Spreading Sunshine

My aunt and godmother, Margie Allard, turned 80 this summer. In celebration, her two godchildren (myself and my aunt Mary Allard) decided to put together a Fairy Godmother Party. Thus the tiara and wing getup in the picture! I also fashioned a magic wand from a dowel, cardboard, white glittery fabric, vintage rhinestone buttons, and ribbons. We celebrated her birthday with a big family reunion at my aunt Barbie's lake house in Addison VT.

For Margie's gift, I made this lovely sunflower quilt, based on a pattern I had purchased at the a quilt show in Lowell, MA last year. The pattern is based on a quilt housed in the Shelburne Museum in Shelburne Vt. You can see the pattern at this link: http://hooplapatterns.com/heirloom_sunflower.html.

I saw this quilt many years ago, and have been considering making it ever since. I hand appliqued the flowers, stems and leaves by hand, then did some beautiful machine applique to finish the quilt. The flowers are a little bit lighter than the original -- but I love this yellow spotted fabric!

Margie was very surprised at the gift. I call the quilt "Spreading Sunshine," because that's just what Margie does. She's a nurse practioner who has travelled all over the world healing the sick, helping the impoverished in Jamaica, Ceylon, Malawi, and more. She's a passionate collector of antique linens, and is the Allard family historian. Her passion for life and interest in travel and history is an inspiration for many in our family.

I knew that Margie volunteered at the Shelburne Museum, helping to conserve quilts. She's an expert seamstress -- in fact her first degree from the University of Vermont was in Home Economics. What I didn't know, is that she helped to conserve the back of the orignial sunflower quilt at the Shelburne Museum. How cool is that?

Recycling Jeans

In celebration of Earth Day, here's an idea for recycling your jeans. This small bag was made with a pair of girls jeans (size 8) The bag is lined and has a hidden pocket that you access through the fly!

Friday Night Pizza

Homemade pizza with caramelized onions, served on my pottery plates.

Pizza is in my blood! My mom, whose parents came from Sicily and Italy, made pizza often. We had pizza at midnight on New Year's Eve, thick slices of Sicilian style pizza with pepperoni. Or a pizza stuffed with caramelized onions.

I lived in Chicago in the early 1980's and LOVED their deep dish pizza, especially the ones with spinach in the filling. When I moved to Massachusetts, I would bring home frozen spinach stuffed pizzas when I had to travel to Chicago for business.

Far from my mother and the pizzerias of Chicago, every Friday night for the last 20 years or so, we make pizza. It's a thin crust pie, baked on a pizza stone, easy and delicious. Here's what I do:

Pizza Dough

3 cups flour*

1 cup warm water (for proofing the yeast)

1 T honey or sugar

1 T yeast (or one packet)

1/4 cup olive oil

salt

* You can play with the flour by mixing in different kinds of flour. I love King Arthur's Italian-style flour. It's made with a low-protein red winter wheat flour that gives you a tender crust that's easy to shape. I get it at their store in Norwich Vermont, but you can also purchase through their catalogue or on-line. It makes the best pizza crust I've ever had. I've also substituted up to a cup of flour with a cup of whole wheat flour. Or try it the way they do in Chicago; substitute half a cup of cornmeal for a half cup of flour.

Add yeast and honey/sugar to warm water and proof until foamy. In a separate bowl, mix flour and salt. Add yeast mixture and oil. Knead until dough is springy and smooth, about 10 minutes by hand or 8 minutes in a standing mixer. Let rise 1 hour, punch down, and form into pizzas.

This recipe can make two 12-14 inch thin-crust pizza or one 12-14 inch thick crust pizza.

So what can you do for toppings? Your choices are only limited by your imagination, but I usually start by choosing to make either a red or white pizza.

The white pizza is basically just cheese and fresh minced garlic, and maybe some red pepper flakes and herbs for color. Make a clam pizza by adding fresh (or canned) minced clams. Arrange raw shelled shrimp on top before baking and you have a shrimp pizza. Mix a can of crab meat into the cheese and garlic mixture and you have a crab pizza. Saute and slice fresh asparagus with a few peas and you have a spring primavera pizza. You get the idea.

The red pizza starts with sauce which we always make fresh (and uncooked):

1 can diced or whole tomatoes, or 3-4 fresh tomatoes

1-2 cloves garlic

1 T olive oil

salt & pepper

Fresh or dried herbs -- we like basil and oregano

I usually whiz the ingredients in a food processor, because I like a smooth sauce. My husband likes it chunky. Then we add caramelized onions or sauteed peppers, wilted baby spinach or browned mushrooms. You can also add sausage or pepperoni or any leftover meat.

