Ribbons and Wreaths

 

I'd had this wreath fabric in my stash for a few years. I don't remember where or when I bought it, but I think it's very pretty. 

One would almost think it's a Christmas fabric, with green and red being the dominant colours, and those flowers in the corners could pass for poinsettias. But the other flowers and the butterflies are certainly not Christmas. And I double-checked the selvage to see what the fabric line was called. It said something about "Australian" and nothing to indicate that it was Christmas. 
So, I was determined to use it in another of the 5 quilts. The difficulty with this kind of fabric is that it works best to use it either as one whole piece, surrounded with a border, or as individual panels. Unfortunately, there is often distortion with printing the fabric and the panels are not necessarily straight with the grain, or perfectly square. And if there isn't a definite border to the panel. one has to decide where to cut. In this case, I chose to cut right through the centre of the flower sashing. And then one might discover that the panels are not a reasonable measurement that works well with an alternate quilt block. These panels are not even square, and measure about 10" x 11¾", for a finished size of 9½" x 11¼", so rather weird dimensions. Which left me with the challenge of coming up with a block that would work with those dimensions. 
Inspired by a design in one of my 3-yard quilt books, I created a really simple block, and chose to avoid red and green as the colours to avoid the Christmas-y look. Instead I used the purple that is in the wreaths, together with green, and a beige Stonehenge fabric in the same colour family as the background of the wreath fabric, for the background fabric in the blocks. And I'm very pleased with how the quilt turned out. 

This is the quilt for which I had to juggle the backing fabrics. After determining the backings for the other 4 quilts, I was left with hot pink, which just wouldn't have worked with this one. So, I decided that the celery-coloured one that I had originally planned for Ashford Square would go to this one, the blue that I had planned for Butterfly Sanctuary would move to Ashford Square, and the hot pink would be used on Butterfly Sanctuary. The other two, which I haven't shared yet, remained with the planned backings. 
I chose Forest Floor for the quilting. It's not a really distinct design, so I really don't like it that well. But it's also not going to compete for attention with the quilt top. Another pantograph that I haven't used before. 
I named this quilt Ribbons and Wreaths because the effect of the cascading blocks reminds me of curling ribbon.

Butterfly Sanctuary

 

For another one of the 5 quilts, I wanted to express hope. And butterflies to me have always expressed hope. While rummaging in my stash of 1 yard/1 metre cuts, I found these 2 butterfly fabrics. 

But I didn't necessarily want to use them together. And then I remembered that I had purchased some butterfly fabric last year. Most of last year's purchases are still piled in a rough tote, waiting to be organized and shelved. Or maybe just used in a quilt. 😁

I'll be honest: I was rather loath to part with this one. It's so beautiful. But not every beautiful fabric can end up in a quilt for me. Just like I can't keep every beautiful quilt that I make. 
Neither of the first butterfly fabrics would coordinate well with this one. Although the lighter one actually has a pink background (I know it looks more mauve in the picture), the pink was too light. 

But this one is a much more vibrant pink and would echo the bright pinks in the white fabric. 

And this one would pick up some of the blues. 
So, I had my 3 fabrics, and then had to choose a pattern. I considered a double focus pattern because both the white and the blue are large prints. I especially wanted a large block for the white print. I ended up choosing Traditions from the book Make It Christmas, as it has a 10" square of the focus fabric and I felt that the 4" squares in the alternate blocks were big enough to feature some of the butterflies in the blue fabric. 

For the quilting, I chose Butterfly Charm. While I am trying to use pantographs in my collection that I haven't used before, nothing but Butterfly Charm would work for this one. And I have used it before as I have made 2 butterfly-themed quilts previously: Butterflies and Blooms and Take Flight, plus I used it once in quilting a friend's quilt. 
And yes, this is the quilt that received the hot pink backing. I had originally planned on using the blue backing that I used in Ashford Square, but as I mentioned, the hot pink just wasn't going to work in the final quilt of the 5 quilts. But it worked fine for this one. I just hope the recipient appreciates pink!

