Fabric Makes Me Hungry

A few months ago I went on a road trip with my friend Lisa, a fellow fabric lover.  We travelled to Pennsuaken, NJ to check out J&O Fabrics . It’s located in a building right on Rte 130.  They sell a mixture of cotton quilting fabrics and garment type fabrics.  They have tons of novelty fabrics.  Anything that you could possibly think of.  They have Beatles fabric, every sports team you could think of, games of chance, Dick and Jane, medical themed, food, animals.  I could go on and on.  But of course my favorite fabrics were the Alexander Henry Mexican themed fabric.  I had never seen them before.  I think I must have bought some of each.  And each one was more entertaining than the next.

As I enter my house after fabric shopping, I always drop my fabric off in the laundry room.  While the fabric was in the washing machine, I headed to the kitchen to look for my recipe for Arroz con Leche from my cooking lessons at the hotel where we stayed, Mesones Sacristia in Pueblea.  The fabric made me hungry fro Mexican food. I could always go for something sweet.

When we went to the market in Puebla, I bought real cinnamon

and Mexican vanilla.  Their vanilla is water-based and the entire bottle cost me 50 cents. I store it in the refrigerator and understand it’s got a pretty short shelf life.

To make rice pudding, boil 1 cup of short grain rice in 4 cups of water with whole cinnamon until the liquid is reduced.  Add 2 cups of milk, 1 can of sweetened condensed milk and 2 TBSP of vanilla.

Cook for 25 minutes or until the rice turns soft.  Let stand for a minute.

Serve warm (my preference- especially since I don’t have to wait) or cold in a dish sprinkled with cinnamon.

YUM!

Upcoming Lectures

Just a quick note to let anyone in the Philadelphia area know that I am giving 2 talks in the next few days. Friday, Sept 11th in the morning, I'm talking to the Homemakers Quilt Guild in Collegeville. The talk is about personalizing your quilts with words and photos and images. On Monday, 9/14 in the evening, I'll be lecturing to the County Line Quilters. They meet in New Britain which is near Doylestown. The title of my talk is "Inspiration From Squiggles and Dots". I talk about finding inspiration from anywhere and everywhere.

If you come to hear me talk, please come and introduce yourself. I'd love to meet you.

Girls Just Want To Have Fun!

Sometimes you just need a little quickie. You know a small little project that you can whip out in a couple of hours, especially when you are spending hours and hours working on time consuming quilt projects.

I was in a quilt shop and I saw this beautiful fabric with bird cages on it. I though it would be perfect to make something for my son’s fiancé's mother. She breeds and raises birds – Gouldian finches – LOTS OF THEM. (Aren’t they amazing looking birds? Like a child’s crayon coloring.)

The project needed to be not too time consuming and I wanted to use big pieces of the fabric so she would see the motifs. So I found a pattern for this cute purse that said it would take 2 hours. The pattern is “The Two Hour Tulip Purse”. I made the “cantelope” size. After cutting out all of the pieces and fusing the fleece/stabilizer, it took me a little bit longer than 2 hours. It was soooooo gratifying.

I wrote a note, stuck it inside and mailed it off to her for just a little surprise gift. I hope she likes it.

SAQA Quilt Auction - Eye Candy

I have been a member of Studio Art Quilt Associates for a few years. It's primary focus is promoting art quilts and professional quilt artists. It is exciting to see the quilts and the quilters that are at the leading edge of this relatively new art form. Each year they have an auction of 12" square foot quilts donated by some members. (Not me, not yet.)
All I have to say is EYE CANDY! If you check out this link, you can view the quilts and see the details about the auction. Below are 3 of my favorite quilts by Bodil Gardner, Melinda Bula and Lisa Chipetine.
http://www.saqa.com/newsebulletins/Squares09_1.aspx

Free Folk Art Sampler Pattern

To celebrate the publication of "Willoway" in Fons & Porter's magazine, Love of Quilting (see previous post) and it's soon to be visit to the PA National Quilt Extravaganza, I am offering a free folk art pattern. I used to offer this as a class when I taught at The Country Quilt Shop in Montgomeryville, PA.

CLICK HERE FOR FREE PATTERN AND DIRECTIONS

I have a split personality. I love contemporary art quilts and I also love primitive folk art. This is clearly my primitive side. Click on the photo either here or in the sidebar for the directions and pattern.

My Folk Art Farm

I am so excited and thrilled that my quilt, "Willoway - A Folk Art Farm" is in the current issue of Fons & Porter's magazine - For The love of Quilting. It is in a feature titled Art of Quilting - American Farms. The quilt was inspired by the stone houses doting the landscape near where I live in Pennsylvania.

After stitching the landscape, I added the houses and then the pond. All of the applique up to this point was done by turning under the edges and topstitching it down. The rest of the applique is fused, raw edge. The weeping willow tree branches and leaves were done with hand embroidery. The leaves on the other trees are 3-dimensional and attached by machine stitching down the middle of the leaf. The cows' tails were done with hand embroidery as were the sunflowers and the vegetable garden. The 2 black dogs were our family pets that are no longer with us. The top and bottom borders are machine pieced. The entire quilt was machine quilted.

"Willoway" and another quilt of my mine - "A Shrine For Planet Earth" will be at the PA Mancuso Show, Pennsylvania National Quilt Extravaganza, which starts Sept 17th. They have moved from Harrisburg to a new location, closer to Philly. Yippeeee. I will be there on Thursday, white gloving for my quilt guild and then seeing the show and shopping (of course). I'd love to meet you if you're planning on attending.

I have a pattern for a primitive sampler along the lines of "Willoway"that I designed while I was teaching in our local quilt shop. I am working on trying to figure out how to offer it as a free down loadable pattern on this blog. Check back in a few days and hopefully it will be here.

Sawdust Art

 

Last March my husband and I travelled to Puebla, Mexico.  The reason for the trip was to see the buildings covered with Talavera tile and to visit the authorized factories.  It was an amazing trip.  Since neither my husband nor I speak Spanish, we hired a guide through our hotel.  To visit another factory, we had the good fortune of being hooked up with the daughter of a friend of a friend of a friend of a business acquaintance.  Her name is Kenya. 

She picked me up after she was done with work one day.  At 27 years old,

she still lives at home, because she is not married.  She is a lawyer and has a boyfriend.  She was just adorable  and we really hit it off.  I think we got along so well because she is the same age as my kids. She shared so much with me about the Mexican Culture and was a wonderful translator at the Uriarte Talavera factory.

Yesterday she sent me an e-mail with these wonderful photos from her cell phone showing the streets covered with painted saw dust for a religious celebration called The Charity’s Virgin.  I don’t really know what the holiday is exactly about, but I am always so amazed by their culture and traditions and their folk art.