Merry Christmas!

Wishing you all a very blessed and meaningful Christmas

and a Happy New Year!

I'll be back soon with news about my current quilting projects. I confess with only just a little encouragement from Linda, I began working on Quiltville's latest mystery quilt, "Roll, Roll Cotton Boll" (RRCB). Did you know we grow cotton in Kansas?

So, now I'm working on three bed size quilts at one time - the Selvage Quilt, the Clamshell Quilt and RRCB. I may need an accountability partner to help keep me on track to finish all of them!

Again, Merry Christmas and many thanks for reading my blog,

Mayleen

Some of my favorites

Our house will never look like something out of a magazine and we're happy with that! At Christmas, we like to "decorate" with things that are meaningful and have special memories for us. This is our piano which, unfortunately, no one plays anymore so I decorate it with some of my favorite Christmas things.

The framed, limited edition picture hanging on the wall is very special to us because I purchased it years ago as we were becoming more and more disappointed with the overcommercialization of Christmas. Week after week I admired this picture in the store but I wasn't able to afford to purchase it. Finally one of the clerks arranged that I could purchase it through layaway, something they normally did not do. I hope you can see the details in the picture but if not, try clicking on the photo to enlarge it. It's a boy and a girl surrounded by toys gazing into a nativity scene globe.

On the left is the Weihnachtspyramid we purchased when we lived in Germany 20+ years ago. We've set it up every year since then but rarely light the candles. Too afraid we might set the whole thing on fire! I need some advice though, how do you dust one of these? I'm seeing dust and someone has left a very noticeable thumbprint behind. I've tried using a clean, soft paintbrush to get between the little figurines but I invariably break one off and have to glue it back in. Any suggestions?

In the middle you might notice a kind of shabby looking creche. This was the nativity scene my parents owned and I remember my sister and I setting it up under the Christmas tree. I'm sure my parents purchased it secondhand because we rarely bought anything new. The stable is made of cardboard and there are still some wood shavings on the roof but its missing camels for the Wise Men and there is only one shepherd. A puzzler for me, although I think I know the answer, there are three angels?!? Obviously, two belong to something else but they all look like they could be one set. Whenever I see a nativity set for sale at an antique store, I always check if there are camels or shepherds which are the right size for my set but so far, I haven't found any.

And, last, in the very front is the book Take Joy! by Tasha Tudor opened to one of my favorite illustrations. For some reason, I just like the aqua color so much. I didn't know anything about Tasha Tudor until about ten years ago but now have several books about her and her gardens.

I enjoy baking cookies almost anytime of the year but I have several recipes I usually save especially for Christmas time. I've gathered them from magazines, books and friends so as I share them, I'll try to give credit to where its due. Here is the recipe I plan to bake today:

Poppy Seed Hearts

1 cup butter, softened

2/3 cup sugar

1/4 teaspoon salt

1 egg

1 teaspoon vanilla

2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour

1 tablespoon poppy seeds

Lemon Frosting

In a large bowl, beat butter for 30 seconds. Beat in sugar and salt until combined. Beat in egg and vanilla until combined. Beat in as much of the flour as you can with the mixer. Stir in any remaining flour. Stir in poppy seeds.

Divide dough in half. Cover and chill for at least 2 hours or overnight. (If chilled overnight, let dough stand at room temperature for 15-30 minutes before rolling and cutting.)

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. On a lightly floured surface, roll dough, half at a time, to a 1/4-inch thickness. Using 1 1/2-to 3 1/2-inch heart-shaped cookie cutters, cut out the dough. Place cutouts on ungreased cookie sheet.

Bake in the preheated oven for 10 to 12 minutes or until edges are lightly browned. Transfer cookies to wire racks; let cool.

Spread or pipe Lemon Frosting onto cookies.

Lemon Frosting

In a medium bowl, beat 6 tablespoons butter, softened, with an electric mixer on medium to high speed for 30 seconds. Gradually add 1 cup powdered sugar, mixing well. Add 1 tablespoon lemon juice. Gradually beat in another 1 cup powdered sugar. If necessary, stir in milk or lemon juice, 1 teaspoon at a time, to make a frosting of spreading or piping consistency.

This recipe is from the Better Homes & Gardens Christmas Cookies 2006 magazine, P. 103.

Enoy!

Merry Christmas!

... Or perhaps a better title to this blog post would be,

"What have I been doing instead of blogging for nearly a month?"

Life seemed to get a little busy just before Thanksgiving. My husband was quite unexpectedly hospitalized with Atrial Fibrillation, no past history of heart issues. He's now on medication and doing much better. The day after he came home from the hospital, I received a letter from my doctor telling me I needed a repeat mammogram. Thank you to all of you who were praying for me, the second mammogram was clear! Since then there have been several more routine end of the year appointments to keep us busy.

