Today is the last day to enter my current giveaway!!!
Here’s what’s up for grabs:
Last week I wrote a list of three things that I wanted to accomplish. My list included making an Apple Pie (check), finishing my organization project for my sewing room (check) and completing Part 2 of the Mystery QAL that I am working on in Quiltmaker Magazine (check). This whole setting attainable goals for myself has turned out to be a good thing…maybe something I will continue 🙂
I also decided to participate in the One Week, One Week Challenge over at Amy’s Creative Side:
For my challenge entry I decided the most important thing for me to complete was my organizational project and I am IN LOVE!!!
Here is a before picture of my cabinet:
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| Love the cabinet – hate the mess inside! |
Do you remember my post where I was testing a tutorial.
Well, I made a few changes to the tutorial and decided to go big or go home. I made 9 more baskets with my own measurements and they turned out GREAT!
I decided that ROYGBIV was the way to go, but I added a box for black and/or white fabrics and another box for multi-colored fabrics.
I am so in love with these boxes. This time I used Pellon Fusible fleece on the outer layer and a craft weight fusible stabilizer on the inner layer. I used 2 fat quarters for each of the boxes, the bottom outside and the entire inside of each box was done in white linen – I was trying to add some strength and stability to the boxes because I know they are going to get used and abused.
After sorting out my fabric and filling the boxes it because painfully apparent what my favorite colors are – the blue, indigo, black/white, multi-color and red bins were stuffed to the gills! I guess that means either I can’t buy anymore of those colors or I simply need to buy more fabric in the other colors so those bins can catch up 🙂
I know you are thinking that I need more boxes, but the rest of the fabric on the left hand side is minky and felt, which I don’t really want to put in a box. The fabric on the right hand side is unfinished quilts that are in some stage of completion and I really don’t want them in a box because that will just make them out of sight out of mind and they will NEVER get finished!
What do you think? I am still waiting on a delivery of mason jars from my mom to do more organizing and prettying up, but the sewing room is definitely coming along!
Check out my “Where I Get Down” Page to see where I am linking up this week!
I am also partying at: http://todayscreativeblog.net/
I really had hoped to do an update post this week regarding my status on my Mystery QAL. Well…Part 2 turned out to be more complicated than I bargained on.
To start out you need to cut wonky triangle shapes and sew them together, not so bad, but it called for either just straight piecing or foundation (paper piecing). I HATE paper piecing…so far, I haven’t found a pattern that I love yet. Maybe someday.
The wonky triangles weren’t so bad but cutting them out from a photocopy was proving impossible, so I made my own templates and I’m going to show you how I did it! It is four easy steps and takes about 5 minutes if you aren’t taking pictures of each step 🙂
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| Here are my finished templates |
After making these I was able to use my rotary cutter to cut out my pieces, this was important because I had to cut 48 H templates and 48 G templates, flip that template over and cute 48 GR templates!
Here are the supplies:
You need:
Step 2:
Cut out the templates from the photocopy – the photocopy is nice because you won’t ruin your magazine by chopping it to bits!
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| Don’t worry about being exact – neatness doesn’t count yet! |
Step 2: Tape both pieces to your card stock with your packing tape – make sure it is smooth!
Step 3: Cut the pieces off the card stock – this is where neatness begins to matter!
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| You’ll notice that the pieces are not taped to the card stock anymore |
Step 4: Place the template cut out onto the card stock cut out and wrap with packing tape and you are done and ready to get cutting!
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| All Done! |
Super easy and it really does make cutting out templates from magazine so much easier! Give it a whirl the next time you are working on a pattern from a magazine – it really does make the whole process faster and more accurate.
Do you have tricks when using templates?
This has been a busy week so far. I think that doing “Make a List Monday” has really helped me get things done. So far I have made my first ever Apple Pie and I finished my big organizational project for my sewing cabinet – check back later this week for the big reveal!
Right now I am working on Part 2 of the Mystery Quilt Along that I am doing from Quiltmaker Magazine.
I completed my blocks from Part 1 before we moved and luckily I was smart enough to put all my fabric for the project into a giant ziplock bag so there were no losses from the move!
(How do you store WIP’s?)
Now I am working on cutting out the squares for part 2 – there is optional paper piecing or you can just sew the triangle templates that they provide you with, I am going to attempt sewing the triangle templates before I try paper piecing, it just seems like such a waste to me…besides, I’m out of printer paper!
I’ll put up a post when I complete my blocks from Part 2 and I’ll put up pictures of the blocks from Part 1 and we can all have a little fun trying to guess what the heck I’m making.
What are you working on this week?
P.S. If you are having trouble uploading images this morning switch to Edit in HTML mode – I picked up this tip from a commenter – Tiffany – on The Intrepid Thread blog – check out her blog, she is having a sale for her Blog Fans only today!!! Tiffany blogs at This Crafty Fox – check out her blog too while you are doing a little blog hopping, I think she is participating in every QAL that I considered joining this summer and I can’t wait to see her progress on each of them!
For those of you who know me personally, you know about me and pies. I would rather have pie than cake on my birthday, heck if we had found a pie that was anywhere near equal to my mother’s we would have had pie at my wedding! Making a pie has been a baking goal for a long time, it is also something that has severely intimidated me…probably for equally as long!
For Mother’s Day my parents got me a new book:
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| image courtesy of: http://www.marthastewart.com |
I have baked from two of Martha’s previous books, Cupcakes and Cookies and been quite successful, so I decided for Father’s Day that I should bake my hubby a pie.
I bought all my ingredients and was home with them by 3:30 pm of Father’s Day. I started making my dough, according to Martha you need to make a Pate Brisee. Little did I realize that the total refrigeration time for the entire pie would be a minimum of 2 hours. Needless to say, not much other than the dough got made on Father’s Day itself. I made full use of Monday morning nap time though!
Here is my gorgeous pie in all its glory.
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| Don’t you just want to cut right into it? |
I did!!!
And what is Apple Pie with out Vanilla Bean ice cream?
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| A match made in heaven 🙂 |
The hubby’s only critique was that it was not sweet enough, and on this one I had to agree with him wholeheartedly. Martha calls for only a 1/4 cup of sugar and it needed anywhere from 1/3 to 1/2. Have you baked anything out of Martha’s Pies and Tarts?
This successful pie gives me the confidence to try more a more complicated recipe next time! Now if only I had all the fancy kitchen gadgets that Martha recommends, maybe then everything in her books wouldn’t take twice as long as her recipes say they should!
