Holiday recap: Part 1

I'm super behind on posting holiday photos, but when did I ever let that stop me? My plan is to get our photos from our Christmas travels up this week, but first, how about some Thanksgiving? We'll pretend it wasn't almost two months ago, okay? We traveled to Texas and Louisiana for Christmas, and I couldn't leave our California family out, so here we go.

We flew to California on what was B's first flight since we went to Italy over a year and a half ago. The big difference (well, besides the fact that this was only a five-hour flight) was that this time, we had an iPad on our side. We give B very little screen time at home, but when traveling, all bets are off. Due in large part to that magical device, it was a super easy and quick flight.

When we landed, we headed into San Francisco for a few hours before driving on to Matt's hometown. It was a beautiful day, so we decided to take advantage of the weather and take B to the Golden Gate Bridge (his first time). We strolled along the bay and stretched our legs before piling back into the car.

B had a great time hanging out with his cousin, uncle, and grandparents, not to mention Bella, the family dog. They played sports, went to the golf course, read books, and took walks, and B enjoyed his first trip to In & Out.

We topped the visit off with a wonderful Thanksgiving meal, which Matt and I prepared. This year, I took on the dinner rolls, sweet potato casserole, and a chess pie, which all turned out great, if you ask me. All in all, it was another wonderful holiday!

 

Sewing and stashing

Gift sewing makes for bad blogging, and I do a lot of gift sewing, even right after Christmas! Here's a little peek of what I've been working on, which I'm hoping to finish up this week. Lots of little pluses in a very different color palette for me. I was hesitant about it at first, but now I kinda love it.

After I finish up this little quilt, I'm planning to work on a few items to take with me to QuiltCon (only a month away -- WHAT?!?!?!), so hopefully the sewing posts will be a little more frequent and filled with more reveals. But for now, I'll show off some of my Christmas goodies.

I commented a while back about how I don't have very many quilting/sewing books, which apparently was my cue to suddenly get a whole lot more. In addition to Patchwork City and Scraps, Inc., which I bought back in November, I added the four above to my stash last month. Simply Retro and The Magic Pattern were Christmas presents. I won Shape 2 Shape through a blog link-up contest, and I won Tula Pink's book through the Christmas raffle the STLMQG does each year. I can't wait to crack into all of these!

For Christmas, the adults in my family do a Secret Santa, and my little brother drew my name this year. Luckily, he's a great gift giver, and in addition to a ton of sewing notions I'd asked for, he also scooped up the fabrics above. The teal with white heart arrows on the left is an older Cloud 9 fabric (still available here) that I tracked down after seeing it pop up in a few projects on Instagram, and the rest of the fabrics are the teal/blue Sun Print bundle from Alison Glass's shop. I also got gift cards to Etsy and Hawthorne Threads that I'm itching to use.

Finally, after the STLMQG meeting this weekend, I picked up a few more goodies from my wonderful LQS. I had to pick up some Doe, of course (and I suspect I'll be back for plenty more), and I couldn't resist some of the Prisma Elements, the gingham from Wild and Free, and those cute clouds and arrows from Moda's Airmail collection.

Time to finish that quilt and start cutting into these!

Pumpkin Cranberry Muffins

I've been craving cranberries since before Christmas, and I always stock up on bags of fresh ones as soon as they appear in the stores around Thanksgiving (they freeze really well). When I got the itch to make muffins a few nights ago, I decided to combine them with a can of pumpkin that was lingering in my pantry and came across this recipe from Taste of Home, which I adapted to make tastier and healthier (lowered the sugar and oil, bumped up the pumpkin and spices, added vanilla -- because, duh). These babies are super moist and tasty. I used frozen cranberries, but I suspect dried would work well, too. I don't think I'd regret adding some cinnamon chips either, if that's your thing.

Pumpkin Cranberry Muffins
Adapted from Taste of Home

Yield: 18 muffins

Ingredients:

    2-1/4 cups (9 oz.) white whole-wheat flour
    1 teaspoon baking soda
    1 tablespoon pumpkin pie spice
    1/2 teaspoon salt
    2 eggs
    1/2 cup granulated sugar
    1/2 cup brown sugar (light or dark)
    1-15 oz.  can pumpkin puree (not pumpkin pie filling)
    1/4 cup coconut oil, melted
    2 teaspoons vanilla
    1-1/4 cup fresh or frozen cranberries
    1 cup chopped pecans (optional)

Directions:
    1. Preheat the oven to 400 degrees F. Grease 18 muffin cups or add paper liners and set aside.

    2. In a large bowl, whisk together the flour, baking soda, pumpkin pie spice, and salt.

    3. In a medium bowl, whisk together the eggs, sugars, pumpkin, vanilla, and coconut oil.

    4. Pour the wet ingredients into the dry ingredients and stir just until blended. Fold in the cranberries and pecans.

    5. Divide the batter evenly among the muffin cups, filling each three-quarters full.

    6. Bake, rotating the muffin tins halfway through, until a cake tester inserted in the muffin centers comes out clean, 18-22 minutes. Transfer the muffins to a wire cooling rack and cool completely. Enjoy!

