Gramma's Rice Casserole

Here is my mother's casserole recipe. I used to make it all the time, not just to take to pot lucks, but to serve at home. I called it Gramma's Rice. Here it is. In later years, I tend to just put chopped onions instead of the onion soup mix so it has less salt and I use a bit less than the 1/4 cup oil that is called for. It's yummy just the same. It's good hot or cold.

1/2 cup diced peppers
1/2 cup diced celery
3-1/2 cups water
2 cups Uncle Bens Rice
1/4 cup soya sauce
1 tin mushrooms
1/4 cup oil
1 pouch onion soup mix

Bake in a covered casserole dish at 350 degrees for 1 hours then turn off the oven. I leave the casserole in the oven for another half an hour.

Another recipe my mother used to make was Dirty Macaroni. Now I bet you'll be curious as to what that is, won't you. Within a couple of weeks, I'll dig out the recipe and make some so that I have a picture to go along with the recipe.

Casserole carrier with bugs

I made this little round casserole carrier for a soon to be bride. It's a great summer theme since it has ladybugs all over it. It fits my older round Pyrex dish perfectly, so I'll have to go to the store to to see if I can find brand new pretty one for her in a similar size.

I needed a little embroidery fix today, so after spending an hour looking around at designs, I ended up with this sweet little single color ladybug. It is on the center inside. A surprise bug you might say.

I like this carrier design because you can flip it over and use it as a pot mat to protect your counter top from hot pots.

I think I'll include a couple recipes for a couple of my favorite casserole dishes that I like to take to a pot luck. Gramma's baked rice is a favorite. I'll have to put some thought into a couple of others.

Quilt Magazines in the year 2000

This weekend I took a dozen 1999, 2000, 2001 quilt magazines to the cottage. I need to get rid of some stuff. So I thought I'd have one last look through them to see if it was OK to recycle. Well, what a fun way to spend the afternoon on the deck. So what did not appeal to me 10 years ago, sure looks good to me now. There's at least one or 2 projects out of each magazine that I want to make. The end result, no recycling of these magazines. They all have page marks with notes on them and they'll be returning to my list of "want to make" pile. The good thing is that some of the projects are small and I can quickly make up a kit which can be sewn together at a later time.

It's so fun to watch the gardens at the cottage this time of year. It's the first thing I do before even going in the cottage each week. I walk around and inspect what's blooming. I'm happy to report that my 4 year old chives, have these beautiful purple blooms for the very first time. My larger garlic chives have no blooms in the foreseeable future, for the very first time. How weird is that. My pole beans and morning glories are up thanks to some rain earlier this week.

My rose bush is filled with blooms and more than a hundred small buds. It's sweet. There was a long branch strung out on the ground, so we staked it up. Looks like the branch is posing like "the Thinker". Do you see it?

My hosta gardens are doing fabulous. The hostas that my friend Linda H. gave me, are all doing wonderful. Actually they're all bigger than the ones I've put in the last few years. No slugs yet, but it's early. We've got the bait and eggshells all ready for when they do appear. My sister, the gardener, is coming up next weekend, and I'll have her inspect them for me.

The Princess and the Pea

Every once in a while, I'll see a project that stops me in my tracks. I saw this Princess and the Pea quilt on the Moda blog last week and thought, how perfect. I had to make it. The pattern is by Angela Yosten and the tutorial can be found on her blog here. I actually saw this on the Moda blog. The quilt I made was only 20" x 30". I also did a plain binding instead of a ruffle.

I just happen to know a little girl who this would be perfect for. She's just coming into the age where she'll want everyone to read her stories.

You'll notice that there are 20 different mattresses. Earlier this week when laying out all the pieces, I only had 14 mattresses. But Caitlin was over for a visit, and she knew the story in fine detail and said that there are 20 mattresses not 14. She also found me a green button out of my button box and was very specific on where it should go. Do you see it? That is the perfect placement for the button.