Ashford Square

I finished my 5 quilts, maybe not in a week, but probably about 9 or 10 days altogether, even if they weren't consecutive days. And of the 5 of them, this one is my favourite. I find it very peaceful. The pattern is found in Fabric Cafe's book, Quilts in a Jiffy, and for once I actually named the quilt with the same name as the pattern. 
Like most 3-yard quilt patterns, it went together quite quickly and makes a nice snuggle-size quilt. Especially with a minky backing. 

Originally, I was going to use a celery-coloured backing, but when I decided to make 5 quilts, I had to juggle the backing fabrics to make sure I had a better-coordinated backing for each quilt. I only had 5 minky backings to work with. But the blue is fine. It was the hot pink/coral one that wasn't going to work with the 5th quilt. In the future, I may just buy neutral minky, so it can coordinate with any quilt top. 
Ordinarily, I would have chosen a flower-themed pantograph to quilt this quilt, but I'm actually trying to use each pantograph I own at least once to justify it taking up storage space in my house. And really dense designs don't work very well with minky. I've used my more open flower-themed designs at least once before, so my options were limited. This one is Nifty Feathers, an 8" Urban Elementz design that appears to have been retired, as I couldn't find it on the website. It's a pretty generic design that would work well with most quilts, and works up quite quickly. And as I have said before, the average recipient of a quilt doesn't even notice, let alone care, what quilt design I use on the quilt. 
Now to get this, and the other four, to their intended recipients. 

 

5 Quilts in a Week?

 

Flower Boxes on the longarm; Ribbons and Wreaths (left) and Butterfly Sanctuary (right) on the design wall in the background

My daughter, grandson and I will be going to Ontario for a family reunion this summer. We each are allowed 3 pieces of luggage: one personal item, one carry-on and one checked bag. Because it's summer and we won't be needing heavy clothing, and we're only staying for a week, I'm hoping there will be room enough in our bags for some quilts. I would like to finally finish three bed-sized quilts that I want to take with me to give to their intended recipients. So, I would like to focus on getting them done before our departure date. 
But in the meantime, I wanted to get some snuggle quilts done first. Five of them, only one of which was already started before last week. And I determined to see if I could get all 5 of them done in one week, so that I could focus on spending the rest of my time working on those 3 bed-sized quilts. And I nearly accomplished it. I have 3 already quilted and ready for binding (Good Vibrations, Flower Boxes and Ribbons and Wreaths). Butterfly Sanctuary is ready for the longarm, and Ashford Square will also be ready for the longarm as soon as the borders are added. 
I was making great progress and then on Friday, I hit a snag. I had no fabric that would work for the binding on the Flower Boxes quilt, which necessitated a trip to the quilt shop. But I had already been to my local quilt shop and didn't find what I wanted. So, I was going to go out of town to the next nearest quilt shop, about 20 minutes drive away. And then my daughter got called into work, so I would be responsible for overseeing my grandson's virtual schooling. And since she was working over the weekend (she's working in healthcare), I decided on some "field trips" with my grandson. On Sabbath afternoon, we went to Elk Island National Park. 

It was gorgeous there, and we exhausted ourselves with over 4 km of hiking. That doesn't sound like much, but most of it was not smooth, paved trails like in the above picture. And that was a lot for this old grandmother who hasn't exercised regularly in too long. 
On Sunday, we took in the Edmonton Reptile Expo and the Alberta Aviation Museum. On Monday, my daughter was asked to work for the rest of the week, for a total of 8 days straight. So, even though my grandson is old enough to not require a whole lot of direct supervision from me, I still had to feed him and my daughter (they usually stay with me when she's working) and I haven't done any quilting this week. And today is Thursday. Maybe today...

Quilter's Scrap Pantry: a Book Review

 I received a free digital review copy of Quilter's Scrap Pantry by SusanClaire Mayfield. through Net Galley. I have not received any compensation for this review.

