Free magazine give away.

There is a chance to win a a free magazine from a new publication called Vignette. They are giving away 10 copies so chances are good that we might actually win one. 
It could happen! For a chance to enter the draw, click here.
The mag looks good, it appears from the cover to have quilting ideas and recipes. 
Good Luck!
-Carolyn

Dr. Seuss Fabric Give Away!!

Dawn is doing a wicked give away for not one, but 7 yards of fabric!!! 
Can you say Holy Sh*t with me?? 
Click here to enter. HERE I stole this picture from Dawn's blog - sorry Dawn!!

Post Christmas Blues

Does anyone else get this. After Christmas, I always feel a little flat. I had grand plans of sewing up an army of lovely things to parade around and show you, but alas, I have only bonded with my couch until my butt became numb. 
I did not even realize that today is the 29th, the 29th!! Eek! How did this happen! I feel like I have to go back to work already - thankfully I do not have to go back until January 4th, but the days are slipping past me so fast.


I am super excited to get my first package from my sewing bee, Lets Bee Together. The administrator, Linda is sending out our first packages. There is a picture of the fabric on the blog, but it always looks better in real life. I am very much looking forward to working with all these different patterns and seeing what other patterns my friends are into right now. Plus I am super excited to buy more fabric for this project!!! Not that I do not have enough in my stash already for this. hee hee hee.


I thought I would share with you my Antipasto Recipe. I know there are a few you can find online, but I made this one up by combining and eliminating off of a couple of recipes I found online. I think it is pretty awesome.


ANTIPASTO
Ingredients:
2 1/2 cups marinated artichoke hearts (three little jars)
1 1/2 cups roasted red bell peppers (one jar - Superstore has a jar of Sweet roasted red bell peppers that I used and it tastes so yummy!)
1 can drained sliced black olives
1 jar pearl onions
2 cups chopped carrots
2 cups chopped celery
2 cups or one head of chopped celery
1 chopped (or more if you prefer) green pepper
2 cups vegetable oil
1 jar sweet pickle mix chopped up
1 jar of pitted green olives - sliced
1 1/2 cup white vinegar
1/2 cup Balsamic vinegar
1/2 tsp. oregano
3 cloves minced garlic
1 can strained sliced mushrooms
1 tomato paste
2 cans tuna


In a large sauce pan, pour in your vegetable oil, both vinegars, the tomato paste and the oregano. Bring to a boil. Stir. Reduce heat to medium - make sure it is still boiling.
Add the carrots, boil for 10 minutes. Stir.
Add celery, green peppers and cauliflower and boil for another 7 minutes. Stir. 
Now you can put everything else into the pot, stir well and boil for another 7 minutes.
Remove from heat, put into a sterile container and refrigerate overnight. 
If you know how to can, you can do that and your antipasto will last for much longer - without canning, your antipasto is still good for a minimum of 10 days.
Enjoy!

Make sure you stir it up good to prevent sticking. All that oil and vinegar is what keeps the items tasting so good and preserves it. I try to not put too much into my jars, but make sure you do not over strain or it will be dry.

This recipe is great for gifts. Just put the finished recipe into all the jars you used to make it!

Cheers,
Carolyn

And the runner goes to

Out of all the co-workers I have at work, funny, my table runner ended up going to my good friend Eva. Eva as well is the only other person that I know of at work that blogs. 
Her blog is the Hygiene Hunter. I know we both have Hunter in our blog names which is weird - but where I am a Hunter by marriage and joke with people when I give them the spelling of my name that I am the vegetarian hunter, carrots be wary - Eva is a hunter of cleanliness. As she only posts things about cleanliness - well more then that - her blog makes me really laugh - you will most likely not see my runner on there as I presented it in a very tidy gift wrapped box. She did seam to really like it. Funny too - I ended up getting the present she brought in - we do a random selection thing at work. 
If you would like a good chuckle and some tips on healthy living and eating, check out my friends blog by clicking here.
Cheers,
Carolyn

