Quilting is hazardous to your hip

Yesterday while working on decorations for Ms birthday I walked into Millie with my hip. I did it so hard I knocked off one of the roller bars. And dang it hurt. Mr. Steam even poked his head in the door to see what happened.

Well, today when I went down to the craft cave. This is what I found. Thanks Mr. Steam for your support.

Practice, practice, practice

So I strongly dislike practicing. But my Love cabin quilt showed me that there are times I would be much happier if I did.

I really don’t want to use up fabric for practicing. So that won’t work.

I had been using scrap paper, but I used it all up. And I wasn’t going to waste new paper.

Whiteboards are great for practicing too. Except I don’t have one. And I am trying to get a specific shape inside a block and I don’t want to keep drawing the block.

Then one day at work I picked up on of my reference sheets they I keep in a sheet protector and had an idea.

PERFECT! I drew the block one time and put it in a sheet protector. Then i can practice with a dry erase marker. As long as you use a shiny sheet protector the dry erase marker wipes off super easy. And now I can practice for that specific block to my hearts content.

I am sure I am not the first person to have this thought. But super excited about it.

Funky Snowman to Keep You Warm

I made this snowman quilt quite a few years ago on a self challenge.

I have a good friend Squirrell and she an amazing sense when matching fabrics for her quilts. She’ll show me a focus fabric that she got and I’ll think to myself “How the heck will she find fabrics to match that?!”

And lo she will find some GREAT fabrics and come up with a totally rockin’ quilt.

It’s not that the fabrics she picks are ugly. FAR FAR from it, they are gorgeous. It’s just they are just FUNKY and way out of my personal comfort zone when it comes to quilting.

So I wanted to challenge myself and come up with a funky quilt. Funky snowman is what I came up with.

I did a very loose panto on this one. It was my first panto on Millie and I am happy wit how it turned out.

It’s still not Squirrell style. This quilt is MUCH too loud. With all the different prints and colors all fighting for your attention. But I like it. I AM loud. And I always have to many different things shouting at me for their attention. So I think it’s just right.

Squirrell just started her own blog. Stop by and see some of her great quilts and show her some blog love.

St Patrick’s Day Breakfast – Green Chili Smothered Skillets

One of the best things about making green chili is what you can with it for follow up meals. And this morning Mr. Steam and I had one of our favorites – Green Chili Smothered Skillets.

Ingredients:

• Hashbrowns
• 2Eggs
• 1 red or green sweet pepper 1/2″ dice
• 1 onion 1/2″  dice
• 1 sm tomato 1/2″ dice
• 1/2 c shredded cheddar cheese
• 1/2 c green chili

1. Cook the hash browns and diced onions, sweet pepper until almost done. Add the tomatoes. When they are done to your preference put them on a plate.
2. Cook 2 eggs your preferred method. I prefer over easy, Mr. Steam prefers over hard.
3. Heat up the chili
4. Put the eggs on the potato mixture. Top with the cheese.
5. Put the plate under the broiler for just long enough to melt the cheese.
6. Top with the green chili and serve.

Tonight I am hoping to have enough time to make some green chilaquiles. Yummm!

Steam Family’s Version of St. Patrick’s Day food – Green Chili

Well it’s the day before St. Patrick’s day and I was trying to figure out what to make to celebrate. I wanted to make some Irish Soda bread, but really didn’t feel like baking. I really can’t stand corned beef so that was OUT! But GREEN food is good for St Paddy’s day right? RIGHT!

GREEN CHILI!!!!! Perfect!

This was the first time I ever attempted to make green chili. I ate it plenty while I was in Colorado. I had several recipes but none of them looked quite right to me so I made up my own. And I have to say it was a winner. Mr. Steam even voted it one of the best things I have ever made.

Ingredients

• 2 poblano peppers
• 1 jalapeno pepper
• 6-8 tomatillios
• 2 T extra virgin olive oil
• 3 lb pork roast cubed 1/2 inch
• 2 large onion diced
• 3 large garlic cloves minced
• 1 1/2 T whole cumin
• 1 1/2 T whole coriander
• 6 c chicken stock
• 1 32 oz can of hominy
• 13 oz hatch chilis
• 1 t kosher salt
• 2 corn tortillas
• Optional garnishes: Grated cheddar cheese, sour cream, green onions, avocado wedges, corn bread