Organizing my fabric leftovers is something that I must make a priority, so that's why I requested this book on NetGalley. And I was looking forward to what the author had to share with me. 
She starts off with basic quilting equipment, supplies and techniques. To me, this seems rather redundant to a quilter with enough experience to have a collection of scraps to organize. On the other hand, starting out organized might prevent the scrap hoard from getting out of control like mine. She then goes on to describe the choices of containers required to keep your scraps organized. I will say that this inspired me to look online to see what might work for me. I already have several units of Kallax shelving units from Ikea in my studio, so I explored what was available for storage in these units. I was very pleased to find these

and these. 

I'll start with this metal mesh bin. I have several of the fabric bins that fit the Kallax shelving. Most of them are storing yarn, but in one of them I had my layer cakes and some coordinating yardage. However, the fabric bin was not sturdy enough to support all of that fabric. So, I decided I'd try this metal one. Unfortunately, it doesn't appear to be sturdy enough to support all of that weight either. I tried to pull it out again to add another item or two and it started to bend. There is a rattan basket available at Ikea that fits these shelves as well and I might have to try one of those for my layer cakes instead. 
The plastic storage boxes in the first picture, however, are great. I bought a total of 8 of them, but will likely buy more as I gradually organize my shelves. The two in the picture contain fabric panels in the top one and jelly rolls and charm squares in the bottom one. They are 13" square on the outside, but I haven't had a chance to see if they will store a 12½" quilt block flat. That would be really awesome if they did. I also find that the boxes that they come in are a great size for storage/shipping. 
So, if nothing else, this book has inspired me to actually do something to start getting organized. 
The next part of the book details her suggested method of organizing. The author cuts her leftovers into smaller pieces of predetermined sizes, ranging from 1½" squares to 6½" squares and then various rectangles as well, plus some uncut strips. She then assembles some of these pieces into units: 4-patch, 9-patch, snowball blocks, flying geese and HSTs. 
I honestly see a great deal of merit in her method. It would simplify and expedite using up one's scraps if you just had to open a box/drawer/bag that had the correct size in it, make your selection and start sewing. However, for me, I have a few issues with this method. The first thing is the HSTs. I rarely trim anything, so I prefer to start with 2⅞" squares, for example, when I want a finished size of 2". I don't want to start with a 3" square and have to trim. All of the effort I've put into saving time by precutting all of my scraps is then taken up by having to trim all of my HSTs. And I hate trimming. The second issue is the flying geese units, which she makes using the stitch and flip method, which wastes fabric when you have to cut the corners off. I hate wasting fabric and prefer the no-waste method, which requires measurements by the quarter and eighth inches. These are not included in her pre-cuts. She has whole and half inches. And to start trying to include quarter and eighth inches would be overwhelming. I think she made the best choice by only including the ones she did. But that doesn't mean that it's going to work for me. Because I never know where, when and how I'm going to end up using my fabric leftovers, I prefer to leave them as the large pieces that they are. That way I can determine what size to cut them when I do get around to using them. And some of my pieces are large enough that they have filled in a gap in a quilt I was working on. If I had already cut them down into multiple pieces of various sizes, I couldn't have done that. So, my boxes instead will be mostly the pieces as they are when I'm finished the quilt they were originally purchased for. I plan to organize them by colour. Just having them organized in individual boxes, rather than all over my studio, or piled haphazardly on a shelf, will definitely help me in my quilt-making and scrap use. 
I'm not totally ruling out the author's method, however. I think I may use it on a more limited basis when I have a particular scrappy project in mind. Currently, I have in mind a project that will require 480 HSTs that are 2½" finished size. That means I will need 240 each light and dark 3⅜" squares. So precutting these as I'm organizing my fabric leftovers makes sense for me. 
Before I continue with my review of the book, I'd just like to point some things out about digital review copies of a book. These are not final, published copies, so there are lots of imperfections. In this particular book, several of the photographs are upside down. And some pictures appear more like some glowing apparition. 

