PAJAMA DAY - yippee

7:00 a.m. Good morning!!!! It's pajama day at our house - no getting dressed all day long...

Thank goodness no rule against quilting.

Plenty of turkey left for sandwiches.

I can't wait...........

10:00 update: I just finished the quilting on this little whole-cloth with trapunto that I started yesterday at class... just needs binding now! This is my first use of wool batting - oh is sews up nicely!

And I put DH to work arranging some "I Spy" blocks for a charity quilt! He is enjoying doing this (wonder if he wants to cut some strips?)



.............more pajama day to come!

6:30 pm. PAJAMA DAY NEARS AN END

The afternoon was very relaxed, but a lot got done:

These HST's are for Clue 2 of Bonnie Hunters's mystery quilt:

This basket of strings came from a bin of scraps: and then became a bunch of string blocks:

And I discovered that my cactus is preparing to bloom - a lovely yellow bud:


The quilt DH arranged and selected the border for is a completed flimsy now - this will go to the Bumble Beans Quilt Gathering when it is sandwiched and quilted..

What a great Pajama Day - and I didn't once stress over the laundry or other household chores... wearing pajamas somehow wards off reality...

Back to work tomorrow - what a great holiday weekend this has been!

Happy Quilting and Pajama-Wearing, Everyone

Kate

No More

No More Dishes

No More Laundry

No More Cleaning Up

No More Errands

No More Lists of Things to Do

Kate

ABOUT THOSE GIBLETS

Happy Thanksgiving !!!!

I must confess to being a lover of the giblets - the parts thrown away by so many cooks (boohoo).

I love the giblets so much that even though I bought a prepared dinner, I picked up some giblets to cook on the side, and thy are now in the slow-cooker... along with several lovely turkey necks... another favorite part!

And then, for some strange reason, I decided to research giblets – I am, after all, a professor! Here are a few interesting things I discovered:

The word "giblets" comes from Middle English, and originally meant a "game stew".

Giblets are described as the "edible offal" of a poultry carcass - - eeeew that sounds awful.

Now, a special word about that gizzard – the gizzard is the grinder for a bird, who has no teeth. When I was a child, we slaughtered our own chickens, and cleaning the gizzard was a mystery – you cut it open, and in there were stones, trash, all sorts of stuff the bird had picked up! The stones and sand help grind up the food... an amazing little body part.

The giblets in that little bag probably came from a DIFFERENT turkey... makes me think about some medieval torture – having the innards put in another body!

The color of the liver is influenced by what the bird last ate.Green livers are filled with bile, and are usually discarded in production at the slaughter plant.

"wog" means "without giblets" in the turkey trade!

If you accidentally leave them in the bag and cook the turkey – it's ok, they just need some salt!!

Happy Day - Kate

Pre-Thanksgiving Preparations

Hi all and Happy Pre-Turkey Day:

I've been reading lots of blogs about pre-Turkey prep: some people are brining their turkey; some are making pies; some are making cornbread for stuffing (doesn't she know Pepridge Farm sells that stuff in bags?) Seriously - I have great respect for all those dedicated and inspired chefs;; BUT

here's my True Confession:

What I did today to prepare for Thanksgiving:

Picked out some new batiks at the LQS;
Bought some thread and some sharp new needles;
Got three movies;

Oh - and called Boston Market and ordered DINNER FOR SIX with turkey, veggies, dressing, and PIE!!!

So - I wish all of you gifted cooks a wonderful meal...

.................i'll be sewing most of the day - I'll post some photos of my accomplishments!

Kate

So Much in Progress!

Hello everyone, and happy Saturday !

I've been away for a bit, visitingwith some family at a lovely lake house in North Carolina - it was gorgeous - crisp, fall temperatures, beautiful yellow and red leaves. We ate, we drank, and we watched one of the young ones perform in a play - great fun!

So now it's great to be home - and I have SOOOO many quilty projects that I hardly know what todo... let's see.............

I need to blanket stitch down the binding on this little cute cheater-panel charity quilt - love the trucks - -



And this one is in the process of being machine quilted - and I'm doing feathers for the first time:



And then - I started the new Bonnie Hunter mystery - this is half the pieces to complete Clue #1 - actually went pretty quickly:

And - over my travels I started the Farmers Wife Sampler - here are some first blocks. Only 109 left to hand piece!

There's a binding to be stitched down to finish this charity quilt:

And, oh heavens, all this fabric has been washed, but needs to be ironed, folded, and put on the shelf!

Do you think I can finish all this before lunch??? I have other UFO's waiting, too!!

Happy Quilting, Everyone !

Kate

Bev's Geese Went to Quilting Class

Hi all - - well, while many of you 'flew' off to Houston and had a wonderful time, I took advantage of a great class on machine quilting by Jill Schumacher, a California machine-quilting artist.

The two-day class, on machine-quilting design, was taught at a lovely LQS in Livermore, CA. It required that we show up with a finished top ready to quilt... so I took along a little flimsy that began from some flying geese blocks made by my friend Bev Bennett of the Yahoo Sunshine Quilt Guild... Bev passed away a few months ago, and some friends distributed her stash to members of the online guild... and I got these flying geese blocks... and then they began to tell me what needed to go with them... and this emerged...........

So - here's the quilt, all marked for machine quilting... and just barely begun to be quilted... this will be the first time I have done machine quilting beyond the basic stuff like stippling and straight lines ... should be fun!

Great class, Jill! And I love these flying geese, Bev...

Kate

Complete, with Piping

Well - this little beauty is now completed...

Pardon the messy kitchen - why is it that the best lighting in my house for photographing

quilts is in the room most likely to be messy????? Photoshop - where are you????

And, if I may brag - I have fallen in love with piping! Hor cool is this???

And , since I am bragging on myself - what beautiful hand quilting! (And what idiot decided to do it 1/4 inch apart - that would be me). Oh my, but do I see a skipped row???????? I'm gonna rush right over and put that in - why is it I did not see it until i posted it on the web - grrrrr.........

Thank you to Sharon Stroud for a great class on hand quilting.

Happy Quilting Everyone,

Kate