1. Peel and quarter the tomatillos put them on a cookie sheet along with the poblanos and jalapeno.
2. Broil until the tomitillos char a little. Flip them over and broil them for a little bit longer.
3. Pull the tomitillos out.
4. Keep roasting the peppers until they are black on all sides. Put them in a zip top back and let them sit for about 10 minutes.
5. Heat up a large dutch oven with the olive oil. Brown 1/2 of the pork. You want it crunchy. Put the browned meat in a bowl, and brown the other 1/2 of the meat. once that is browned put that in a bowl and set aside.
6. While the meat is browning, take the peppers out of the bag and remove the skin, stem, and seeds.
7. Put 1/2 c of stock, the peppers and tomatillos in a blender and puree until smooth. If the peppers and tomatillos are still hot be sure to hold a folded towel over the blender rather than the cover. If you use the cover with hot food the steam will blow off the cover and you will have hot puree all over yourself and the kitchen. Set the puree aside.
8. Drain all but 2 T of the pork fat from the dutch oven. Saute the onions until the are clear.
9. If you are using pre-ground spices, skip this step. While the onions are cooking put the whole cumin and whole coriander in a dry pan on high heat. Toast them just until you can smell them. Put them in a spice grinder and grind fine and set aside.
10. Add the minced garlic and cook for 1 minute.
11. Add the salt and spice mixture and cook for 1 minute.
12. Add the tomatillo and pepper puree to the onions and garlic and cook for about 5 minutes.
13. Add the pork, chicken stock and hominy. Let it simmer for about 20 minutes.
14. While the Chili is simmering tear up 3 corn tortillas and put in the blender with 1/2 of the soup. Puree until it is smooth. Add into the chili.
15. Add the hatch chilis and cook for about 10 more minutes.
16. Serve with your choice of garnish and enjoy.

I had mine with a little sour cream and a side of Guinness.

Lucky Sue or Lucky you?

Well I think it’s lucky you! My friends over at Butterfly Angels are at it again. They have released their March paper pieced & appliqued Sun Bonnet Sue and she is SOOOOO cute! Stop over and show some blog love. But do it before your luck runs out, Lucky Sue is only free until the end of the month. – Butterfly Angels

Love Cabin – Quilting Motifs for Sashing

So I have shared with you the overall quilt, the quilting on the pink logs and border. As well as the 12 of the 15 quilting fill patterns. Now do you want to know what I did in the red logs? It was so much fun!!!

On the inner set of red logs I wrote in cursive 15 things our family loves. After all it is the Love Cabin so I thought it was a perfect mix. And writing in cursive is SOOOOO easy to quilt. And both N & M got to help pick the words. Here’s what we came up with:

• N’s name
• M’s name
• Mr Steam and Mrs Steam’s name
• Steam Train
• Wheeling
• Camping
• Cooking
• Sewing
• Swimming
• Party
• Reading
• Hiking
• Presents
• Games
• Crafting

Then on the outter red logs I did a different quilting motifs. They would all be perfect for sashing or borders.

The first set are all different letters. Lots of quilters use L & Es, but I had never thought about using other letters in sashing. A quilting buddy said she uses letters all the time. She thought that Js ans Ss would be perfect because they mimic the shape of  a heart. I also ended up using Zs, Os, and Ns because I thought they looked cool.

On the rest of the blocks I used these sashing motifs. They were lots of fun and super easy to quilt. On the bottom two motifs I did mark where the “points” are, but other than that these were all mark free designs.

And the great thing about these motifs is they can be modified so many different ways.

• On the double loop – add another loop, or make the loops bigger
• On the top two patterns, add a loop or double loop at the bottom of the curve
• On the bottom pattern, if it was big enough you could add a fill pattern in the ovals
• On the leaves (2nd from the bottom) add a few pebbles at the intersection to make berries or change up the leaf shape into an oak or holly leaf

Yes, yes I know 15 blocks and only 12 motifs? Well the other two patterns I used were a 1/2 feather and a feather kind of fan.

Oh and I had to draw them for you because they are really hard to see in the pictures. That’s ok I know they are there.

All in all I am thrilled with how the quilt turned out and now I can use it as a quilting library when I get stuck for quilting ideas.

I can’t wait to get started on the next one. Which is a good thing because it’s on the machine already!!!! I should have pictures to show you soon. I am going to do my first panto on this one so it should go pretty quick!

Love Cabin – Filler Quilting Patterns

I hadn’t really thought about how hard it would be to come up with 15 different filler quilting patterns. Sure I can come up with about 10 different meander variations, but that wasn’t the point I wanted to have filler patterns that I hadn’t used before. And let me tell ya, that was more of a challenge than I thought.

I am really impatient and hate to practice. I would much rather just go do it and let the kinks work themselves out as I go. In large part that’s why I wanted to do this as a sampler. It would let me “practice” without having to put some muslin on Millie.