Like this, 

or this. There are also outlines that should contain diagrams, but they are empty. There are paragraphs that are not where they're supposed to be and instructions that are out of order. If I was reviewing a finished copy of a book, then I would likely make some comments about the layout and pictures, but this is not possible with this digital review copy.
Moving on in the book, the next section tells how to assemble the various units to make blocks and full quilts. Normally, when I review a quilting book, I like to make at least one project from the book so that I can discover from experience how clear the instructions are. I wasn't sure if I was going to do that with this book for two reasons. The first reason is that I consider this book more about organizing fabric scraps and not so much a book about making quilts. And the second issue, of course, is the lack of usable pictures and diagrams. It appeared that it would have to be a mystery quilt, if I wanted to attempt it at all. But then I got towards the back of the book and suddenly there were diagrams of blocks and full quilts. And the quilts looked interesting enough that I wanted to try one. So, I chose the medallion quilt. And while I didn't have the precut squares/rectangles and premade units, and I did follow my preferred methods for making HSTs and flying geese, it still was a great pattern. Some of the instructions were out of order in my copy, but they were numbered, so I was still able to follow them. They are in simple, plain English and easy to follow. The steps are very clear.

So, this will be the very first quilt that I have made fully from quilt leftovers. It's a lot of fun and I'm happy with how it's turning out. I wanted this post to include a picture of the completed quilt, but other projects interrupted and I think I've waited long enough to post my review. 
The author finishes the book with instructions on how to bind a quilt (did I miss the quilting part?) and further ideas for how to use scraps. Aside from my personal preferences for how I want to manage my scraps, I feel this is a very worthwhile book. 

The Great Bread Making Adventure: Granary Cob, Grant Loaves, Poppy-Seeded Bloomer and a Couple of Belated Mentions

 At one time, Silver Hills bread, my favourite store-bought bread, was available for purchase in town at all three of our local grocery options. I'm not sure why, but now only one of those stores offers it. And the price keeps going up. And I find most other store-bought breads doughy and unpalatable, with sometimes questionable ingredients. Since I'm now retired and supposedly have more time on my hands, plus the fact that I do own a Bosch mixer that has been standing mostly idle for years, not to mention a fairly new grain grinder (my daughter "inherited" my old one) and a store of organic grains, I decided that I really should be baking my own bread. It's just a matter of setting aside the time to actually get it done. I do enjoy bread making, especially when it turns out well. And I have found a recipe that makes a few loaves, which is what I want, but I'm still tweaking it. I haven't hit on the optimum amount of flour to add without it being incredibly sticky. As a result, I often end up with malformed, albeit edible, loaves. 

I will keep working on that however. 
Meanwhile, I was overdue for baking a batch of bread, and actually resorted to buying some Silver Hills bread at the only store in town that still sells it. I finally made the time to grind some grain, and was planning on using my "usual" recipe when I happened to pull out The World Encyclopedia of Bread. It's been a long time since I've tried any recipes from this book. 
After all of the reference material, the first recipe in the book is the Granary Cob, which calls for Granary flour or malthouse flour. Try finding that in Canada! Unless, I was prepared to pay a small fortune to have it shipped from the UK, I would have to find an alternate. Fortunately, I was able to find a UK vendor for malthouse flour that actually gives the percentages for the ingredients. Thank you, Doves Farm. I already had wheat and rye, but I had to find malted barley and malted wheat flakes. None of my usual grain vendors in Canada carried malted products, so I had to turn to a home brewing company, where I was able to purchase what I needed. The wheat flakes do not indicate that they are malted, so I bought malted wheat as well. Using the percentages from the Doves Farm website as a rough guide, I came up with my own blend for malthouse flour. 
I actually made the flour some time ago, but hadn't gotten around to making the Granary Cob. So, I decided it was time. 

