Looking for pizza and cellphone fabric

Hi everyone, I have a new friend Shelly from the Wilton Creek Fabric shop who asked me to see if I could locate a fat quarter of cellphone fabric and pizza fabric. She is making a quilt and needs a fat quarter of each of these fabrics. She would be willing to swap a fat quarter with the person who has a fat quarter of either of these fabrics. She knows that they are out there, but they are not being produced anymore. If you know someone who may have some of these fabrics, send me an email and I'll put you in contact with Shelly. If anyone can help, that would be great!!!

On another note, I started a new hand pieced quilt the other day. I love to do hand stitching, so I found a quilt pattern perfect for that. It's called the Hexagon Star. I got the pattern out of the Big Book of Best-Loved Quilt Patterns. It's a scrappy quilt. So it's suit me great. Here are some pictures of the pattern.

I have to make 255 stars for this pattern. I have 19 made. I've got a long way to go. I still have to buy the white material for the pieces between the stars. But for now, I'm just using what I have and making as many stars as I can. The great thing is that I participated in the Itching2Bstitching scrap mini swap and received some wonderful material from my partner Jodie. I was able to make 2 stars out of each of the pieces of material she sent me. The stars are very small. I really love this pattern. It's going to be a wonderful quilt. Here are some of the stars I've made. These are all using the material Jodie sent me.

This is going to be a WISP (Work in slow progress), but that's okay. I needed something portable and small to piece by hand. So this is perfect. Since I've already made a the Tumbling Block quilt by hand, I know that I can handle this project. It's essentially the same thing. All the pieces are diamonds. It's the colour placement that is different. The size of the diamond is smaller for this pattern, but that's okay. It make it easier to use up my scraps. Well, I hope everyone has a great day. I have to work evening shift tonight. Oh well!

Happy Stitching!

Ariane :o)

Rocky Road to Kansas Block

I just had to do some sewing tonight. It had been too many days since I've sewn. So I wanted to do something new.... something to inspire me. So I had printed a pattern a few weeks ago called Rocky Road to Kansas. I got the pattern on the Quilter's Cache web site. This is a wonderful site full of free patterns to use for personal use. You should go check it out. I made templates for the block and took out some freezer paper to make the center scrappy triangle. The pattern said to sew long strips together then cut out the triangles. But I only have small pieces, so the freezer paper helped. I made one block. But I just love it. It's really great. I just love putting colors that wouldn't normally go together and just mix them up. It looks great in the end. I had bought the cream colored material to make an applique quilt. But I think I'm going to stick to making these blocks with it. Oh well, I'm just going to have to buy more. This really perked me up. I really am addicted to quilting. I just love being creative. I think that's what I was missing for so many years. I'm so glad I started doing this. Thanks for all the inspiration you all give me through your blogs.

Happy Stitching!

Ariane :o)

Mini Pizza's

I haven't posted anything in a few days. I've had a pretty rough week. Didn't feel very well, so I didn't do much sewing. But today I was feeling a bit better. I decided to do some baking. I made some chocolate chip cookies and some mini pizza's. I made 8 batches of 15 mini pizza's. I make mini pizza's to put in the kids lunches for school. I put 5 mini pizza's in each of the three kids lunches. They don't like sandwiches...so I had to come up with something I knew they would like and that wouldn't cost too much or be too complicated. The mini pizza's do take a lot of time to make. They are not that difficult, just time consuming. I make them from scratch.

I use the Robin Hood basic white bread dough recipe for the dough. It gives a nice thick crust. I follow the instructions exactly, except I only let it rise the second time for 10 minutes. So, once the dough has risen for 50 minutes, I punch the dough down and let it stand for 10 minutes. Then, I start rolling the dough in small batches and use a round cutter (I use a large glass) to cut the dough. Then I put some tomato sauce, Italian seasoning, mozzarella cheese and pepperoni. I put them in the oven for 15 minutes at 350 F. Let them cool and that's it. I then put them in Ziploc freezer bags in batches of 15, (because that's how many I need), then I freeze them.

In the morning before school, I just take the mini pizza's out of the freezer and put them on a cookie sheet. Bake at 350 F for 10 min. Let cool. Put them in sandwich bags and in the lunches. Sometimes I don't even bake them in the morning. I just put them in the lunches frozen. By the time it's lunch time, they are all thawed and the kids eat them like that. They are already fully cooked. The kids love these. I've made them for many different kids, picky eaters, and I have never found a child that didn't like these. I think it's because they are small. It only takes a few bites to eat each one and they can use their hands to eat. They make a good snack in the evening if you are having a bunch of kids over too.

Well, I hope everyone is well and wish you all a great week to come.

Happy Stitching!

Ariane

I'm done my Tumbling Block Quilt

I'm finally done the Tumbling Block Quilt I've been making for my daughter. This quilt is hand pieced and hand quilted. I started working on this quilt in the first week of September 2008. So, it took me 5 months to finish it. I think that is pretty good. The piecing itself only took me six weeks. But I struggled a bit with staying on track with the hand quilting. I had many projects on the go. I'm just glad it didn't sit for a long time. I think it is a beautiful quilt. It is my favorite one to date. I just like using old patterns to make my quilts. This one really jumped out at me when I was going through a book I borrowed from the library called "Big book of best-loved quilt patterns" by Rhonda Richards. This is by far my favorite quilting book to date. I wish I had my own copy. I also got my Jacob's ladder pattern from that book. It has many patterns for antique quilts, and has many different styles of quilts. It also has great instructions and tips. It has patterns for 82 different quilts. I'm going to have to borrow it again to see what I could make next. Here's a picture of the back of the quilt. You can't see the quilting that well. But I think the back looks really good. The colour of the binding really goes well with it. I'm going to have to take pictures in the sunlight so that you can really see it well and how bright it looks. Well, I hope everyone had a great day.

Happy Stitching!

Ariane :o)