Sweet River Studios

I've recently come across a few food blogs and I hope to try to duplicate some of their recipes right here at home for me and my husband. I have to admit, I've tried some recipes off the internet and didn't have much success. I consider myself a decent cook but I'm sure there's a lot more for me to learn. I decided, I would pick some recipes from each blog and prepare them myself and post about my efforts. One of blogs I stumbled across is Half Baked Harvest. Usually this time of year, I'm thinking soup. It's winter here in central Ohio and after last year's fun with all the negative temperatures, we're not really expecting a mild or short winter for 2015 but believe me we're all hoping for an early spring. I have my tried and true soup recipes my husband and I really like, but let's face it, I like to cook and try new things. So I was out looking for soup recipes and I found Half Baked Harvest's recipe for Crockpot Crispy Caramelized P...

On Saturday, January 17, I went to my local quilt shop, Quilt Beginnings, and everyone who made either a Jacobean Journey or Feathered Star quilt last year brought in their projects. Some were finished, close to being finished or still in pieces.  Below is my quilt.  Its brown, cream, peach and a melon like color.  The blocks have been really fun to do and putting all the blocks together have definitely challenged me and some of the other ladies I spoke with. The next two pictures, are of a mother and daughter and their quilts.  They have a similar theme with black, gray, red, white and dark gold color. When asked if they were going to attempt to do the next Hoopsister's embroidery quilt "Sewn Seeds," which there's a sneak peak of at the end, they both said, "Nooooooooooo." Also, these guys say they're novice sewers but I think they've graduated! This lovely lady, did her Jacobean Journey quilt in red, pink, white and a very light blue...

If you've never done sashing on a quilt, you've come to the right place.  I've never done it either. And of course, the quilt I'm currently working on has sashing. The back of the quilt is done at the same time as the front but when you sew the blocks and rows together you have a seam of unsightly raw edges that is visible on the back. So to cover those up, you a take a strip of fabric 1.5" wide, turn the edges to the middle and sew that on the seams to cover it. So the first thing, I did was trim some of the excess fabric off the seam to make it lay a bit flatter. Trust me, these seams are pretty bulky, just don't cut far enough down into your sewing.  Trim all the seams. Next, you can make your sashing.  Take your sashing fabric, mine matches the backing fabric, and cut strips 1.5"x WOF.  I used a spray starch and sprayed the strip, then I folded the edges over and then I ironed them in place.  You can use one of those binder makers from Simplicit...

Well, this is my first post for 2015!  I hope everyone has a great year but as for me, I'm just hoping River can master her own impulses a bit better and finish her weave poles reliably in agility. And yes, she's always watching me and my husband. She's discovered that propping her head up on coffee tables, end tables, TV cabinets, walls, people legs or whatever she can find gives her a lazy advantage in people watching. Clearly, this conserves energy which is important to dogs. Looks darn right uncomfortable if you ask me but she doesn't seem to care. I got my Babylock Unity back from my local quilt shop on December 22.  They found a little glass head from a glass head pin in the port of my embroidery machine so let's hope that fixes the problem of the machine stopping during embroidery. No one likes to have their very expensive machine not working correctly. I'll be like my grandmother breathing in a bag when I'm upset. Not good. I've gotten bac...