row by row experience - row two!

in keeping with the water theme of 2015, this super cool row did nautical flags!!! GAH!!! So cool! I haven't seen nautical flags pop up anywhere yet! lots of boats and other things, but no nautical flags! :D
 

I discovered that Ta-Da Quilting Studio does not sell fabric, but they do sell paper piece bits and wool rug hook kits. They also have a blog; Click here to go visit it.


So now I'm thinking of signing my name in the quilt with nautical flags, and I'll be able to use this row as a size guide line. It's a shame I'm not from Ohio, as the row ends with OH, but adapting the nautical flag [which also corresponds -or is, I'm not sure - to the NATO alphabet: Alpha, Bravo, Charlie, Delta, Echo, Foxtrot and so forth] to squares for a quilt is not difficult; I did it before in a sampler quilt.

row by row experience 2015 - row one

I finally got on the cool kid train and picked up my first row pattern at Kelly's
Sewing Corner in Erie! I'm keeping everything organized in my wicked cool binder from my college days as a member of Alpha Psi Omega - I don't remember what our rush was, but we picked Wicked as our musical and I did a fusible appliqué for my binder instead of printing out a color image and sliding it into the front of a binder pocket.

I also picked up some excellent fabric to help tie the quilt together -  the beach glass was made especially for the Row By Row experience this year. And for Erie, why no one has lobbied for beach glass fabric before, I'll never know. People are obsessed with the stuff. For real.

I'm going to use my batik stash for this project, since one of my goals is to move on with a bin of finished quilt tops/finished quilts and not bins of fabric... we will see how that works out... you should see how many bins of potential projects I have... forget the bins of loose fabric...

Anyway. The first row I picked up!

 The star part is pretty straight forward, I just found the cutting directions confusing at first - like the 'cut star points' {what? oh, you want me to cut out squares, gotcha. Tell me that first, the way you told me to cut out 4 rectangles.}

 Then to complete the row, you have to make the chevron wave blocks and add 'bubble fabric' [the dark bars]. At least the chevron is sewn by making strips, or I'd have thrown this out the window, or made it up myself.

When I make this myself, I plan on grading the colors of the block so that chevrons go light to dark the way water would. I appreciate the use of nautical fabric, but I found it a little busy myself.

boxes, boxes, boxes

Quandaries of a box.

Here's my first box. You've probably already read about it. This is the box I want to take with me. This is the box I heavily researched and worked hard on. This box is my baby. This box has highly inappropriate steel snipe hinges that I made myself from cotter pins from Tractor Supply but also has hand forged handles and a hasp. I have yet to put them on, but I've been a little busy.

The plus side of the jolly green giant is that it
a. quite possibly could have held everything, clothing wise at least, except for the cloak which would have been spread on my bed
b. was period appropriate

Alas, the JGG does not fit easily into my current vehicle. I drive a coupé, which for the purposes of this hobby, or really, anything else except being youthful and free, is useless.

So. Smaller boxes. After building JGG I decided against trying to go from scratch again. It was just to much of a pain. There's not time, no space, and I don't have the proper tools. Not to mention the right amount of clamps. Not to mention my income. And migraines. We won't talk about that. Let's just say rock and hard place.

At my first event, of which I have no pictures because I brought only my phone and we were in the middle of a National Forest [and guess what! There is no cell reception in the middle of a National Forest! And iPhones don't have super power save mode like 'droids! :D >:( ] someone had a painted dome top box with canvas over the dome. This, I thought, had distinct potential. No muss, no fuss, no why is there an EXIT sign in pieces on my bench [I wish I was making this up...].

To the craft store with the coupons et voilà.

you can't actually find a picture of the chest I bought online for some strange reason... you can only go to A.C. Moore, in person, and buy it, but if you search at Home Depot, they have a fair approximation for $40.

the home depot chest, not to be confused with the one I bought, which you can't find a picture of online. it's like it doesn't exist. weird. Also mine retails for $10 less. And I had a coupon for 25% off. Um, yay.