In addition, I decided to try the second recipe, Grant Loaves, as well, in lieu of my regular bread recipe. 
The Granary cob has a pretty thick crust, especially on the bottom. I seem to have this problem with many of my bread experiments and will have to research how to remedy that. Otherwise good flavour and texture. This bread has no added fats or sugars.

The Grant loaf is a fairly dense bread, which was to be expected since it is not kneaded and only has a 30 minute rise. But it's flavour and texture were also good. I don't know if I will repeat this recipe, however, as I prefer that my bread be not so heavy and dense. It also has no added fats and only 1 tablespoon of muscovado sugar for the 3 loaves. I didn't have muscovado and all my brown sugars were hard as rock, so I used date sugar. 

I decided I wanted to make the Poppy-Seeded Bloomer as well, but ran out of time that day as this one requires a cool rise of 5-6 hours and a 2 hour second rise. As it turned out, however, when I made it the next day, in spite of being in the cold storage room, my dough only took a couple of hours for the first rise and an hour and a half for the second rise. I also added more water than the recipe called for and reduced the cooking time by about 10-15 minutes as well. I didn't slash it as deeply as I should have, but it turned out great. My daughter and grandson were visiting and we made sandwiches with it to go with our soup, and we all really enjoyed this bread. I will likely make it again. This one also had no added fats or sugars. 
Just a note regarding yeast: this book calls for fresh yeast (as opposed to active dry yeast) in most of the recipes, which I don't necessarily want to work with, even if I could find it in Canada. If you're interested in knowing how to substitute, you can find information here and here.
As I was preparing to write this post, I searched my blog to see when and what I last posted from The World Encyclopedia of Bread. It's been over 2 years since the last time. But when I was looking over the posts, I realized that a couple of recipes were missing. Good thing that I write the date that I tried the recipe on the recipe page in the book. 

One of the things I wrote about in a previous post was trying to find a pan for focaccia. I needed 2 - 10" cake or pizza pans. Well, fortunately, the Wholesale Club in Edmonton carries pizza pans of many sizes, including 10", and I was able to make the foccacia way back on May 8th of 2023. As far as I can recall, it turned out well (there's no big X through the recipe 😄).  And it certainly looks good in the picture. 

The Sesame-Studded Grissini that I made on June 6, 2023, also turned out well to the best of my knowledge, although I remember something about them getting too hard after cooling off... Not really sure, and I didn't make any notations in the book, other than the date and the conversion to quick rise yeast. And that is the last time that I made a recipe from this book. Until this week. 
I do find that sometimes it can be challenging to focus on more than one hobby. And occasionally I will go full tilt with one of my interests for awhile, to the neglect of the others. But I do enjoy bread making. I will endeavour to be more balanced in pursuit of my hobbies, and not leave The World Encylopedia of Bread for another year or two...

Sourdough Update

In the previous post I made about sourdough, I had pretty much given up on it. But somehow I managed to finally get my starter to start. And I have since reactivated it a few times. I refuse to keep feeding it daily, as I'm not going to make bread, pancakes, crackers or what have you on a daily basis. So, I keep it in the fridge and reactivate (take it out of the fridge and feed it until it becomes active and useful again) it when I want to make something with it. 

Because I used the sourdough instructions from the King Arthur Baking website, I have been using their recipes for various sourdough breads, only making them whole grain. One of my favourites is the hamburger bun recipe: no more scouring the grocery store shelves for whole grain and healthy burger buns. I can just make my own. 

Another favourite is the English muffin recipe. Unfortunately, I have yet to master the art of unformity in size. 😁 I suppose rolling the dough out and using a cutter insted of the alternate of just dividing the dough would probably help. I also haven't managed to achieve the typical bubbly texture, the texture of mine being more like regular bread. I'll have to work on that. 

The pancakes are a hit, but I have to plan ahead to remember to start the sponge the night before. And they use up some of the still abundant supply of discard in my fridge. 

