Quilts

Giveaway Winners

April 9, 2014April 9, 2014 Elizabeth E.1 Comment

While you were all thinking hard about how you’d like to serve up your citrus (and okay, now you have to send me those recipes you promised!!), I was hard at work in Washington DC being a tourist, while accompanying my husband on a conference and visiting our son and his wife. And Allie, the Wonder Dog, their sweet little pal.

I loved reading all your comments, and did so a bit at a time, reading them out loud to my husband in between seeing art, visiting the monuments and hoping the cherry blossoms would bloom; a few tried to bloom, but we think the full display will be this weekend. I’m back home now, and used a random number generator to choose the winners.

Let me rephrase that. I tried to use a Random Number Generator, and if you are a long-time reader of this blog, you know Mr. Random Number Generator and I don’t get along very well, so I went to a grade school math site, but they couldn’t and wouldn’t build in the variables for two different giveaways, and having to add a couple of numbers for those who were followers, so I ended up with the old strips-of-paper-in-a-bowl random chooser thingie and I have two winners:

Zedda wrote: “I’d choose the book. And I love everything citrus… but my hands down favorite is cilantro lime chicken in the crock pot.” (Don’t we ALL need this recipe?)

and

Animated Librarian wrote: “I would love the fabric and thread. For cooking I love a kumquat, my mom has a kumquat chicken recipe that is to die for! Thanks for the give-a-way :-)” (And it looks like another recipe needs to come my way, as I have two large kumquat bushes out front).

Emails are going out tonight to these two quilters, but if I don’t hear from them by the end of the weekend, I’ll reach back into the bowl and pull out another winner (yes, I’ve saved your strips). And I’m serious: if you send me your promised recipe, I’ll do a tab up above of all your delicious citrus recipes. So many sounded terrific!

Thanks to all who wrote in, and welcome to our new followers! I had so much fun with this one, I’m already trying to figure out what my next giveaway will be.

(quilt from *here*–this is the back)

Here are some of the amazing citrus uses that people listed on their entries:

I like making fresh lemonade. I like oranges, just peel and eat.

My favourite citrus fruit is a lemon, as I love making lemon curd tea cake.

As for citrus fruit: lemons. Mile High Lemon Meringue Pie. Or Lemon Loaf with Lemon Glaze. Or…Lemon Tarts with homemade lemon curd. Yummy!

My favorite citrus creation is salmon with a lime marinade. Thanks for sharing your goodies!

I like limeades so the lime fabric would fit right in with my tastes.

Lemons! I love lemon bars.

I love lemon in desserts- lemon meringue pie is my favorite, followed by lemon bars!

You are too too lucky to have citrus fruit growing in your garden. We lived in Seville for a year and I remember the orange trees along the street, the flowers smelled wonderful! I found some Seville oranges many years later and made marmalade, it was so easy!

I just made some lemon poppy seed bread. YUM.

I love lemon poppy seed muffins. But lemon iced cake sounds delicious too.

Now, I’m Greek, so lemons are the biz in all cooking: lemon biscuits, lemon egg and chicken soup, lemon on freshly steamed zucchini, lemon marinated olives, and that’s just the beginning.

I pretty much like all citrus, so today I’ll pick this one: orange peel dipped in dark chocolate. Did you know it has no calories when a piece is handed to you as a road trip pick-me-up? Amazing. Yesterday I finished my first ever quilt! A baby quilt, all laundered & folded & ready to give to our next door neighbors who are first-time grandparents. You inspired & helped me throughout the sewing & unsewing process. Many thanks.

Mango salsa. Yummy!

My neighbour makes me fabulous lemon butter so lemons for me.

Quilts

Giveaway!!

April 7, 2014April 9, 2014 Elizabeth E.110 Comments

Yippe Skippee!! It’s a giveaway over here at OPQuilt.com and I’ve got two prizes for you to choose from. Of course you could say either, and that’s just fine too.

Our citrus trees are bursting with limes, lemons and oranges all over Southern California, so I thought it only natural to put together a little something to celebrate Spring’s bounty, from our part of the world: a stack of six fat quarters in citrusy patterns and colors (and even one with homemade lemonade all over it). Add in three different spools of Rainbows thread from Superior Thread, and . . .

. . . a shapely little orange peeler that will help you zip off those skins to get to the eating (not recommended for kumquats — see below). They are waaaay too small.

The thread behaves like a rayon, with a nice sheen and good color variegation, but it’s a trilobal polyester, and Superior’s great quality. So that’s Giveaway #1.

Giveaway #2 is Sherri McConnell’s latest book, Fresh Family Traditions. Somehow I ordered two, so that means I can give away one to you! In your comment, choose between the book or the fabric/thread, and leave me a comment telling me your favorite citrus fruit and how you like to prepare it (lemon shortbread? orange chicken? lime coolers? homemade lemonade?). This opens now, on Monday, April 7th, and will close on Wednesday, April 9th. Followers are entered in twice, so if you’re not a follower, come and join us.

I hope you win a little sunshiney pack of fabrics, or a sweet new book from Sherri McConnell!

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Thanks to all who entered. Giveaway now closed.

Citrus

July 21, 2013October 3, 2013 Elizabeth E.17 Comments

Citrus, 31-1/2″ square, finished July 2013

This is a simple Schnibbles quilt, with rail fence and sawtooth star blocks, in bright citrusy colors.

The back, with my sister’s gift of a tea towel as part of the backing.

As I was at our annual summer retreat, I chose a simple leafy pattern–one I could quilt while we talked about children, grandchildren, hymn-singing at church, marathons, and could-you-please-bring-me-a-piece-of-chocolate sort of conversations.