I can see why that person chose to cover the top with canvas. Mine probably didn't need it but hey. Better safe than sorry. The huge perks of being a person that sews include having scrap canvas laying around, so I had a piece of navy blue canvas that I coated with polycrylic and more or less trimmed to size, allowing a little for tucking under. A trip to the small local hardware store and I got slightly more appropriate brass hinges and some 'soldier blue' milk paint. Milk paint is VOC free, so with the migraines, its fabulous. No fumes, I don't get sick.

After the monsoon reenactment of 2015 the first event of the year, I decided adding skids to the bottom might not be a bad idea. My mother and I were at the Carnegie Museum of Art and took especial interest in the bottoms of trunks and chests so I know it wasn't totally out of the ordinary for a trunk to have feet or runners of some kind. And seriously, this sucker has a bottom made of 3/16ths ply if it's lucky so no way I'm setting it directly in wet grass or mud. And yes, I know the bottom skids aren't blue. It's been raining here to beat the band- I'm keeping my fingers crossed that the tung oil and polycrylic took. Some things are best left to wait until it is a bit dryer.

It just doesn't have a hasp - okay, it did have a hasp, a very Asian style hasp which would have been cool if it had been stamped with Asian symbols instead of a bald eagle... guys? The lack of hasp bothers me for travelling purposes but meh. One less thing taking up space in the tent.

Twinkle twinkle

Another one for the baby books.

Two quilts for the road

This is the last, the very last of the purple fabric from a chain mail quilt from 2008. 

This was a quilt along from a website I can't remember the start and the bullseye a were supposed to alternate but it just didn't look right. So. Editing.

peach salsa

I can't believe I never wrote a post about this.

So. Without further adieu. A few caveats - and if you've ever read my blog ever, you know I'm full of them.
A. Feel free to ditch peaches in favor of nectarines. Same flavor profile without the preboil to remove fuzzy skin. You will thank me later. Trust me. No one tells you to remove the skins. And when you catch on to it... it's gross. And time consuming. And ... just trust me on this. Unless peaches are cheaper and/or you have the time/resources/patience, etc.
B. Short on peaches/nectarines? Mangoes. Mangoes are an excellent addition to either fruit and can be mixed cup for cup, I believe, up to half of the recipe. Then you run into issues with sugar contents and the mangoes turn into babyfood. Do not quote me on all this [the sugar bit and the baby food bit yes, but the ratio may be less]; this has been done on occasion in a pinch to achieve require fruit amounts with excelent results. However. proceed with caution, and do a little research. Pro tip.
C. Nothing anywhere says you have to use all of the spices or, for that matter the cilantro. Any of the cilantro. At all. Really, you're going for the acid content, which is controlled by the vinegar in the recipe, so that you have to use. All of the vinegar. The vinegar is what kills bacteria, IE botulism, which in turn tries to kill you. SO, if you don't like it hot, or you think green chillies are lame or whatever, swap them out, but keep the ratios [this number of cups and that number of tsp, etc]. This is actually chemistry we're dealing with. Chemistry = modern medicine, too. You just don't want to have to walk into the ER greenface with a jar of homemade salsa ...

Otherwise. Kind of cool, huh?
Last note: no one has ever gotten sick or died from MY canning. Your canning on the other hand is all on you and how YOU take care of YOUR raw ingredients, sterilization and kitchen.  :)

This recipe is sourced from the Ball Blue Canning book, which is available through most major retailers as well as to BORROW FOR FREE your friends at your local Public Library WHO WOULD LOVE TO MEET YOU!!! And also have a bajillion other books about canning. Ball is a great place to start.

This recipe makes 4 pint or 8 half pint jars. Or what ever combintation there in you decide to go with. Or can find. That's usually where I end up.

Ingredients:

Peaches (nectarines), enough to make 6 and 1/2 cups diced. Like kitty kibble or slightly bigger than peas or corn diced.
Onion, enough for 1 and 1/4 cups diced 

1 (one) Red bell pepper (I'm convinced this is only for color because green fades out in canning), deseeded and pithed (the stringy white bits) diced. The whole thing. 

1/2 cup of white vinegar. It may say distilled on the side. Same thing. Apple cider vinegar works too, as long as the acid content is 5%

Honey. 2 tbsp, liquid (warm up those crystals in the microwave if you need to, no shame) I know, it's a smuckers packet. All about the visuals here. 