2014: The year in review

Happy 2015 everyone! I hope you all had a wonderful holiday. Before moving on to the new year, I wanted to take a quick look back at all the fun I had behind my sewing machine in 2014. This year, my focus seemed to shift to quilts more than ever before, and I finished five lap size (or bigger) quilts, four baby quilts (though one was really more lap size), and four mini quilts.

(Left to right from top row) (1) Cut Glass baby quilt, (2) Texas Forever quilt, (3) Flippin' Triangle baby quilt, (4) I ♥ STL mini quilt, (5) Rainbow Wave quilt, (6 and 7) Pinwheel Pods quilt, (8) Kitchen Windows quilt, (9) Fancy Fox mini quilts, (10) Catty Kitty baby quilt, (11) Glam Garlands quilt, and (12) Bluebird Park baby quilt

Somehow, I also managed to finish a lot of smaller projects as well, including several baby gifts, pouches, and my new favorite, my Perfect Quilted Tote. I can't wait to see what 2015 brings!

(Left to right from top row) (1) Kindle cover and headphones pouch set, (2) Ice cream cone Halloween costume, (3) Foxy zipper pouches, (4) Dinosaur toddler apron, (5) Toddler wallet, (6 and 7) Perfect Quilted Tote, (8) Paper-pieced pouch, (9) Giant beach bag, (10) Coloring pouch, (11) Travel car mat, and (12) Toddler bow ties

(Left to right from top row) (1) Easter basket, (2) I ♥ California pillow, (3) I ♥ Texas pillow, (4) NASA star block, (5) Divided basket and bib baby gift, (6) Cheerful heart pillow, (7) Dragonfly Go Anywhere bag, (8) Open-wide pouch set, (9 and 10) Pillow covers for STLMQG Pillow Bomb project

Texas Forever quilt: A finish!

I'm so excited to finally reveal the mystery quilt I've been working on for the past few months. I passed it on to my mom on Christmas as a late birthday present, so I can now introduce the Texas Forever quilt! (I hope you know the reference. If not, I highly suggest you find out what it is and spend the rest of your holiday break binge watching it.)

This quilt grew out of the idea for my I ♥ Texas pillow. Originally, I dreamed of doing some sort of massive Texas applique quilt, like I used in the pillow, but I quickly realized that was never going to work. Around the same time, I got into a conversation with Corinne of Must Love Quilts, and she showed me her own Texas Forever quilt, which she'd just begun to work on at the time. I also discovered this awesome Texas quilt by Dana Michaelson, which was featured at QuiltCon 2013, and decided to take some inspiration from both.

After much internal debate, I decided to do the quilt in all solids. The top is a combination of several Moda Bella solids in Night Sky, Chartreuse, Pesto, Marine, Turquoise, Prussian Blue, and Blue Raspberry, along with Silver for the gray surrounding the state. I basically just started out cutting a ton of squares and rectangles in the various colors and then began arranging them on my design wall (ahem, basement floor) until I got an arrangement that worked.

For the quilting, I used a light teal in a square spiral shape that's centered over Dallas, my hometown. The spirals are spaced about 3" apart, which makes for a sturdy but really soft quilt. This turned out to be the biggest quilt I've ever made (it finished at about 80"square), but the quilting turned out to be pretty easy on my home machine.

I did a scrappy binding using one of the Moda Bella solids (maybe Prussian Blue?) and a bit of one of the Alison Glass fabrics that I used on the back (Grate in Night from the Lucky Penny collection). As usual, I attached it all by machine. For the back, I used up the rest of the solids, plus the Alison Glass and a big piece of Modern Meadow herringbone.

 

I'm so happy with how this quilt turned out, especially the colors. If I had it to do again, I probably would have chosen a different gray for the neutral on the front (either darker or lighter, so some of the colored solids would have popped a bit more), but other than that, it turned out pretty much how I envisioned it. And most importantly, my mom loves it, so my job is done. Texas Forever, y'all.

UPDATE:  I wrote a follow-up post about the Texas Forever quilt, which includes a "roundup" of similar state quilts, patterns, and designs that I discovered in blog land after finishing my quilt. You can check out the post right here.

Merry Christmas!

We're off celebrating this wonderful day with family, but I'm popping in to wish you all a very merry Christmas! I hope you are warm and surrounded by those you love. And because we can't have a picture-less post, how about a few pics from earlier in the month, including not one but two(!) Santas. Merry Christmas to all!

And Joseph also went up from Galilee, from the city of Nazareth, to Judea, to the city of David, which is called Bethlehem, because he was of the house and lineage of David, to be enrolled with Mary, his betrothed, who was with child. And while they were there, the time came for her to be delivered. And she gave birth to her first-born son and wrapped him in swaddling cloths, and laid him in a manger, because there was no place for them in the inn.

And in that region there were shepherds out in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night. And an angel of the Lord appeared to them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were filled with fear. And the angel said to them, "Be not afraid; for behold, I bring you good news of a great joy which will come to all the people; for to you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is Christ the Lord. And this will be a sign for you: you will find a babe wrapped in swaddling cloths and lying in a manger." And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God and saying, 'Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace among men with whom he is pleased!'
-- Luke 2:4-14