I have also tried other "bread-speriments" with varying degrees of success. On the top left is the Whole Wheat and Rye Sourdough Bread. The recipe called for caraway seeds, anise seeds and cardamom. I don't like either of those seeds and cardamom just seemed like a weird idea to me, so I left all three out. I put this one directly into the freezer and I assume I have since eaten it, unless it has disappeared into the abyss (I really need to clean my freezers out...). The round loaf is Jeffrey's Sourdough Rye Bread, in which I again skipped the caraway seeds, and on the right is Sourdough Cinnamon Raisin Bread. Unfortunately, these last 2 needed to go into the oven at the same time, but at different temperatures, so I opted to use the Breville Smart Oven for the rye bread.

However, I neglected to account for the convection function on the oven and that is likely why the bread had such a thick, tough crust. Otherwise, it had a nice texture and flavour. After taste-testing, this rye bread, too, went into the freezer, never to be seen or heard from again.
As for the raisin bread, I didn't feel that there were enough raisins and I felt that they should have been mixed in with the dough, rather than applied to the flattened dough and rolled up. 

It had a tendency to separate where the filling is, which may be fine for a cinnamon roll, but not really workable for a loaf of bread, especially not if you want to put it into a toaster. Otherwise, the flavour was very good and the texture of the bread was fine.
I think the recipe for Sourdough Graham Crackers came up in my Facebook feed and I decided to give them a try, especially since they would use up more of my discard. I also repeated the Sourdough Crackers recipe. Neither of these turned out very well. Both of them were hard, not flaky like a cracker should be. And a lot of the graham crackers ended up scorched. Although the taste was still good and my grandson enjoyed them. The sourdough crackers were too sour and too salty. I think I might have been in too big of a hurry, so was too focused on finishing, not quality? And my supply of discard might be getting too sour? Is that a possibility? And I don't think I need to salt the tops of the crackers. 

I tried the Buttery Sourdough Biscuits, which tasted good, but were too crumbly and too high in fat. 

Sourdough crumpets don't work very well in the crumpet rings, and they scorch too easily if you're not careful. I haven't given up on these yet, though.

Sourdough pizza crust worked well fresh, but was a dud if the dough was frozen for future use. At least that was my experience - kind of like trying to make pizza crust out of playdough. Yuk!

I think this must be the Whole Wheat Sourdough Bread, which I don't remember anything about. But it looks good. I believe I also tried the Rustic Sourdough Bread, but I have no real memories of it either. I definitely need to try to blog about things closer to when they actually occurred. But the one I do remember trying was the Sourdough Pumpernickel Bread. Big disappointment! I have been trying various pumpernickel and black bread recipes over the years, trying to find one that actually replicates the taste of storebought pumpernickel. Because that is one store-bought bread that I actually enjoy. But none of them come anywhere close, this one included. Most of them just having the overwhelming flavour of molasses. And the store-bought stuff doesn't. I don't know what the secret is, but this recipe is not it. 
Thinking about why I don't use sourdough more often: 

• Many of the recipes are for only 1 loaf. If I'm going to make bread, other than specialty breads, why would I heat up the oven for only one loaf? I haven't figured out how to triple or quadruple a sourdough bread recipe. Or if it works best one loaf at a time. 
• Many of the recipes also call for dry yeast, so why don't I just use all dry yeast and forgot the hassle of sourdough? It seems inauthentic, like a cheater way of making sourdough.
• There are also many recipes where you make enough starter for that one recipe, which negates the need to maintain a starter (although they often use dry yeast as well).
• Many recipes also suggest or require the use of specialty equipment, like a Dutch Oven, which can be quite expensive.    
• It's a hassle. When I want to use it, I have to take it out of the fridge and reactivate it by feeding it and then having to figure out what to do with the discard. And the actual bread making process is generally more time consuming as well. 

I don't plan on throwing out my sourdough starter as I have found a few recipes that I like, and until I can find a good replacement for them, I will continue. Meanwhile, I do want to try the Naturally Leavened Sourdough Bread recipe, which doesn't require the use of additional dry yeast. And I still need to get my discard situation under control. I can put my fridge space to better use.