dolin bliss

My First Quilt!

So excited to have finally finished my first quilt.  It is nothing fancy, just a string pieced number.  But I still love it. 

I did this along with the workshop I coordinated for the San Jose Museum of Quilts and Textiles with participants from Next Door Solutions to Domestic Violence, mentioned here.  I figured if I am going to continue on with being the project coordinator I needed to have actually gone through the whole process.  It was so much fun and I can totally see making more quilts in the future.  This one was pieced and quilted by machine.  The SJMQT purchased this fantastic machine and I am now trained how to use it.  I still need to learn the computer component, but I do know how to run this fancy pants machine, doing free motion quilting.  Right now, we are teaching all the women that went through the entire workshop how to quilt on it too.  They are having a blast with it.  

This evening we are heading up to SF for Frances and Greg's reception at Flora Grubb.  Can't wait to see the bride and groom in their custom made apparel.  I will post finished pictures of the green couture dress I made for her, next week.  

Finished Mikey Embroidery!

A little reminder of what this looked like before it was finished.  Not such a great picture of the work in progress and photo it came from, but you get the idea.

I realized after a couple of years of being a work in progress, having a previous blog post about it AND being featured in a Craft video... That I should post a finished image of my Mikey embroidery I made for my sweet and very patient husband.  I finished this up quite a few months ago and it just kept slipping my mind to post it.   So here it is:

- I wanted most of the focus to be on Mikey, so he is really detailed and the rest of the embroidery is more simple.  Then, I framed it with 2 different fabrics and put a hanging sleeve on the back, so it can be hung up on the wall.  

Matthew was very happy to finally have the finished object.  

Monday, I delivered a very special wedding dress and cocktail hat to the fabulous Miss Frances, but you will have to wait until next week to see that finished project.  We are going to their wedding reception Sunday evening and can't wait to see her all gussied up in her green dress.  

Canning and Quilt Crazy

Over the long holiday weekend I wanted to get some canning done, with the veggies I bought at the farmer's market and also some veggies from my garden.

 

All of the above were picked fresh from my crazy prolific garden.  I canned the beets, zucchini, some of the jalapenos, lemon cucumbers and crystal apple cucumbers.  I didn't want to waste the beet greens, so we sauteed those on Sunday night.  YUM.  I had big plans to can all afternoon, but our little Domino pup, decided to eat a black widow spider, that I had poisoned the night before.  So we spent the afternoon at the vet.  He is just fine and never even showed any signs of being sick, but I would rather be safe than sorry.  Once we got back home I settled into my crazy night of making pickled vegetables.  I was up until midnight getting all of this done.  I know, what a wild way to spend your Saturday night!  

Everything turned out pretty good, but I am in love with the green beans and the beets.  I used this recipe for the green beans from Sunset Magazine.  Soooo good.  I want to make more of them.  Sunset has a great guide to canning, if you have never done it before or just rusty at it.  This guide has been very useful to me lately.

For the past nine weeks, every Monday night I have been going to a quilt workshop that I planned in partnership with the San Jose Museum of Quilts and Textiles and Santa Clara Valley Quilt Association.  We were trying out this workshop for the first time with participants from Next Door Solutions to Domestic Violence.  There have been 5 women who have come every week to work on making their own quilt.  Most of them have never sewn before, so this has been a great skill building exercise for them.  It has been great fun for all involved and we are all almost finished with our quilts (I got to make one too).  

 

Here is a little peak at mine:

 I will post pictures of the finished quilts, in the next few weeks.  We have a few more sessions to go, before everyone will be done.  

New Adventures in Canning!

Last week was my first try at canning and I had a blast.  We were overflowing with zucchini, lemon cucumbers and crystal apple cucumbers.  I needed a way to preserve it all so it didn't go to waste.  A few weeks ago I found a 1964 copy of The Farm Journal Freezing and Canning Cookbook at a thrift store for a buck.  Then my sweetie found the Burpee Way of Home Canning booklet for .25 cents.  The stars were aligned for my first canning experience.  I tried two different recipes, a dill pickle one and the sweeter pickled zucchini one.  They were both a great success when I had some friends over to try them out.  But the favorite was the pickled zucchini.  Here it is:

I did the dilled version and made these adjustments: 

-only used 1 1/4 cup sugar

-added about 6 jalapenos, sliced into rings

-used a bunch of fresh dill instead of the dill seeds

They are so good!  My zucchini plants in the garden aren't producing much right now so I went to my local farmers market this morning to get more supplies.

I got a about 7lbs of squash, 1 bunch of dill tops, 4 bunches of dill and a couple of red bell peppers all for canning.  The rest is ready for eating now.  Fun Fun.  

If anyone has some great canning/pickling recipes, please feel free to share.  

Robin's Egg Blue Dress Featured...

You remember this dress:

Well, it was featured yesterday on the fun blog, Tales Of A Retro Modern Housewife.  She paired it up with some fabulous accessories.  I really love her sense of color.  She does these posts combining interesting colors and makes outfits out of them.  Great fun and inspiration.  A big thanks to the Glamorous Housewife!