I was tired today, after nearly two days at our retreat, so no big fancy quilt labels for this one. Just handwritten in Micron pen, the title, my name, the place, date and dimensions. Truthfully, this is 31 and three-quarters-inch wide, but just couldn’t face all that, so I’m calling it 31-1/2″ inches square.

Here are the last two Schnibbles I’ve made. I’m thinking that whatever the next pattern is, it needs to be pink. Or aqua. Anything but yellow, orange and green.

The house was quiet this morning as I sewed on the binding. My husband had not yet returned from his scientific meeting. The weather was cool so I had the windows open, listening to the faraway sounds of traffic, the nearby sounds of insects, birds, a dog barking his good morning. I could have machine-stitched this binding down, the chunk-chunk of the needle going through so many layers of fabric, but instead, I picked up a needle and thread.

I thought about all the conversations I’d had in the past forty-eight hours at our annual summer retreat. The topics of conversation varied from books to quilt tops to sewing pillowcases to “how do you make bias binding?” to no conversation at all as we concentrated on our tasks, letting others carry the call and response around us. There is something so rich and rewarding about being in the thick of this, of feeling surrounded and accepted by all these creative, productive and interesting people. We have all brought our fabric, thread, and know how to borrow each other’s books for patterns, search Pinterest or the web, or locate what we want in a magazine or on a blog. We all seem to find the time to begin the quilt or table runner or creamy white blouse or Polaroid blocks and bring them to the communal sewing circle, so we can keep our hands busy while we solve what really is on our mind. The machines hum a nice alto line while our chorus of soprano voices slip in those concerns and cares that worry us at night, all of us telling a story of being unable to sleep because a friend moving away, or how to find the money to go to another state to meet an adult child’s sweetheart, or how to recover from a foot injury, or recover from a broken heart of a life called away too soon.

The stories are as varied as we are, from new mothers (am I doing this right?) to mothers of teenagers (can I send them to the moon?) to mothers of grown children (everything will work out). We are young, running marathons. We are older, with a litany of physical complaints. We are professionals, earning retirement and benefits, and we are under-employed, wondering how to find medical insurance. We are so different.

We are the same, with thread and scissors and stars and triangles and squares of cloth. After days of sewing together, we are tired and head back to our houses with our half-finished projects, our conversations, our new friends, our memories, all packed away until the next time.

All of this is on my mind, as I think about how this is being repeated at every retreat, every sewing circle, all of us being bound together like this quilt I am working on, a stitch at a time.

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This quilt is my first finish on my list of things to do in the Third Quarter of 2013’s Finish-A-Long (FAL).

It is #118 on my 200 Quilts List.

Good Heart Quilters

Latest Schnibbles is Taking Shape

July 15, 2013July 17, 2013 Elizabeth E.9 Comments

This is the Schnibbles pattern chosen for this month’s Parade of Schnibbles, hosted by Sherri and Sinta, a design called Lincoln. While I love the red, cream and blue and it is appropriate for July, I had a cute packet of fabrics brought to me by a friend while I was convalescing and it just pushed its way to the front and demanded to be used. So I did, sewing and ironing with my foot up (it’s quite a ~~feet~~ feat).

Think this real estate is getting crowded? I didn’t want to take down the quilt on the left, so just folded it over while I put my quilt up on the wall. In looking at it, I knew the name: Citrus. What else to call a quilt with lime, lemon and bold orange in it?

Sewn top. I cropped it so you wouldn’t have to see my messy pin wall. But I’ve put a tea towel on the back of every Schnibbles so far, and what to put on this one? I thought about going by the Citrus Historical Park, where I thought they may have something. Then I looked on the towel rack in my kitchen (the oven door) and there it was–a citrus-themed tea towel!

My sister brought it to me because my kitchen is yellow, and maybe because we carried a sack of oranges up to her in the snowy mountain west last February, a ray of sunshine from our home town’s harvest. But I hope she won’t mind that I put it into service here. I whipped it off the rack, washed up up and bordered it with fabrics from the front.

One beauty of making small quilts is that I get to piece my scraps of batting hanging out in my closet and use them in the quilt. I lay the scraps side-by-side on my cutting mat, overlapping the sides I want to seam. Then I take my rotary cutter and make a wavy cut in them–a long, slow wavy cut. I butt those seams side by side, and using a stitched-zig-zag in a 9.0 width, I zig-zag the seams closed. It makes a nearly invisible join with no ridges.

Citrus is all pinned up. I’m actually getting some projects ready for our little quilt group (The Good Heart Quilters) is getting together for a retreat this weekend. I have learned that it’s too busy to do intensive thinking, so it’s better to go prepared with projects I can sew while chatting away.

This coming January, our quilt group will have been going strong for about 15 years. We generally meet about 7 or 8 times a year, always on the first Friday of every month just after 7 p.m. When we were all younger, we stayed until 2 and 3 in the morning, but now we’re all packed up and gone by 10:30 p.m. Here’s some photos from June’s get together:

We met at Leisa’s house this time; we rotate where’s we’ll meet.

What I tried to work on–this is when I remembered it’s best not to have too brain-draining of a project to stitch/cut!

Bridget is a new quilter, but look what she turned out!

Laurel finished the quilt she started last fall–a combination of piecing and appliqué.

JoDy showed us her cool round tablecloth, made with a wedge ruler. . .

. . .then flipped it over and showed us the back!

She also finished a reversible table runner.

Caitlyn (L) recently ran a half-marathon with Lisa (R) who is a marathoner. Lisa showed off their medal. ( That’s a pair of scissors on a magnetized disk on Lisa’s shoulder, not a fancy broach or something!) Our retreat will be at Lisa’s house–she did one last year and we had such fun, we’re doing it again.