I did make sure to put a frilly silky sheet on top of the mattresses for this little princess to sleep on. It's wedding fabric and the piece of lace is out of a box of lace that came from my mother's craft room.

I'm still getting used to my Juki and this quilt was made entirely on it. I used the walking foot and enjoyed how quick that the parallel lines were quilted. I did practice my free motion by stitching the name of the story on the single white mattress. I didn't want the writing to be invisible, but I didn't want it to stand out like a sore thumb either. So I used light pink thread. I like it.

I really enjoyed making this project. Absolutely everything I needed came from my stash.

Longing for Lemon

Last week at our Friday Girls meeting, our hostess made a healthy lemon poppy seed loaf from the Eat Shrink and be Merry cookbook. I have their other 2 cookbooks (on loan from my sister). Anyway, this lemon loaf recipe was delicious and I only had a small slice. I should have had another and I've been longing for more ever since last week. Since I don't have that cookbook (yet) and the Friday girl hostess is gone on a vacation, I turned to the Internet to find a healthy lemon poppy seed loaf recipe. I found this recipe on the Superstore's President's Choice website . I has a bit of whole wheat flour and yogurt as some of the ingredients. So it must be healthy right? Well I made it. It was tasty. I still want to try the other one and compare. So I cut the loaf in half and put half in the freezer, and hopefully, my hubby will help me eat the other half. I'm hoping that will will squelch my lemon loaf craving, at least temporarily.

Now, I'm looking for more recipes to use up some poppy seeds. Got any suggestions?

Many thanks RibbonSmyth

I was a blog contest winner at RibbonSmyth last month. RibbonSmyth is a great Crazy Quilter's resource for silk ribbons, charms, fabrics, kits etc. When I took my CQ class last year from LindaH, RibbonSmyth was recommended as one of her preferred online stores.

I love crazy quilting because you can pack a lot of great things into a neat little package. I mean that in a few ways. If you are getting to a stage that you want to work on meaningful projects, but don't want to store any more bulky queen size quilts, you can work for hours on a CQ project, and the project is small and contained to a small area as well. Also, when you purchase CQ supplies, they arrive in a small package but pack a big punch of excitement.

For example, I received my gift pack from RibbonSmyth yesterday and just look how much was in this innocent looking letter size envelope. In my gift pack, there are pieces of fancy fabrics in purples, lavenders, green. There is also a bit of what looks like hand made lace, in coral color, some fancy sequence fabric, an organza shell applique, silk ribbons, stitching floss, and a much large eye needle. There is also a blank stitchable greeting card and a little kit of charms, buttons, sequence to stitch an oversize button. Great to do a mini collage on. How fun. I'm all revved up to dive in, but I don't know where to start. I might have to call on my CQ teacher friend for help!

If you want to get in on the fun, go to the RibbonSmyth Blog and sign up for the June draw. Also visit her website, where you'll find many things including free projects to get you started.

Many thanks RibbonSmyth. You've made my day..

Kathy Tidswell - Fibre Artist Exhibition

Today, hubby and I took a tour at the Charlotte Street Art Center. It was an exhibit of Kathy Tidswell, a nationally recognized fibre artist. Her speciality is thread painting. She won an award by CQA for Teacher of the Year and teaches her techniques all over. She is sharing her talent this summer in a number of thread painting classes that she is teaching in the EdVentures program.

There were over 30 pieces in this exhibit, but I'll only show you a few. To get the true sense of how beautiful the pieces are, you need to visit in person. My camera just can't do them justice.

I've seen this first piece before in the NB Lt. Governor's gallery. She calls it the Bank Machine Blues. I love how she cleverly used the stitching to put the "CANADA" on the note. I really love the play on words and the oversize money.



The next three pictures are of a landscape scene painting that Kathy oil painted herself. Then from her own paining, she stitched a thread painting depicting the same scene from her own oil paining. Then the third picture is a quilt that she made and used the same painting as the inspiration. She used and applique technique.

I thought it was cool to see the same picture used in all three types of her hand/machine working styles. It made for a really interesting display.












