Saturday, November 16, 2013

Soup's on

This afternoon I enjoyed a foodie and fabric outing with my dad (fabric not so much a stop for him). We picked up wonderful gouda at a Dutch cheese shop out in the country. You can peek in the aging room to see the shelves from floor to ceiling of cheese wheels - 3,000 or so of them! Next we stopped at Victoria Street Market, where I picked up a few treats including smoked European bacon. Mmm ... bacon.

Then after a leisurely lunch (partly to do with the slow service) it was onto my favourite local fabric shop Greenwood, which just got in the awesome Collage collection. Thanks to a couple sweet CFFs who kindly gave me gift certificates for my birthday, I picked up a FQ bundle of Collage and a charcoal Kona for the background that I'll use to make a lap quilt in this fun Tiny Dancers pattern.

I also picked up a wee bit more of the retro whimsy of Fort Firefly to add a border to a nifty quilt combining Fort Firefly and Camp Modern. These colours are perfect for my living room.

After a few more chores it was time to think about dinner. I whipped up a pot of this Ginger Coconut Milk Soup. Mine included lotsa ginger, sweet potato, baby kale and white mushrooms. So tasty and so easy.



Sunday, November 10, 2013

Getting things done

This weekend I packed in some solid crafting time, starting with pinning my Moroccan tile quilt. I hoped to get going on the quilting, but ran out of time.


During a recent stop at Fabricland to pick up half-priced batting for an upcoming weekend quilting workshop with some great CFFs that my mom kindly offered to teach, I noticed off-the-charts cute flannel FQs. My mind started racing trying to come up with something to make with them. I recently read a blog post where the woman said she tries not to buy fabric without having a plan for it, and that struck me as being pretty wise. I'm not going to even imagine for a moment I can stick with that approach (there's so much irresistible fabric!!!), but it got me to thinking I should at least try to do that more often (after looking through my abundant stash).


I remembered my friend saying recently that her daughter was upset she had to leave at home her sock monkey blanket, so I figured I could make a travel-sized cuddly blanket for her. I didn't really even know that was a thing until a shot-in-the-dark google search brought me to security blankets and this sweet little one using ric-rac. Can't resist any project with ric-rac! Especially when combined with these ridiculously cute farm animals.


Then I spotted cute retro kitty and floral fabric in my stash and thought they'd make cute pillows to go with the blanket. Unfortunately I discovered I only had a half-metre of each, so instead I picked out these sweet and super girly prints that I've been holding onto for quite sometime.


But I still wanted to make something with the kitty fabric, so I went with a drawstring pouch to put the blanket and pillowcases in. How freaking cute is this bag for a little girl to hide away all her treasures?


I found a string of yellow flowers and sewed them on with a wavy stitch to add a little colour and fun. (Not so much fun for me because I mistakenly sewed the front side of the flowers down and then I lost my focus while ripping out the stitches and had to re-do a line of top-stitching I attacked with the ripper.)


I whipped up another two sets of pillowcases, including these with Jay McCarroll fabric.


Finally it was time to take a break from the sewing machine and head into the kitchen to tackle dinner. I made stuffed peppers with ground chicken, rice and onions topped with bread crumbs. With acorn squash on the side, it was a warming dinner for a cold day.


I hope everyone else had a lovely weekend with lots of time for crafting!