Cumin, 1 and 1/2 tsp. use the powder. 

Garlic. 1 clove. Mashed, chopped, or the equivalent measure of diced.

Options I left out* (aka season to taste, or the BTU tolerance of your mouth)

*Cayenne: 1/2 tsp

*Cilantro: 1/2 cup

1/2 cup diced spicey pepper of your choice, seeded or not for heat. - substitution note: I use canned green chile. You know, the tiny 4.5 ounce mild, peeled and chopped ones in the Mexican foods section. This may make me an evil person but I don't have to touch it and I like the spice level and no one has died. Yet. ;) 

I am a spice wuss. I also hate cilantro (I think it tastes like soap). A final note, you can always control for additional heat after the fact. You can't tone it down later.

Cooking instructions:
Put diced fruit, onion, peppers, spices and liquids in a stock pot. Bring salsa to a boil, stirring gently. Simmer 10 minutes, allowing to thicken, stirring occasionally. Pack into jars with 1/2" head space. Process in waterbath for 15 minutes. Allow to rest 24 hours.

Don't forget to label. Hoard from family and friends.  

fun things I relearned making this. It takes six [6] fist sized fruits to do this. Not five [5]. six [6]. Otherwise in the pre-coffee morning fog that says, oh yes, here we go, 6 cups of fruit in the pot, la la, you end up with the picture on the left. A sad half a jar of salsa that cannot be processed. That one fruit makes a difference. I did go nectarine crazy at the store, so there are four left over, and that onion was rather a whopper. So.

One red onion, one can of chilies and two more peaches...

Old Fort Niagara's French and Indian War Encampment 2015

Vive L'Roi! [We are French, after all]

very fine cribbage board. no one knew how to play cribbage.

I made strawberry raspberry shrub. It was tasty.

 And a good time was had by all.

emerald isle

A few summers ago I made this quilt for my brother [which still isn't done done] based on the pattern by Moda Bake shop called Sweet Menagerie.

And before I get too far, this is Harry, my brother's cat. Such a good helper.

For reasons I now don't remember, likely they were using precuts and I had stuff laying around I just wanted to use up, I didn't have a clear idea how much fabric to supplement the project with. I wanted it to be scrappy in the nine patch, calm and orderly over all. But still. No idea. My squares were bigger, so something, again. I have no idea. I kept the left overs in a box. This week I pulled the box and other accumulated bits that had been lost and whatnot and thought about seeing how far I could get with making a top just with what leftovers I had on hand.

This is a Double/Queen size blanket. I have a problem. Or maybe I don't.

lighting the way

Lanterns. So. Much. Fun.
Except of course, when you have your first event coming up, and you were an obsessively prepared girl scout and you think to yourself  'But wait... how will I see in the dark?'

For after hours there is the obvious flashlight but we all know how hard it is to be digging around for something and not have both hands free. Head lamp you say. Yes, but do you know how easy it is to blind people with those? I made a solar lantern the hard way by galvanizing a solar stake that is light sensitive [on/off depending whether there is light or not] and hot glued the cap to a wide mouth jar band. It now lives in my mother's bathroom window as a nightlight. Not even kidding. My friends and I found premade small mouth solar lantern lights at the craft store that have an on/off switch...  Because when there are small children and tired, stumbly adults about, who wants to leave a line of FLAMING luminaries around your worldly possessions? That's right. No one does.

This still didn't solve the problem of a period appropriate lighting device.

Example A, also known as a barn lantern is period appropriate. It is to my liking and would suit my personal proclivity to knock things over and break them at any moment.

It costs an entire day's pay in my present income bracket before taxes and shipping. That would be a no. It's beautiful, but I need that money for other things right now.

The girl scouts didn't really teach you how to do anything handy, at least, my troop didn't. Maybe that's changed...? In any case. I found another man's blog. He's from Utah, and he made similar lanterns, and had some enlightening photographs on his blog. So I thought. Why not. I'm handy with this sort of thing. 