The final one is my absolute favorite. It's based on Vermeer's "The Girl with the Pearl Earring". I listened to this book a couple of years ago I looked for the painting on the Internet after finishing the book and it's exactly as I had pictured it in my mind as I listened to the audio. I saw another of Vermeer's work at the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art.

The stitch work on this girl is stunning and the frame style really shows off the work. It's absolutely beautiful. It was the favorite of my hubby too.

This was a lovely exhibition Kathy. Congratulations.

Maritime Beauty - Done

This week, I have a few projects that I'm machine quilting on my new Juki. This is my Maritime Beauty from the class that I took in April from Karen at Sew Karenly. I finished this workshop piece quite quickly but was waiting for my new Juki to use it as my very first machine quilting test.

So, yesterday I finished machine quilting it. I took the opportunity to try a binding technique that Judy from Patchwork times demonstrated here. She also has subsequent hints on her blog, so if you're going to try this, be sure to read all her posts pertaining to binding. It's all good info.

The technique requires a good bit of pinning and preparation, but then the stitching takes minutes. This 30" table center piece, even with the curved sides took about 15 minutes to pin and about 5 minutes to sew. To do this by hand, would have easily taken me a few hours.

Judy recommends pinning quite close together. And she recommends stitching in the ditch with thread the same color as the background fabric. See how it blends in. It's hardly noticeable. In the bobbin, if you use thread the same color as the binding, you'll hardly notice the bottom thread also.

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Back to free motion on my new Juki, I found it quite nice to stitch with, although, it does go fast. I have to learn to be smoother with my movements. I thought free motion was very "free"

but I am discovering that there is quite a bit of planning involved. I started in the center and tried a few different techniques as I moved to the outer edges. I used a small spool of coats variegated thread that I had no idea how cute it would be. It shows up quite nice on the black fabric piece.

The fabrics in this piece were from a bag of scraps that I bought at an auction our guild had a number of years ago. I have another rectangle shaped table runner that I'm finishing made from the same fabrics. The rest of the scraps are going into the trash. They're really not that nice. I enjoyed making my practice pieces from them and these pieces are going to the cottage. I'll make new projects out of nicer colors for the house.

A sunny weekend!

I hope this weekend was just the beginning of more sunny weekends at the cottage. Weather really makes a big difference. We took in way too much sun. Baby Aurora enjoyed all the fresh air and her freedom on the enclosed deck. Here she is in the kids cottage, preparing a yummy mucky treat for Grampie.

Aurora and her mama are admiring the little red bush roses that are coming out now on the plant that Julie and Sean gave me last month. It has a ton of little buds on it and I hope they don't all flower this week while we're in town. My other plants are all coming along nicely too. My sister would have been proud of me. I weeded twice this weekend. Each time, the bugs got bad but just with that little effort, the gardens look a lot better.

Running

I've been awake half the night. I've got 2 things on my mind.

For the past 2 weeks, I've been taking physio for my bum knee. I've also been preparing to re start my running program under the supervision of my physiotherapist. I've been huffing it on the elliptical, to strengthen my wind. I've been conditioning my knee with leg presses, stretches and ice. And today is the day, that I am to start running again.

I was fully awake at 4:30am this morning. It was light out. Though, too early to go out for my run. I like to run when other runners are out just in case I fall or need help. My thoughts turn to sewing a little storybook quilt that I'm making for baby Aurora. I have it spread out on my ironing board. I need a piece of light light blue fabric. As I lie awake, I'm mentally going through my fabric stash. I think I have a piece of light light pinky white. I'm thinking about the construction of this little quilt.

I look at the clock. it's now 5:30. My thoughts go back to preparing for my run. You would think I was going in a marathon or something... But I am so excited to do this, it's been almost a year since I've had a successful run. It's just before 6 am. I fling the covers off, and I know exactly where my running duds are, my ironman watch, my socks, sneakers, ipod, my long sleeve running shirt cause it's ZERO degrees out. No need to do hair, teeth or any of that stuff. Within 8 minutes I'm out the door.