Unfortunately, I haven't had much time to sew/quilt. In fact, yesterday was the first time I'd been able to sew in over 3 weeks. With the help of my family, I finally finished decorating for Christmas today. The picture above was taken in our entryway. I purchased the Drunkard's Path quilt but did make the table runner. I'm in the process of writing notes for Christmas cards, have done a little baking and the shopping is almost done so perhaps I'm making progress!

I'll blog again soon about the snail's pace progress I'm making on the clamshells and the selvage quilt. And, I'd like to share some special Christmas decorations and memories. Be back soon!

Selvage Quilt update

I'm working on my selvage quilt blocks again. This is a photo of a block I put together to show some women who have given me selvages. No one could imagine what a spiderweb quilt made with selvages would look like!

Each block uses 8 subunits and there are usually 8-10 selvages in each subunit.

After working off and on sewing selvages together into subunits, I only have enough subunits to make almost 9 blocks. Obviously, I have to make more time for this quilt as I'd still like to make it a throw or twin size. If I stopped now it would only be about 45x45 or if I still wanted a throw or twin size, I'd have to add really wide borders!

Want to see one of my P.I.G.S.?

OK, not this kind of pig! Sorry, I found this photo on the internet and just couldn't resist.

Here is one of my P.I.G.S. (Project In a Grocery Sack) Of course, someone might argue its really a Flimsie, which it is, but since its also not finished I'm calling it one of my P.I.G.S. Its been laying on an antique washstand in our bedroom for years because I haven't gotten around to having it machine quilted. One clue why it isn't quilted yet is that I dislike sewing together backings for large quilts. You can see the backing fabric under the quilt top in the photo.

I've always wanted to take beautiful photos of quilts hanging on a wash line gently blowing in the breeze. As you can see, its just a little too breezy in Kansas this morning. By the way, we're expecting winds of 20-30 miles per hour today which is not terrible but since its so dry, the fire risk is high.

Here's a photo of the quilt top taken inside. Its a large queen size and I'd originally thought of using this on our bed which probably will still happen if I ever get it to a machine quilter. I've been saving the border fabric for years and finally used most of it on this quilt.

A few more photos of the scrappy nine patches. Some of the fabric was old when I made the quilt. All of it is older now!


This past week I spent quite a bit of time at the hospital with my mother. She's back at her home but between the two of us, we have enough appointments to keep us busy! Thanksgiving seems to be right around the corner too. Its looking like I won't reach my goal of finishing all the full clamshell diamonds this month but that's OK. I'll check back in when I've actually accomplished some quilting!

Clamshell Update

This was my first month working on the clamshells and here's my progress!

I have finished appliqueing 5 of the clamshell diamonds, 2 more of the diamonds are glue basted and another 2 more ready to be glue basted. As you can see, this is going to be a very bright quilt! I may name this quilt "Myriad Gardens" so I'm trying to think of each diamond as a garden. A little blue for water perhaps in the form of a fountain, bird bath or pond, some brown and green for trees, shrubs and grasses and some color for flowers. Some of the gardens have more attitude than others!

Sometimes its been difficult to use both my older fabrics and the contemporary fabrics. They might look OK together but don't have the ZING I think is needed. I'll soon need to cut more clamshells and am seeing which fabrics work better than others in this quilt.

This past weekend, my husband and I took a quick trip to Illinois to see his family. I was hoping to get more of the handwork done in the car but I quickly discovered how difficult it is to make tiny stitches in traffic! Threading a needle was a challenge too so I was only able to work on it during the evenings. I'm happy with my progress though and hope to finish or come close to finishing the full diamonds during November. Next will be the half diamonds and corners but at this point, I'm trying not to think about how much handwork is left to do!

Yes, you need a grid

The next very important step for putting the clamshells together is one I probably would have ignored if I hadn't read the other clamshell blogs! You most definitely need a grid or some other way of keeping your clamshells straight and spaced evenly whether you intend to put them together in a straight row or another shape.

Some of the bloggers are using a fabric grid but after reading Journey of a Quilter's blog post about her grid drawn on paper, I decided to try it. I taped sheets of copy paper together to make a large enough grid for my diamond shape and started drawing lines. I'm not sure I can easily explain the lines but perhaps you can figure it out from my photos and her post.

Here I'm laying out my first clamshell diamond. Notice that not all the clamshells have turned out the same size so the grid is very important to keep them aligned. See the glue dots? I'm using a fabric glue to baste the clamshells together until I applique around each one. Just a word of warning, do not put too much glue on because it does seep through the fabric! Luckily, I had covered my paper grid with contact paper so its not sticking to the clamshells.

These are the first two diamonds on my design wall. I try out colors together until I'm "satisfied" and then transfer them to the grid to be glued together. I enjoy playing with the colors but working in my old fabrics has been frustrating sometimes. As my daughter said, "Somehow it all works together!"

These two diamonds have been hand appliqued together and more in the works!