A couple hints about baking your pizza:

Use a pizza stone. We've had ours for 20 years. Heat the oven to 500 with the stone in the oven. Build your pizza on a piece of parchment. It's easier to get it off and on the stone. Use a wooden pizza peel to put the pizza into the oven. Cook for 10 minutes or until the top and bottom look golden brown.

My husband likes to wait 5-10 minutes after the pizza gets out of the oven to eat it. But I like the challenge of eating a burning hot slice of pizza.

Enjoy!

Slowing down, testing glazes, & introducing Flossie the teapot

When I'm creating, whether it be with fabric or clay or even food, one thing is common. My work is feverish, focused, intense. When I'm free-motion quilting, the whole house shakes. When I'm on the potter's wheel, chaos can surround me and I won't hear it. It's a great way to really understand your medium, but sometimes I get so focused on what I'm doing - I'm so in the moment, that I forget to step back and consider what I'm doing.

What throwing pots is teaching me is that I need to slow down. When I first started working with clay, I would be speeding around the studio, knicking the clay with my fingers, dropping things, making mistakes that could have been prevented by just slowing down. I'm learning how to harness that passion, and be a little bit more reflective of what I'm doing.

For example, take my two whimsical pots. I threw the body of the teapot at the end of one class where I was using a clay pad for trimming; the pad became the pot body. The next week I threw four or five spouts and a couple of lids. I loved the teapot's shape, but the plate was just an excercise in carving; I was trying to disguise a lopsided plate with a bottom that was way to thick, thus the carved bottom and egdgework. The week after I was working on carving the sunflower plate, and in the last five minutes of class, decided to carve the floral top on the teapot. The next week I painted the yellow and red and green with underglaze -- many coats. I was so excited to glaze them and start using them.

When I came in the next week to glaze, my teacher, Lizanne Donegan, suggested that I glaze the sunflower plate first with the opal glaze and see how that came out. I only take classes once a week, so this was hard advice for me to follow; I wanted to glaze that teapot! I dipped the sunflower plate in opal (using tongs) and then painted on randy red in swirls in the center. I was thinking it would be a very transparent glaze, glossy, with just a bit of bluish-purple sparkle. But when the plate came out of the glaze kiln, it was much less translucent than I thought it would be, but I do love the results.

The teapot, now that's a different story. I loved the fleshy shape of the pot -- like Mrs. Potts in Beauty and the Beast. We even named her, Flossie. I tried clear on the teapot, which came out great. One problem, which you can't see in the picture is that where the clay is thin (on the spout) and the underglazing is thick, the glaze had trouble sticking.

The teapot pours without dripping, and holds at least four good-sized mugs of tea. My daughter and I had a wonderful tea party with Flossie during the premiere of America's Next Top Model. What could be better than that?

Mariner's Compass Challenge Quilt

For me, quilting is about the process and the story behind the quilt.

You have to love the process of quilting to make a quilt-it's very labor-intensive. People always ask "How much would a quilt like that cost?" You could figure on labor and materials, of course, but a quilt like this is hundreds of hours piecing the compasses, desiging the borders, hand sewing the applique, designing the quilting pattern and quilting. It involves lots of time picking fabrics, collecting fabrics, changing your mind. It's frustration and colorful language. It's also love and surprise. Now how can you put a price on that? You have to do this for the love of the process.

The story of this quilt starts with me wanting to make a Baltimore Album quilt in traditional colors of red, green and white. I began collecting small bits (fat quarters) of reds and greens, while I was working on my other projects. Then one day a friend brought in a quilt that featured a mariner's compass like the ones in the four corners. It was paper-pieced, a technique where you sew the fabric directly on a paper pattern then rip the paper off when you are done. This compass was from an old magazine, "The Foundation Piecer" April 2000. I tried one. I had trouble getting the points to match up. I sewing the pieces on wrong. It was very frustrating. So I did another one. And another. And another. Four compasses -- that's almost a quilt!

In the meantime, my Tuesday quilting group, Friends in Stitches, watched my progress. And egged me on with another, more complicated compass, thus the middle compass. I decided that the middle compass needed a little more punch. I had been admiring the Bella Bella quilts ("Bella Bella Quilts, Stunning Designs from Italian Mosaics" by Norah McMeeking) and decided to try my hand at designing a paper-pieced circle around the middle block. The Friends call that my flying swallows -- similar to the traditional flying geese pattern, just a bit smaller. I decided to set the five compasses with a bit of applique, I guess I was going back to the orignial Baltimore Album idea. I love tulips, so that was easy for me to design and build.

