cloth: lumbar pillow #1 in progress

I’d been admiring the projects of the weekend quilter on Instagram, and last week I spied her book at the public library. Score!                  

Also I’d been searching images and quilt patterns to sew a lumbar pillow, and I found one I loved in my new public library checkout. 

I played with a color combination of Kona medium pink and light peach, but didn’t care for it in combination with the Cloud 9 mustard solid I had. And so I found a cantaloupe and dark pink to instead stitch squares to snowball into the rectangular strips for a lumbar pillow that I decided to gift to a grandniece. In sewing the directions, I misunderstood or maybe the directions in the book are just wrong. I drew a line bisecting the squares to “snowball” onto my strips, and then sewed a 1/4" seam on either side of the line (to use the leftover half-square triangles into coasters_.

After trimming the half square triangle off the strip, I then had to slice a 1/2" along with the dogears off the strip to square up the rectangle. 

 

In hindsight, I should have made the bisecting line of the 5 1/2" and 4" squares the bottom stitch line, drawn another 1/4" seam to be the line to cut off the fabric and sewn another 1/4" seam above that cut line in order to use the cut-off triangles as half-square triangles into another project of coasters. I went ahead and just sewed the smaller rectangle strips together.

I rather love the colors of this abstract-patterned pillow and hope a little girl will like it too. Tomorrow I'll find a utility fabric like muslin on which to layer with batting and quilt the top, use more utility fabric to sew a pillow insert, and do I then make the back of this pillow cover unquilted? I guess I'll know after I've quilted the top.

clay: a vase + a mug

I finally made it to clay club despite a flurry of tasks to complete (dental appointment, quilting, summer cleaning) before school starts. For two days I finished this Hans Christian Andersen vase (it’s his quote) and this Sadie mug on which I’m going to decal an iron oxide image of her after I've dipped it into white glaze.                                    

In the meantime, Zan finished her candelabra.                          

She copied the structure of my candelabra but gave it her own flourishes of dragonfly, lotus blossoms and cattails. It's lovely, and now I want to make another candelabra.

In the meantime I'm inspired by the bouquets Patrick brings home. Next Saturday, instead of making a lamp base, maybe I'll rehearse with a candelabra or some low candlesticks. I once made a lotus bloom adhered to the top of a lidded pot. But I'd love to stick my votives into a lotus atop a lily pad.

So that's the plan for Saturday Clay next.

cook: how to cheat making bolognese sauce

I was uninspired about what to do with hamburger patties, which we needed a break from in the dinner rotation. I decided to cook the ground beef into something else. I remembered serving favorite neighbors a homemade Bolognese sauce over handmade ravioli from our favorite ravioli house. However, Marcella Hazan’s Bolognese is a 4 to 5 hour process, and I only had 2 hours to get dinner on the table. I decided to use up leftover jars of marinara sauce and heirloom tomatoes I had whirred in the Vitamix instead of slowly simmering crushed tomatoes. I chopped red onion and celery and grated a carrot which I sautéed in butter and olive oil and then added the ground beef to lose all its pink.

 

I then added a small pour of whole milk and sprinkles of nutmeg, and you're supposed to then simmer until all the liquid is driven off. That wasn't gonna work in my time frame, and so the milk furiously boiled off.

 

After the meat and vegetables were almost dry, I then added a glass of Chardonnay...

...and furiously boiled again and then added the tomatoes and marinara sauces and vigorously boiled again, and voila! Bolognese sauce in 2 hours.

I served the Bolognese atop pappardelle pasta. And here's my lunch of leftover Bolognese atop pappardelle (which I had been too famished to photograph after the previous night's dinner).                       

I realized later that the missing ingredient in this Bolognese was pancetta, but I've leftover bacon which I just might add to the Bolognese that's left.
 

cloth: roybgiv ii

I started this quilt two summers ago in the second year of the pandemic before I returned to a school year of in-person learning. I finally got all 80 blocks stitched with fabric strips and then began removing their foundation paper, ripping and removing bits of paper with tweezers.

