Best Press..ed!

Yesterday I was pressing a quilt top and backing. The weather was great and the windows were open. My ironing surface is in front of windows. Here's a photo from last January on a not-so-nice day and lots of snow on the ground.

I was using Best Press, my favorite spray starch alternative. Anyway, the breeze changed direction and all of a sudden, as I sprayed the Best Press, it came back at me. I was Best Pressed!

In other news:
  
* Ray is doing very well. He has regained most of his strength and stamina. He is back to his normal bike riding. Thank goodness for his new noseless bicycle seat. His next cancer test is in a few weeks. We are both optimistic that he'll get a good report.
   
* I am leaving on a retreat with a couple of friends tomorrow. I'll give you an update when I get back.

Color My World

I bought the pattern Color My World by Country Threads and the fabric at Quilt Camp last October. I saw the store sample and decided in a split second that I had to make it. Of course I love bright colors especially orange!

I pieced the top at a retreat in April. It's about 42" X 48".

I finally quilted it with fairly large stippling. 

The binding is from the left over strip pieces.  

That little star on the back was the first star I made for the front - it's about half the size it should be. Once more I didn't read carefully - will I ever learn??! Of course it is rather cute on the back...

Turned out to be a corkscrew!

I've been busy....but I don't have much to show for it yet!

One thing I've just finished is a mystery KAL (Knit Along) with Michelle Hunter at KnitPurlHunter. We made a corkscrew hat! 

Since I didn't know what this would look like, I decided to make the infant size.  I'm hopeful it will fit Leo, our youngest grandson. Maybe he can wear it to his brothers' hockey games. Their colors are red and white.

Cool top!

I wanted a hockey puck for the button so I ordered some hockey buttons. All of the pucks had to be glued on so I went with the hockey player button.

Not too happy with my flap - this is flap #3. I know how to make it better next time!

I enjoy learning new things and this KAL was great. I learned:

• a new cast on - I just tried the German twisted cast-on, you could use any
• how to knit with two colors at once - holding one color in each hand
• a new way to make a nice buttonhole

The KAL was fun - I'm glad I did it and I have a cute little hat!

Brookies - Oh Yeah!

Before we knew about Ray's cancer, we both began seeing a homeopathic doctor in January. We wanted to feel better and thought we might be able to accomplish that by losing weight. We followed the Shape Reclaimed program under the guidance of this doctor. We both left the program before Ray's surgery. He had lost 30+ pounds and felt great. I had lost almost 20 pounds and felt good. About six weeks ago I went back on the program which in part is a very restricted diet - I wanted to drop my last 10 pounds. I am now feeling great and have also lost 30+ pounds. My very restricted diet ended two days ago. Yay!

Our now normal diet includes lots of vegetables, fruits, and some protein. Did I mention LOTS of vegetables?! We can eat anything we want but we try to limit sugars, starches, and most grains.

During the last few months, I have collected and tried many new recipes - mostly for vegetables. I think I mentioned that we eat LOTS of vegetables! There was this one recipe though that looked so good that I had to try it today - it is a really good treat. BROOKIES are part brownies and part chocolate chip cookies.

I found the recipe at Mel's Kitchen Cafe. You can find it there too! 

I also baked a couple kinds of zucchini bread today - a couple of those bigger zucchinis were begging me to make them into bread instead of a stir fry.   Most of the bread is headed for the freezer along with the brookies. Does zucchini bread count as a vegetable???

Wish you were here to enjoy our treats and the wonderful aromas in our house today!

Kitchen is done - sort of!

Before Ray's cancer surgery, he kept busy trying to clean up all the little jobs that had been put off and some big ones. At one time we had talk about redoing our kitchen. All of a sudden, we were making decisions and within a week, everything was set for our 'new' kitchen! The cabinets would be refaced in hickory. 

The old peninsula.

In early June I totally move out of the kitchen. That was a good thing after 25 years. Lots of things went to the garage sale pile and some went to the pantry shelves in the basement. Everything else just hung-out in the dining room.

On June 6, the builders refaced our cabinets and installed new doors, new drawers and new shelves. The lower shelves now all pull out. The cabinets and drawers are all soft-closing. We had to change a bank of 4 drawers to 3 drawers in order to get the raised panel on the drawer fronts. I was concerned about losing my spice drawer so they built me a special insert in one drawer for my spices!

Refaced cabinets and new granite countertop.

Less than a week later, we had new granite countertops and a huge new egranite sink. I love the size and the depth. The two sinks have a low divide so big pans fit down in the sink.

New sink.

The following week, the backsplash was in place and grouted. We wanted rather neutral colors but I love the gray/blue in the glass tiles. It really goes with the blue paint. In the future about any color will look great with it.

The blue on the walls is a steel blue, not very bright.

I moved back into the kitchen and I love it. The appliances will be replaced as needed, probably in stainless steel.

The only problem is that the floor doesn't go with the kitchen at all. Ugh! The first floor of our home is partly an open concept and that means that when you redo flooring, you redo ALL flooring at the same time. We were going to wait a year or two but are now rethinking that decision. We are also trying to figure out what we want - oh, I hate this kind of decisions!

A pinwheel finish!

I was going to make a disappearing pinwheel block - just a sample so I'd remember the block. After making one pinwheel block, I decided not to cut it up. I would just make a baby quilt because I didn't have a lot of the white dotted background fabric and I really liked the brightness. 

So I made 5 blocks and then realized that I was running out of the background fabric. So I played with the blocks on my design wall and came up with this layout. I used all of the dotted white background fabric and all of the turquoise sashing fabric. In fact the sashing fabric is pieced in a couple of places because I didn't have enough to cut the needed pieces.

After finally getting the quilt pieced, I had to decide how to quilt it. A few days earlier I saw that Leah Day had free-motion quilted a pinwheel with straight lines and a snaking line. So I decided to try that. I started free-handing the lines. Then I decided to try to use a guide ruler My paper piecing rulers worked really well. The lines on the green were free-handed without rulers.

The 'solid' color pieces of each pinwheel have straight lines going towards the center and the background/dot pieces have a snaking line with rounded ends.

When the pinwheels were quilted, I had to decide what to do in the sashing. I tried river rocks once before with not a good outcome but I decided to try again.

The turquoise sashing looks too gray here.

It was much easier with my new quilting setup.

The turquoise sashing looks too gray here.

The turquoise on the front and this backing fabric which I absolutely love were purchased in January on our trip to North Carolina. I bought them to make a purse. Guess we'll just have to go back so I can get more!

I used a reversible binding. The binding on the back is yellow (see above) and the binding on the front is a turquoise with dots (see below).

This quilt is about 40" square and has Dream Poly batting.

I love that even though I started to make a sample block, I ended with a bright donation quilt.


Ray update: Ray has a new noseless bicycle seat and can ride his bike again!!! Yesterday was his first real ride since his surgery (he went 10 blocks the day before to try out the seat) and his first ride of 2014. He went almost 10 miles and loved every second! His recovery is going pretty well.