At that point, I had the middle of the quilt done, and Friends in Stitches proclaimed it beautiful and done, but I wasn't finished yet. I had picked up a book at a lawn sale, "A Quilter's Album of Blocks and Borders" by Jinney Beyer. It had a lovely sketch of an idea for a border. I created a paper-pieced pattern and off I went, cussing and sewing. When the border was done and on the quilt, I decided to add the yellow dots at the bottom of each green swag on the border just to break up that large piece of fabric and continue with the circle dots I put in the applique blocks.

So the top is done, now to quilt. Many people like to send their quilts out to have them professionally quilted on a long-arm machine. I actually like the process of quilting -- doodling with thread, even on a quilt as big as this. So I made a backing of various white-on-white fabrics, sandwiched the batting, and pinned the top, middle and back together. I usually start a big project like this by stitching along the seam lines -- known as stitching in the ditch. Then I started filling in all that white space with shadow quilting and swirly stippling. Amazing how the quilting changes the look of a quilt.

To finish the quilt, I thought I'd try a scalloped edge. There are some great sites that give you advice on how to make scalloped edging easier. The best advice was to have a box of chocolates on hand! When you make a scalloped edge you use a very thin binding (about 1 1/2 inches) and you have to ease the outer curve and stretch the inner curve.

I'm showing this quilt at the Quinobequin Quilter's Quilt Show March 26 & 27, 2010. I've also entered it in the Vermont Quilt Festival and Lowell Images.

Quilted Chenille Pot Holders

Ever wonder what to do with ugly fabric that you inherited? I love making wonderful USEFUL gifts. These quilted chenille potholders are easy to make and can magically make ugly fabric beautiful!

The top of the potholder is six squares 9-inch squares of cotton fabric, a batting center, and a backing, usually of flannel or heavy twill. You will cut five of the top layers of fabric. It's amazing to me what you can put together and still have a nice finished project: here I mixed a print of cats, red peppers, vintage yellow and brown calicos, and a print of computer screens!

I layer the six squares of cotton fabric, right sides up. In the finished product, you will be able to see the colors in the print of the top fabric and you might be able to see colors of the bottom fabric. The middle four fabrics make up the chenille- you'll see flashes of color, but that's all. This is where you can hide ugly fabric! You put these six squares on top of the batting, and lay the heavy duty cotton or flannel on the bottom, wrong side up.

I pin the fabric, batting and backing together, then stitch a line of stitching corner to corner. I then do parallel lines of stitching about 1/2 inch apart. I find this is easier to do from the back of the potholder.

When the potholder is filled with parallel lines of stitching, I trim the holder square -- this time it was trimmed to just over 8 1/2 inches. I applied binding -- either double wide bias binding or left -ver quilt binding (I made that by cutting 1 7/8 inch strips and pressing them in half, wrong sides together).

Then you cut the top 5 layers of fabric between the lines of stitching. They sell special equipment to do this, but I just used a seam ripper. I made 10 potholders, and do not advise doing that many all at once!

Be careful not to cut the stitching lines where you bound the edges. Try not to cut the bottom layer of fabric, but don't panic if you do. I have a couple of potholders I've been using for daily for two years with a few stray cuts to the batting, and they work just fine.

Free motion quilting: sketching with thread

Imagine that you had to cover a whole piece of paper with doodles, and never take the pencil off the paper. That's kind of how I approach free-motion quilting.

When you free-motion quilt, you disengage the feed-dogs on your sewing machine. Feed-dogs are the jagged teeth that sit in the base of your machine just under the needle. When they are engaged, they feed the fabric through at a steady pace. When you disengage the feed-dogs, you control the speed and the direction of the fabric as it passes under the needle. You control the pattern you make by moving the fabric.

Sounds easy, and it is, when you are using small pieces of fabric -- that's why I always encourage new free-motion quilters to practice on a small project. I learned to free-motion quilt by doing fabric postcards. It's harder to do it on a bigger quilt because there is more quilt to move around, but it's not impossible. Also, you don't have to leave the needle in the fabric -- but it goes faster if you can make your design without having to lift the needle and move the fabric all the time.

Many of my free-motion quilting involves swirls, hearts, and leaves. I've had enough practice to get them to look right. Today I free-motioned tulips; a favorite motif of mine, but one that I have not done free-motion yet. I also tried to do a sky -- wind (more swirls) and clouds.

These photos are small memo book covers that I am making to sell in the boutique at the Quinobequin Quilter's quilt show later this month (March. 25 & 26 in Neeham, MA).

The photo with the zipper is the start of a purse. I'm not quite sure what that's going to look like -- I'm toying with making the sides a circle (so it finishes as a cylinder) or maybe a teardrop shape. I'll post it when I finish.

I also started doing a few chenille potholders, but more on that tomorrow.