And I would never have guessed while learning to quilt that the craft also involves pressing seams with an iron as much as stitching fabric on a sewing machine.

And I love how it's coming together so far in a couple months of stitching like a madwoman.

Seriously, an awesome summer of sewing my stash. But this blog is getting super repetitive. I've been making, re-making ceramics and quilts, cooking, and cooking again the same recipe too often. It may be time to close this blog down. I've loved posting about my creativity, but I've been wanting to not post SO MUCH. And now there's this record that's frankly quite boring. I suppose I could just post less often, but maybe I want to get more focused on what I highlight in my making like a motherfucker and start a new blog. Maybe I also don't need to explain my process in minutiae. I could also just show not tell by putting up pics of ceramics and quilts and other works of my art on Instagram. And maybe I just make what I make for a long while before I start that other blog or even create my own maker's website. Some thoughts before transitioning to something different.

cloth: bliss joy love quilt in progress

Last night at slow sewcial, the other Anna in the group kept laughing as I kept describing the dream sewing getaway with a monotonous emphasis of just sewing and nothing else. No trips to a quilt shop, no exchanges of quilty gifts, just a sew your stash interrupted by  companionable talking and eating in a lovely Airbnb by the sea. A stay in natural surroundings for hiking and walking when not stitching. And so I'm gonna research if there's a boutique hotel with a community space or an empty homestay for the short term this October as wished for by Bonnie. Annemarie said she'd love to go sewing retreat like Medomak. Oh yes! I thought of Craft Napa or Gathering of Stitches in Maine. Anyway sewing trips are on my backburner. 

In the meantime, I am sewing like a motherfucker summer 2023. Here's what I started at home after finishing the Swim Camp baby quilt top and while piecing my 80-block ROYBGIV in my sewing sweatshop at my school library. It started with one of 12 patterns I spied in Brigitte Heitland's Zen Chic with lots of negative space and words--features that I love in modern quilting.  And I was determined not to buy more fabric for this quilt. I didn't have the Moda terra cotta in Heitland's quilt, but I did have one- and half- yardages of peach and cantaloupe that I could sew with all the fat eighths pinks and light oranges from my Kona solids subscription from Pink Castle. Right away I started piecing into a stripe all the solids for the quilt.

 

Instead of some of the neutrals in Heitland's quilt, I used pink-orange and medium orange solids.

  

I quite like the combination of pink and peach.

 

I subbed out Heitland's yellow and other neutrals with the pewter and chocolate solids in my quilt. 

 

I especially loved these blush tones below.

Since I didn't have enough yardage to substitute for the one terra cotta panel in Heitland's quilt, I pondered using this one yard of fuschia with my peach panels.

 

But the garish pink didn't look good to me. I decided to save that yard of fuschia for another project or maybe even the back of the quilt. I broke down and bought Kona coral at Joann, but at least I needed only a half yard, which score! was on sale. And I like the three colors so much.

 

I had dark gray, light gray and silver gray yardages in my stash. I opted out of the dark gray and sewed the silver panel to the coral, cantaloupe and light peach panels.

Time to add text to the quilt. I had old Wonder Under, but only enough for one S. Buggers. Back to Joann. Score again! A doorbuster sale made it only half off; I also needed some cream fabric (but the closest color to that at Joann was the Kona bone.         

 

Dummy me. I needed a yard and half of cream for the letters on the right side panels, and I bought only enough Kona bone for the shorter word.

There was enough light gray fabric, however, to make the letters for the word on the silver panel. Once cut, I placed the letters on their panel.

