Jelly Rolls

Have any of you used them at all? For quilting that is? I drool over them at Moda Bake Shop but NONE of the quilt shops in my area sell them. Poor me.

Missouri Quilt Co. is giving away a jelly roll this week. Maybe I'll win and I can finally get my hands on one. Too bad they're so far away from St. Louis since I'm going to be there in two weeks.

Quilted Pillows

I made these three quilted pillows for my bed. What do you think? They took a long time to make. I really enjoyed quilting again. I didn't use a pattern. The one is a diasappearing 9-patch and the others I just made up as I went along.

The One We've All Been Waiting For

I finished them and then forgot to take some pictures so my parents took this picture of the stockings for me today when they were at the house. You can see the four I did for Gabriel's family there on the right from Aiden to Dad and then Lily's. The rest I did two years ago. I'm going to have to make some adjustments on Lily's so it'll hang the same as the rest of ours. Didn't Johanna do a fantastic job on the embroidery? I think they turned out really pretty and I perfected it more this time around. What do you think?

Packs, Punkins and Pizza

Last year I purchased two charm packs from Fabric.com. They were both Moda fabrics, one was the Nell's Flower Shop collection and the other the Sonnet collection. I really liked the color combinations of both collections and thought the idea of having a 5" square from every fabric in the collection was really neat. Plus I really like working with such nice fabric. I think I've already mentioned on this blog how much I rue that I am relegated to Joann fabrics due to funding constraints. It's nice and everything but quilt shop fabrics like Moda and Robert Kauffman are simply luxurious! Anyway, I just knew I would one day find something fun to do with the charm packs. Well, that day has arrived. On Wednesday I was browsing through some of my favorite crafty blogs when somehow I happened upon this tutorial for a disappearing nine-patch quilt. It is so ridiculously easy I nearly finished it in one afternoon! I absolutely dig the quilt top. Of course I haven't quilted it or put the binding on it. I figure that that will get done next year or the year after considering my history with quilts getting finished. Hey, since the last quilt I started ended up getting finished for Lily a year and a half after I started it, maybe this quilt will be finished just in time for the next baby!

Speaking of Lily the other day Ella snapped this photo of little "L" smiling at us. She is the smiling-est baby I've had so far.

OK, the last exciting thing I have to tell you about is that I have found the "pizza light". Have you guys ever watched Good Eats on FoodNetwork? That is my absolute most favorite show on television. Sounds crazy, right? Well, I like Good Eats because Alton Brown explains the science behind cooking and I really like to know why you do certain things to certain ingredients so I can apply it next time I'm using that technique or ingredient or whatever. So, one day I was watching the episode on pizza and Mr. Brown said that the key to good pizza is good crust and I heartily agree. He advised that to make a good crust you must make the dough 18-24 hours in advance and let it rise that entire time in your refrigerator for optimum flavor and tenderness. So, trusting Alton Brown implicitly with all my food I made pizza dough and let it rise for 18 hours in my fridge. I kid you not I've never had pizza that good!!! It was better than Pizza Hut, better than any pizza joint I've ever been to! It was simply divine! You know when you get a pan pizza from Pizza Hut they put 4 gigantic squirts of OIL in the pan so the crust is FRIED (thank Mike for the info Meagan)??? YUCK! Since I found that out I haven't been able to down a single bite of pan pizza. And also, most pizzerias smother their pizza with sugary sauce and barely any cheese or toppings. I put just the right amount of my own sugarless pizza sauce on my pizza and all the toppings and cheese I wanted. My crust was not soaked in icky oil, it was light and fluffy and oh so flavorful! I highly recommend Alton Brown for a culinary education and making your own super duper yummy pizza dough. I did not use Alton's recipe for pizza dough because 1) the recipe I like uses honey and not refined sugar, 2) it uses more yeast (I actually use less than that but more than Alton) and 3) he says to use bread flour and I just don't have the time or space for more than one type of flour.

My quilting project

Ok, so it's time to reveal the project that I have been working on since early summer. I just made this up myself and I am winging it every step. It's not going to be that big, but it has been tedious getting all the darn triangles lined up and sewed together. I finally finished the edge with bias tape and now I am ready to put it on the piece of this black fabric, as to where I am going to go from there I am not sure. I don't even know what to use as the back fabric. I took a closer picture of the fabric so you can all see it is kinda "japanese" inspired. Derrek likes the colors and I have never worked with black and red before. The only bad thing is my cat won't leave it alone and its a fur magnet!