More on the quilted eReader cover

My friend Christina whom is a talented knitter, her blog is Nuclear Knits: Where Knitting is the Bomb! told me that she has the B&N Nook. The Nook is just a tiny bit bigger then the Indigo/Chapters Kobo eReader. If you have a Nook and want to sew along, you will need to cut your fabric as follows:
1 print 6.75" x 18.5" 
1 print 6.75" x 18.75" 
1 batting 6.75" x 18.5" 
Then follow the same steps! The measurement on the sides to stitch the folds, do yours at 3/4"


You will need a fabric for binding, I went with a 2 1/4" wide by about 11 or 12". I had a little left over, but better then then the opposite right?? Fold in the centre and press - only on the edge you want to start at, fold over a 1/4. There is a picture later if that didn't make sense.

Here are the next steps I did (shown in lots of photos of course!)

From your folded over edge, measure the height of your eReader plus 1/4", mark, fold and stitch just like the edge folds we did.

From the new line we just stitched, measure again, this time - for the Kobo measure that 1/2" + the tick, for the Nook, do your 3/4". Fold and stitch.

It should look like this.

Good side facing in, fold at as close to the centre of our stitched bottom as you can. Finger press.

Mark where the short side stops on the longer side.

Place your binding to start stitching it on right at the start of this mark you just made.

This is the picture of the 1/4" fold I promised.

Bind as per usual until your get to the second corner - complete the corner, then stop.

Align the fabric up to your second mark and fold it over (excess on top).

Cut leaving at least 1/4" extra that you can now press into the inside just like we did for the start.

I finger pressed mine so it was easy to see where I had to fold.

Iron... .. ha ha, sorry I got camera happy. I know you know how to iron, but isn't my iron pretty??

OK, so here is our second fold, ready to go! So stitch it on!

Flip the binding over, fold neatly like shown, pin.

Turn over to the top and stitch in the ditch to catch your fold over. You could hand stitch this, but no one is going to look at the back and you need the strength of the machine as this binding is going to get a lot of pulling on it.

Your back should look something like this.

Now flip it over, good sides out. Fold the bottom inward like an accordion fold - like a fabric shopping bag when it is new and you haven't smashed it into a ball to fit in your purse =) Pin the bottom.

Place your velcro.

Pin in place. **Here you can learn from my mistake, put your velcro right up to the binding. Because I left the extra fabric, it wants to curl up.

Stitch on the velcro doing the x lines through the middle to give extra strength.

Take out those pins from the bottom. Fold good sides in, match up the top short end to meet the binding and sew up your sides with a quarter inch seam allowance. To keep it nice and straight at the top, I started there for both sides.

Flip it right side out.

See how the top is too wide. If you have a brilliant way to avoid this, please do tell.

What I did and am happy with, is just to fold this in as shown and stitch.

And here you have it - a completed quilted eReader cover.

I hope that made sense for you and you enjoyed making your eReader cover. 
Have a great weekend my friends!
Cheers,
Carolyn

eReader completed and a little how too if you like

I finished my quilted Kobo eReader cover for my sister in law tonight and I took lots of pics in case anyone else wanted to see how. 
Here is the end result:

Here is how I did it through pictures:

The Kobo is 4.7" x 7.4" x 0.4" I cut two pieces of print, one was 18.25" x 6.75", the other 18.5" x 6.75". My batting I cut 18.25" x 6.75"

 Put the fabric right sides together with the longer piece on the bottom, then the batting. Make them nice and square. Sew along one of the 6.75" side with a 1/4" seam allowance. Turn the outer printed piece over and press.

Now that is is presses, I pinned and quilted.

 Next, verified that my fabric still measured 6.75". I know it should, but sh!t happens so I double checked. It was good so I then marked off on each side with my fancy ruler one tick past the 1/2". I'm sorry but I can only guess that it may be .625 or something like that?? I dunno know - just do it.

 Using your marked lines, fold the fabric over. If your fabric has a good side, then fold on your good side having the small edge fold over into the "bad" side. Pin it baby!!

