chance.   Well I am trying to get my house in shape and start quilting with my new fabric line…here it sits in my sewing studio…waiting  to be loved….

Home…again

I just got back home from my MI teaching gig.  I whimped out of driving all the way through Chicago, and took the SS Badger Ferry across Lake Michigan.  It was a blast I would do it again in a minute.  I was almost late, but my lead foot got me there, thank God, I did not get a speeding ticket. I spent the night with Colleen Foley who just moved to MI from WI.  She lives on Gull Lake…I am sooooo jealous the lake is beautiful…we kayaked before supper and then went for a boat ride.  Of course we stayed up late sewing…..But here is my grey suburban packed nicely into the cargo haul of this boat.  Then here is a photo of the Manitowoc shore.. 45 min drive home from there.  I was so busy teaching I did not get a chance to take any pic’s of the Cal-Co quilters’ work shop.  Sorry Girls!  But they did the Redware Crow project from our new book.  I think everyone was happy with how far we got!  It was a hot one, but everyone must have not minded, no one left early…I never sweated so much teaching before????  I will write tomorrow to show you my treasures I found in Marshall MI when Linda took me shopping before my lecture on wool! Bye now…

Summer’s End

Here is a preview of Summer’s End, our summer block of the week.  I hope you like it.  Order your finishing kit as soon as you can to help us know how many kits to cut.  I will post the freebie quilt too, it is done but I forgot to photograph it…oh well it will give me something else to have to blog about…I promise I will post it as soon as I get back from MI.  

primitivegatheringsquiltshop@yahoo.com    email us  for your finishing kit!

Meet Tim!…he showed up to give Nick a sponge bath!  Tim is one on Nick’s poker night buddies.  They have a blast as you can tell there is nothing that they would not do for a laugh…He found Christy’s old nursing hat! lol…….

Book Projects

Hey Everyone! 

I am so excited to have our “Autumn Gatherings” book done…Below are all of the 24 of the projects, the top four are the  bigger quilts from the book, the next 6 are the little quilts and wall hangings, the rest of the photos are everything else, wool projects, punchneedle, stitchery and pillows projects!  

Also included in the book are our favorite “fall” recipes.  They include: Apple Crisp, Green Bay Mac & Cheese, Easy Enchiladas, Molasses Cookies, Sour Cream Banana Bread, Baked Potato Soup, Southwest Chicken Chili, Cranberry Icebox Cookies and Tex-Mex Check Casserole…these are all great recipes that Carole and & have been making for our families for years.

The actual book turned out great, the color is nice and true, the layouts are all full sized (no enlarging) and we have 24 projects!  That is a lot for a self published book.  We try real hard to give you a lot of projects in each of our books.  Also, a lot of the projects are not seasonal, I know that may sound weird coming from a “fall” book, but if you look at the quilts and some of the other projects, they will not only look good for the fall season but can be used all year round! 

 Click on the photos for a bigger pic!

Thank you all for being wonderful in support of our business, we appreciate it and all the nice comments we receive.  We could not do this without you loving our patterns and hand dyed wools, enough to spend your hard earned bucks on it!

Here is the reason…

quilt for new book-coming soon

all done!

Ok, there are a lot of reason’s I have not been in blog land.  The first is… We have a new book coming out in a little over a month…My projects are all done.  My 1st draft of my directions are done.  Photography is half done.  I will soon post some of the projects when it gets a little closer to print.  On Jan. 15th my long arm quilting machine was delivered.  So you know what that means..I have to learn how to use it.  To this date I have quilted 6 quilts.  One of them which will be in the new book..is shown here on my machine.  I have to do something about those white walls..eeeeek..I am so used to warm color..but must have lots of light when quilting in the basement.  There is so much to learn and I have so many questions.  I have only done some edge to edge quilting so far… but my goal is to do custom quilting on my own quilts.

I think Carole and I are strung out from too much book stuff… but the load is lessoning.  I am looking forward to my Tampa Fl trip to teach 2 workshops and a lecture and trunk show starting March 11 for the Feather Princess Guild.  I will have to get lots of stuff done between now and then, but I am used to that…after another snow storm this week,Tampa sounds better every minute.  So I promise to post more often..you know I wanted this weblog to not be about my shop/business…I wanted it to be more personal, but I find it hard because I AM my shop/business, it is what I do and love.  So to heck with that I am going to talk about what ever I want from now on…piece out!

Thursday- already?

Ok..I really do not know where the days go…last weekend i attended Patsy’s Homestead Cabin Retreat in Hillpoint, WI. I met a lot of nice new people. If you ever need to get away this is the place. I love the food, and my Sweedish Birth, that were i slept…like a log, I might add… i am pictured here stitching in my sweats by the fire in the old cabin. This is the best place to runaway and stitch, or whatever…. 

Hand Quilting

 

 

 

Today  is way below 0 degrees here in WI with a wind chill factor of -45degrees, schools are closed and I am getting ready to go to a retreat this weekend.  So lots to do…My photo is a quilt that I am hand quilting.  Crazy Hearts by The Buggy Barn.  It is nice to do a row every couple of days or so…some quilts just need to be hand quilted.  I inserted a big pic so you hopefully can see the stitches.  Fans about  1-1/2 inches.  I have some acrylic templates from Judy at the shop, she gave them to me for my birthday, all my tools are shown here.  I have a wonderful frame that looks like a piece of furniture, so it is ok with me that it is set up in my sewing room.  In other words, it is not ugly.  

Yesterday I was in Brookfield WI teaching a workshop on Wool Applique and gave a lecture and trunk show of my things…I met a lot of new ladies and seen some old friends.  My students were all outstanding and will be happy with there projects.  I appreciate the ladies all coming out in this awful weather.  I forgot to take pics at our class, oh well next time…