Let me first preface this with I have little to no idea what I'm actually doing, or rather, I don't really have the tools at my disposal to do things with. This lantern is about 11 1/2" tall. About. There are no cabinetry making specs here. I used a pine 1x4 from Lowes or Home Depot from the nice section, 4' x 1/2' long. The door/back are about 2 inches shorter than the top crest of the lantern. As I have absolutely no idea how to make a candle pan from tin/aluminum sheet, I used a black candle holder from Ikea, and had to cut grooves for it on all sides after the fact so it would fit in the lantern cavity. It fits snugly, so I have no fear of it sliding out or tipping over. It's also black. I suppose if I'd have picked up the brass one with a loop at SalvAl I could have made that work, too.

As you can see from this top picture, there are two horizontal grooves cut out on the door near the cavity of the lantern. I tried to set snipe hinges like the ones in the picture above [and it failed miserably], but mine would have been 18 gauge aluminum wire because again. Money. Working with what I have. However, I messed up the mechanics of the hinge and should have set the loop on the outside of the door, not the inside. I was also in a hurry to get this done.

That said, the lantern has extra holes in it that are covered up by period appropriate leather strap hinges. I have no idea where we got this piece of leather but we had it laying around the house and no one was laying claim to it so I commandeered it for this project. If you have no idea what you're doing, nail the strap/screw the hinge onto the door first. Trust me.
Once the door was on the the little tab nailed in with an OBVIOUSLY APPROPRIATE NAIL, I discovered that the door sticks. I tried to shave off suspected sticky places with my furniture chisels but no luck. There is the addition of a leather tab to help get the door open while I sort that mess out with files and rasp and sandpaper.
The windows voids were cut out with a drill and cleaned up with a chisel and a router, then the rabbet for the window was made with a router and cleaned up with the chisels. I made the stripping for the widows out of what is referred to as 'fill it' strip, but with the humidity in our basement, felt safer nailing it in with brass brads. Most of them split on the ends, but they are stuck in there. One of the panes of glass cracked on me while I was driving nails, so it was back to the store for another custom cut of glass [I had thought of just getting 2x3 picture frames, so it would be easy to replace the glass if it broke, but silly me, I marked the wrong cut lines and then drove the drill into the wrong place without thinking at 9PM after a long day at work...]

The 'tin' lid is actually a piece of 8"x4" chimney flashing, which is deceptive for someone who doesn't know what they are looking for because it's actually 8"x8", but it's folded in half down the middle. I punched it myself with a claw hammer and a set of 'wood carving chisels' from Harbor Freight on a piece of scrap pine. No one is carving wood with those kiddos, believe me, I tried. Get some Flexcuts or something, but for this application, punching aluminum sheet, the "wood carving chisels" were perfect.
The exterior of the lantern was finished with with a homemade mixture of food safe beeswax and mineral oil because again, it's what I had. And also, what I could find at the time.

And then, and then there are those times you walk into the store and suddenly you see...

And you think to yourself 'what?!'

I had this ripped apart and turned into a more, shall we say, appropriate accoutrement in four hours. Four. Hours.

It doesn't have a candle holder and I can't find my pillar candles but details. It's done. I pried the mesh and framing out with a chisel, had glass measured at the hardware store (pried off the top, broke the top, messed up the back up top, made a second back up top) purchased dowel rods, drilled holes in the  (new) lid the same side as the dowel. Drilled matching holes in the interior base of the lantern for the dowels to fit into, as close to the corner as possible. Fit the glass into the door and secured temporarily with leftover strip bits from the mesh (I'll use ripped strips of fill it trim later) fit the pins of the door back in and secured it into the opening. Secured the glass into the frames, slid the dowels into the slots in the base of the lantern and the new lid, nailed down the aluminium cover to the top and cut and fit a new handle out of coat wire, into a hole drilled into the lantern body, not the lid. Voilà. 

The lantern on the top would have cost me $65 ish dollars, the one above $40ish? By making them myself I think I saved $75.

Field tests are this weekend!!

pockets

yay pockets.

The Victoria and Albert Museum did a great write up about pockets, and as I was reading it, I wondered, but why do the women have a separate pocket and the men don't? My friend's conjecture is that because women were considered property, and buttons were not only a symbol of wealth but also used as money, why would you give money to your property. Women weren't worth it. And with a wage discrepancy of $.75 a woman earns to every $1 a man earns, women still aren't considered worth it.