Orange and Blue

A friend of mine is getting married this June, so I thought some homemade decorative pillows were in order. The happy couple is all about orange and blue, so picking fabric wasn't strenuous. I'm more and more a fan of orange with each passing day. I'm not an orange addict yet, but I'm inching closer to that slippery slope!

International Quilt Festival | Chicago

Over the weekend my good friend Caroline and her sweet little girl Beatrice and I spent a few lovely hours at the 2009 International Quilt Festival just outside the city. Whoa, baby. These people were not messing around.

A whole convention room packed full of die-hard quilters is truly a site to behold. I mean really... don't underestimate these ladies. They are serious about their craft and giddy with delight when it comes to all things fabric.

I'd heard of "art quilts" before, but I never imagined how much these would take my breath away. I was stunned beyond belief with some of them. Here are some of my faves...

Bon Appétit

There have been several times in the course of my life where it's dawned on me that certain meals or food items can be made from scratch. For some reason, my industrial and limited mind thinks there are things that only factories can make.

Mushroom soup for example. Before a friend sent me this recipe it never even occurred to me that one could make it at home with their own two hands.

Talk about decadent! I mean really, if you like mushrooms on any level, you're in for a treat. The recipe I used is below. My advice is to follow the ingredients and directions closely. Try not to be a hero with this one. I used a large lemon and mine could have used a little less lemon flavor, so stick with a medium sized one. Be careful not to let those pesky lemon seeds into your mushroom mix too. Biting down on a lemon seed in your soup is far from ideal. Don't substitute anything for the heavy cream either. DON'T I TELL YOU! I'd say a general rule of thumb is to stick with heavy cream when told to.

Enjoy mon ami...

Wolfgang Puck Mushroom Soup
- 4 servings

Ingredients
- 1 pound firm white mushrooms, with stems, cleaned
- 1 medium lemon
- 1 tablespoon unsalted butter
- 2 tablespoons minced shallots
- 1/4 teaspoon dried thyme
- 1/2 bay leaf
- 1 teaspoon salt
- 1/2 teaspoon freshly ground pepper
- 2 cups heavy cream
- 1 1/2 cups chicken stock
- 1 teaspoon cornstarch, dissolved in 1 tablespoon of water
- 1 tablespoon minced parsley

Directions
1. Sprinkle the mushrooms with juice from one medium lemon. In a food processor, coarsely chop mushrooms.
2. Melt the butter in a heavy saucepan and lightly saute the shallots. Add the mushrooms, thyme, and bay leaf and saute over moderate heat for 10 minutes, or until the liquid disappears. Add the salt, pepper, cream, and chicken stock and bring to a boil. Reduce the heat and simmer for 20 minutes.
3. Add the cornstarch to the soup and continue to simmer 10 minutes longer, stirring constantly. Correct seasoning to taste.
4. Serve in warm bowls.

Cat or Alien?

My niece Madeline requested a stuffed kitten for her birthday - "an orange kitten with a purple face" to be exact. Nice color choice, if I do say so myself girlfriend.

I found this free Amy Butler pattern, but I'm wondering if it looks more like an alien/Pokémon cat of sorts. I don't want to scare the poor kid, but I want to follow through on my delivery of an orange stuffed cat. What do you think? Cat or Alien? Anyone know of a pattern that is a little more cat-like out there, but still cool?

Home Made

I have clear and vivid memories of Easter morning as a child. I remember what my plastic, woven Easter basket looked and felt like. I loved this purple hula-hoop I got one year. I still want to color in a coloring book with Goofy and Pluto that I was lucky to get and honestly still think about. Whether my mom had sewn my sister and I matching dresses or we had bought them in the store, I looked forward to wearing something a little fancier for church that day. I can smell the white "patten leather" shoes and hear them squeaking.

Over the weekend my sister and I took it upon ourselves to spend a few hours to relive the memories and dye some eggs for Easter. I have no real qualms with fake dye or PAAS kits...they're lovely. We just wanted to be a little more au naturale. I found several recipes for making home-made dye, so we combined what we liked and put them to the test. Our blues (red cabbage) and yellows (turmeric powder) turned out the best and next year I'd like to venture into the land of green dyes (red onion skins). We even made up our own concoction for a light orange/peach dye.

Like kids again (this time a little more concerned for where stray dye would end up), we took turns creating our beauties and experimenting in what would work and what wouldn't. I'm quite happy with my life...but sometimes, don't you just want to be 6 years old again? Maybe I'll stage an Easter Egg Hunt in my backyard on Sunday.

Stack-N-Whack | Part 5

Can you believe that I haven't finished this quilt yet? It's sort of been one of those things I work on occasionally and in between things. Something that takes a little too much thought and patience, so has only been worked on when I'm in the best of moods. At any rate, I've finally sewn together the top of the quilt! Click here to read its sordid history.

When I put together a quilt, I consistently forget where strips or squares are supposed to be placed after arranging them and then picking them up to sew, thus ending up having to spend ample time thinking and rethinking placement. This time I thought ahead and pinned labels to each strip so that I wouldn't lose track of what was supposed to be going where. I know: genius. Of course the top isn't without flaw, and there still seem to be a piece or two that I didn't catch being in the "wrong" place, but these reminders saved me a decent amount of time and frustration.

If you've never done one, a Stack-N-Whack quilt can be slow going. The cutting, ironing, and piecing were quite time consuming for me. Mine has 32 squares and is measuring 64x75 without a border at this point.

I've worked on this baby way too long to attempt to quilt it myself, so I'm not about to screw it up making an attempt. I think that it will be off to the shop for some quilting done right. It might cost an arm and a leg, but these are the sacrifices we make for our treasures, right?