 On the machine, sew as close as you can to that edge. Make sure you do not sew over a pin, it may not break your needle, but it does something really bad to the alignment of your machine which will eventually make you cry big hot tears. No fun.

Now, it should look like this on both sides. 
Phew - it is my bedtime. I am sorry, I will have to finish the rest on Friday. I hate to keep you waiting, but I must sleep. 
Cheers,
Carolyn

Natures Garland

It is snowing like crazy here. You cannot tell by my picture, but it is really coming down. I cannot see out of the office windows.
On my way to find food (I forgot my lunch) I found Mother Natures Garland. Check it out:

Can you see the perfect swags from the freezing snow on the pedway windows? I thought they were lovely.

I started an ereader cover last night and I would have completed it, but my mommy called so I was tied up on the phone for a couple of hours. She never used to call me, but now that my parents are separated and she is happy, she calls me at least once a month which I love. I know some of you may be going, What?? You only talk to your mom once a month, but its just how my family is. None of us talk, its always been that way.
Tonight I will finish this cover and post you the pics. I designed the pattern in yesterdays early morning sleep. You know that time when its almost time to get up for work, but the alarm has not gone off yet, or you pressed snooze. You want to sleep, but your brain wants to think up stuff?? Well, I come up with most of my ideas at this time. I have taken pics along the way so if any of you are wanting to make one you can use the steps I came up with.
Cheers,
Carolyn

First Christmas fabric runner done!

Phew, another one down! I have fabric to make two more in these prints. I am unsure at this point as to what order to put them in, but I will show you those in a minute. Here is my finished runner!!

Before the finished product, I had some set backs. I attempted to do free style trees - yeah, not so good.

Oh bother, have you ever seen such bad trees? 

So I made a paper stencil and just kept re pinning it down the line until it was completed.

I did do some free style snowflakes and I thought they turned out okay.

Snow flakes in a row

Here are the good trees - well, better trees.

The final product!

So here are my left over pieces. I thought the bottom runner is fun, but I am not loving the top one. I thought perhaps with a wide strip of the poinsettia fabric in the middle? Then I thought perhaps they are destined to be two place mats? Or even 4 with the width of the mat made up with the poinsettia fabric? What do you think??

Cheers,
Carolyn

Christmas Runner number 1

I have started a series of Christmas table runners using a simple pattern I had shown you on one of the pet quilt donations here. The fabric I have for these all have some gold and I must confess - these are going to be hard to give away, the fabric is just beautiful. The pictures do not do it justice. I got the fabric at the first retreat I went to, it is probably a season or several old now. On the shelvage of one, it said it was from The Classic Christmas series - no designer was labelled.

Here is one set of the stripes

Close up of front

Completed top.

I am not sure as to what to use for the binding. I want to use the dark fabric that really pops out at you in the pictures, but I am short about 1/2 an inch in width. I may try making my binding just a little skinnier. Not sure, but you know I will post it soon!
Happy sewing everyone.
Cheers,
Carolyn

Getting it done!!

I am finally on a roll. It felt like spinning wheels all last month, but I think I am finally figuring these Christmas gifts out. 
The table runner / place mat set is 100% done, plus the gift for my boss - check it off the list!! She told me her kitchen is all neutral, with some little hints of sage green. So, I whipped up a very simple pattern using scraps I had actually scored from the last retreat I was at, and then using a fabulous green print (I had posted tis fab print many months ago that I was going to use for another project - I came to terms, it just isn't going to happen). Here it it:

My free scraps.

The back

Close up of the quilting - on back.

Close up of front.

I made this cute little strap out of the left over binding. It was just the right amount left.

I found this button in my collection, I was surprised I had one of the perfect color. 

And here is the completed project. I figure if this pattern is too much for her, she can just use the back as the top.

I think it turned out pretty good for a simple table runner. It measured about 24" x 12". I really hope she likes it!!


I have started a beautiful Christmas runner, but you have to wait to tomorrow to see it.
Cheers,
Carolyn