It was a beautiful sunny morning on the trail. The river water was still. There were rowers out in the water, runners on the bridge. I was impressed with my wind and sweating is wonderful.

The best part is, it's only 7:30 am and there's lots more left of this great day.

Lesson - always do a 1/4 test - Card Table topper

In yesterday's post, I showed a great quilt made from a simple block. Or I should say it looks simple. I had a little hodge podge of 1.5 inch strips on my cutting table, so without anything else planned for today, I thought I'd try to make a small card table topper cloth. I was using my new Juki TL98Q for sewing strips together. I have on order from my dealer, a 1/4 inch foot without a side on it but for today, I used the 1/4 inch foot that has the side guide.

I was quickly getting through the first set of sewing strips together. I ironed, and sewed each pair of strips together again and ironed. I had all that done in less than an hour. When I measured the width of the strips, I was surprised to see that it was only 4.25". My friend Lee pointed out in a comment on yesterday's blog, the math told me that it should be 4.5" wide. I quickly realized that my problem is that I didn't do a 1/4 inch test on my new machine. I'm surmising that with each of the 3 seams in the small blocks, my1/4 seam was just a few threads too big. Compound it over 3 seams, and that's where my other 1/4 inch went.

I guess this little project has become my 1/4 inch test. So, after sewing the 4 little blocks together, the finished block is only 8". So I'll finish this little topper by using a slightly less than 1/4 inch to see if I can keep the illusion of equal size strips. Tomorrow I'll add the side triangles, sew the blocks together and add a couple of small borders. I'm planning to machine quilt on the new Juki on Thursday. Stay tuned to see a finished topper later this week.

I will do a "real" 1/4" test when I get my new foot.

Quilt Show - Maugerville 2009

Last Friday, the Friday girls and I attended the annual Maugerville Quilt show and tea. Maugerville is a local service district outside the city of Fredericton. This show had a large amount of scrap quilts. Anyone who knows me, knows that I love scrap quilts. I make planned scrappy quilts most of the time.

After looking at all the quilts, the Friday girls sat and had a great cup of coffee and a home made square. We discussed which quilts we would pick as our entries for the Viewers choice ribbon. We couldn't decide. After finishing our treat, we had to go around again, and have a second look at all the quilts before we each personally made our final picks.

I realize now that I should have written the names of the quilts and quilt makers down so I could share with you. Here are some photos the quilts that I liked the best.

The name of this quilt is on the tip of my tongue. Could it be the Tennissee Waltz. I like the dark points of the stars, and I like the fact that they're all the same fabric. This is truly my style, and I'm going to make up a new quilt category.. Semi-Scrappy... and call that my personal style of quilting.

Again, how cute is this. I think this would be a great way to use those left over 1.5" * 21" darker strips that I have on my sewing table right now. All I need is a bunch of light strips to go with them. And as I look at this, I think each of the blocks would be made up of four 5 inch blocks. So I think there would be very little waste. I like that.


I've seen this pattern several times and I always say, "I've got to make this". I'm sure it's called, the split nine patch. I think I may even have this pattern.. somewhere. I need to start collecting red fabrics before I can even consider doing this. Or all the purples that I've been collecting could be transformed... hmm... now, I think that's a great idea if I do say so myself.

Don't you think this bow tie quilt would look great on one of the beds at the cottage. For me, this would be a true scrap quilt since I have lots and lots of nice unique small pieces of fabric. Some old, some new.

I've seen this pattern a few times, and I love that it speaks to me in a math sort of way. I think it's called Puss in the Corner. I spoke to Sandra who made this little card table cover size quilt and she said it was made with left over blocks from a big quilt. That gave me the idea to make a table cloth for our card table.

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Great show and very tasty goodies to eat and drink while there. It was nice to have the bake table too. I bought the Oatmeal molasses bread that was baked in the Apple juice cans. Hubby liked it too. Yummy.