But some of the filler patterns that I did turned out completely unrecognizable. They look fine on the quilt. But they don’t look ANYTHING like what they are supposed to. So now I know I need to practice those some before I try them again.

Here are some of the blocks that I am really happy with:

Left – Cross hatching. I don’t have an extended throat plate yet. So extensive ruler work is out of the question. But this wasn’t too bad to do with out the extender.

Right – Loops. I haven’t used this pattern that often. But I may start using it more. It’s seems so lacy and happy.

Left – Echos. I love how echos look, but I am afraid I am going to need some more practice.

Right – Water. I have used this fill pattern before and I really like it. I have used it to represent water, done more loosely to represent air, and done vertically to represent bark.

Left – Every which wavy. I love this pattern. It’s very forgiving and lets you move around very awkward spaces.

Right – Basic stipple. I swore after doing the blue Irish chain that I’d never do stipple again. But, sometimes you just can’t beat it.

Left – Swirls. I have never used this on a quilt before, but I am pretty sure I will be using it now. What a fun pattern. This one I did practice on paper until I got the hang of it.

Right – Tear drops. I have also never done this one before but have wanted to. It is very easy to use. And gives nice texture and curves.

Left – Meander leaves. I know I said I didn’t want to do 15 different meander patterns, but I felt that on shape meander would be good to have in the sampler.

Right – Pebbles. I know the picture is lousy, but trust me it’s pebbles. I know pebbles are REALLY popular right now. But I was pretty sure they would take forever and I was right. DANG did they take a long time. I am glad I did them on a block that didn’t have much white space.

Left – Lines and circles. I am in LOVE with this. It was super easy to do and looks great.

Right – Square meander. This one was HARD for me to do. There is a square at the end of each line. And that square determines what direction the line goes. So I had to talk in my head which direction I needed to go and talk myself thru it. You can see there are a couple of places where I messed up. I doubt I’ll use this one that much, but can see where there would be certain places I’d use it.

Phew! That was a lot of fill patterns. And yest if you are counting there are 15 blocks on Love Cabin and only 12 fill patterns. And NO I will not show you the other 3.

Tomorrow I’ll share with you the sashing patterns that I used.

Love Cabin – Borders and Sashings

Boy have I been having fun sewing with Millie. But that means I have been neglecting the blog. So I thought I’d catch you all up on what I have been working on.

I finished the Love Cabin in 2005. Good grief. Yep it’s been a while.

Its such a lovey quilt. Very fun and playful. So, I decided to do something fun with the quilting. I really have been wanting to try out a bunch of different quilting motifs, but some I am not sure I’d like so didn’t want to commit to a whole quilt. This quilt could be a sampler! Perfect. Each block could be different. It would give me a chance to try out a bunch of different quilting.

In the center of each block I would do a different filler. In the red “logs” I’d do a different sashing quilt motif. AWESOME!!! But that was going to be 15 different fillers and 15 different sashings. OH BOY!

I wanted some thing to keep the quilt pulled together. In the pink logs I used a template and did hearts in white.

I really struggled with how to do the borders and then remembered a flowing heart I had seen. So I used some chalk and drew some free hand hearts and just drew a loop to connect them. I really wanted to have the hearts pop and needed to practice my echoing. So viola! There’s the border. I am thrilled with how it turned out.

Tomorrow I’ll show you some of my favorite fill patterns that I used.

Hatching some Heaven in the Kitchen

When Mr. Steam and I went on our honeymoon we went to Colorado. Why Colorado? Why its the steam train mecca in the US of course. We had a 10 day tour of Colorado to see and ride as many steam trains as possible.

Mr. Steam was in heaven! I was happy to get to go to various quilt shops throughout the state. But what I really enjoyed was the ubiquitous green chilies and green chile sauce that you find all over. I made it a point to have it at LEAST once a day. I was so sad to leave Colorado and the green chilies. Ever since then I have been begging and pleading with Mr. Steam to get some shipped here.

Well yesterday he came thru!!!! THREE whole glorious tubs of frozen roasted Green Hatch Chilies!!!!

I was so excited I could hardly wait to start cooking.

This morning we had breakfast skillets smothered in chilies. YUMMMM. (Sorry I was so excited about eating green chilies I didn’t get a picture.)

Tonight we are going to have “Hatch Chile Chicken Enchilada Casserole” from the daily waffle. I can’t wait!!!!

** EDIT **

The casserole just came out of the oven and the casserole is HEAVENLY!!! We will ABSOLUTELY be making this again.