I was not gonna go back to Joann to buy more bone-colored fabric, and so I used the Kona Natural in my stash. I pinned down the letters with the paper still on them to where I placed them on the quilt panels. Luckily, I remembered to trace the letter on the rough side of the fusible web, and not the smooth side. Well you could trace the letters on the smooth side of the paper--BUT the letters then need to look backwards in order to fuse them to look right on the fabric. Instead of peeling the paper all the way off, I would unpin one half of the letter and just unpeel and tear off with the other pins holding the placement. I then pressed my iron on the unpeeled paper side, and once half the letter was heat-stuck on, I unpinned and unpeeled paper from the other half of the letter.

 

Once fused to the fabric, it was time to stitch the raw edges of the letters to the fabric. I used the zig zag stich on my sewing machine. Took a pic to remember which stitch.

All stitched! I laid the quilt top on my bed to measure. And oh! The colors of my quilt top coordinate the colors of my pillows. Funny.

I couldn't bear to throw away any scraps from Kona fat eighths solids that I cut into, and since there were at least 2.5" or more wide, I stitched them into an improvisational scrappy back that's getting bigger and hopefully big enough to extend those extra couple inches on each side of my quilt top to stitch those 3 layers. 

And I've got some Kona bone and natural to integrate into this scrappy back.

cook: summer rolls

I’ve blogged about these before, but they’re so delicious that they bear repeating. I was emptying my freezer and took out the Argentinian prawns. Some of them became camarones pipián, but on another summer day, the prawns were the protein in Asian spring rolls even though I had no cucumber, nor rice vermicelli. However, I did just buy three small pots of Thai basil, which are so aromatic and add the most delightful anise-like flavor to a dish. I plan on sprinkling the Thai basil with cilantro to the leftover green curry chicken I still have in my fridge. But yesterday, I included them into rice paper rolls, which I picked up on impulse at World Market. My first couple rolls looked sloppy.

But I learned from a Tik Tok on IG a different technique for folding. Rather than folding them like a lumpia, I fold the left and right sides inward to create thickness at opposite ends of the wrapper. I put the lettuce leaf down first. The lettuce then is supposed to extend over opposite ends of the roll. Also I would have preferred green leaf rather than the butter lettuce in the fridge. 

And like I'd mentioned before, no cucumber, nor skinny rice noodles. However, I did have Đồ chua or Vietnamese pickled daikon and carrots, and so that went on top of the lettuce leaf next.

On top of the pickled salad, I put a layer of cilantro...

And then a layer of mint, which I chopped a little because they were tough and not tender, but are a nice flavor.

And then the Italian basil...

...and then Thai basil and two shrimp or prawns next to the produce, so that they show first through the rice paper.

Sometimes wrapping was clumsy because I did not flatten down the lettuce.

But I loved that these rolls were heavy on the herbs and that the shrimp were surrounded by a sea of green.

Here are my completed rolls to be stored in the fridge until consumed as a lunch or a snack. When feeding a crowd, I'll use rice vermicelli noodles as well as pork belly to make a more substantial roll.

And I had two rolls to eat for lunch--the first one I had made and the last one which only had a single prawn.

But I needed dipping sauce for my lunch rolls. Instead of nước chấm or a dipping sauce of water, sugar, lime juice, fish sauce, garlic and Thai chile, I made a peanut sauce of my own recipe: peanut butter, peanuts, fish sauce, Sriracha, lime juice, lemon juice, and Asian raw cane sugar. And I don't measure but just spoon what proportions I like into my mixing bowl. I used water to thin my sauce.

And I remembered the jalapeno pepper in my fridge. Lastly I chopped peanuts to sprinkle on the sauce for looks.

 

I could have added garlic, Sambal chili paste and hoisin too. Next time. This sauce has me wanting to make an Indonesian satay. Again next time. In the meantime, I'm dipping my Asian rolls into it. I love my leisurely lunch making and eating in the summer. They made me pause to enjoy the succulents I'm propagating...

...and the blooms Patrick has picked from our garden. My orchid denuded of blooms has also reminded me that I need to tend to my own gardening.  

And so I spent the rest of the afternoon after eating my summer rolls, trimming and deadheading and then re-potting succulents and flowers.