A tiny slice of my life

This is a look at my life, and the many things I try to learn and do.

Friday, December 21, 2012

What Have I Been Up To ... Christmas Sewing & Cooking

Well I haven't forgot you all I have just been very busy getting Miss Le Coiffures quilt finished for Christmas.

All I have to do today is sew on the binding then I can sit tonight and hand sew it down.

Here is it as I have left it, after Christmas when Miss Le Coiffure has seen it I will post pictures showing you all the details.

Also for little Layla "Sweet Pea" I have already made 2 Santa stockings one for her house and one for Nanas house it feels strange saying that, I have gone from being a Mum to a Nana.

So I have been working on her Santa Sack, which I will finish after I have posted this.

Isn't it cute for a little cutie.

Ice cream

Now what have I been up to ths morning some gentle beating using the electric mixer and some stress relieving using my marble rolling pin on some candy canes.

The end result vanilla ice cream, coffee ice cream and my christmas favourite candy cane ice cream. It is divine with its peppermint flavour and pieces of candy cane.

I must admit it is a very easy recipe

Ice cream recipe

1 x 600 ml bottle of cream & 1 1/4 cups icing sugar beaten to soft peaks.

This year I divided it in half and flavoured one half with vanilla not essence or extract but the actual seeds and the other half I mixed in broken candy canes.


That is were the gentle stress relieving bashing of candy canes comes in, because you want some pieces but also the fine dust which will flavour the ice cream.

Then comes the coffee ice cream. Now normally I make the ice cream above and add coffee flavour and crushed chocolate coated coffee beans, but as I have been so busy I haven't been looking for the coffee beans.

I fell upon the recipe I used on the internet yesterday , it is from Nigella's new show Nigellissima and is dead easy.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/food/recipes/one-step_no-churn_coffee_88525

If mixed the coffee and liquor in the bottom of the bowl while I measured the other ingredients. This gave the coffee time to dissolve.

Coffee ice cream

300 mls Cream, 175 grams condensed milk, 2 tbsps instant expresso coffee powder & 2 tbsps coffee liquor - I used tia Maria

Mix coffee & liquor together in your mixing bowl, add cream & condensed milk. Beat till very soft peaks form it took about 3 minutes in my mixer, stop scrap down sides keep beating till soft peaks form. Place into a sealable container a freeze 6 hours or overnight.

Well if I don't get a chance to post again before Christmas from the CLI family we wish you a very Merry Christmas and a safe New Year.

 

Friday, December 14, 2012

Easy Street Mystery Quilt Steps 2 & 2 + Some Christmas Sewing

 

Here are after 2 days of serious sewing I have now completed all 3 steps of the Easy Street Mystery Quilt, phew !

Now all I have left to do is iron the squares flat, that is a job I can do when I am less busy.

Also while I was waiting for the cotton to quilt Miss Le Coiffures quilt I got busy making 2 Santa Stockings for my little Sweet Pea.

One for her house and one for Nanas - my - house.

I used a pre printed panel from Spotlight and primped it.

I got our my collection of beautiful ribbons, not only do I collect fabric I have trouble passing by a lovely ribbon.

I made crazy patchwork backs for the stockings. Don't you love this Santa , perfect for Australia.

Then I really pimped them with bells , Santas going to have to be extra quiet when he fills these and pom poms for the hats.

Both of them are now under there respective trees filled with little presents for a very special sweet pea.

 

Tuesday, December 11, 2012

Easy Street Mystery Quilt by Bonnie Hunter of Quiltville

Well after 2 weeks of no Internet I am behind the 8 ball in this mystery quilt. There us a clue each Friday and I missed the first 2, so I am running to catch up.
Last week saw some serious sewing of Miss Le Coiffures surprise quilt the top is all finished I only have to baste it then quilt it !
Her quilt consists of 63 12" blocks quite a big one.
Anyway I made some head way yesterday and today.
Step 1 is all cut and sewn. I only need to iron the blocks fat, but I can do that at anytime.

Step 2 cut ready to sew today.

Look what I found I had a quarter and half square ruler. In the instructions Bonnie uses 2 as I was reading them a little light went of in my brain.
I had recently gathered together all my specialized rulers into one place and remember seeing a ruler that would do the job! There it was still wrapped in plastic, well it has worked hard these last 2 days!
Step 3 also cut ready to sew. Phew.

Link to the mystery quilt
http://quiltville.blogspot.com.au/p/easy-street-mystery.html

Monday, December 10, 2012

The Internet is Back ... Yippee ! And Blocks from My - The Civil War Love Letter Quilt

Well hello again, long time no talk. Our local Telstra telephone exchange burnt down just over 3 weeks ago, so we lost all land lines & mobile service and our Internet was down :-(

 

Well we finally got it all back they should have everyone back on line over this weekend, it didn't do much for people Christmas shopping. No Atm's no Eftpos no banks computers working = no Xmas shopping.

I was very lucky I had withdrawn money from the bank the day before because we were going to Mt Gambier for the weekend phew !

If you were with the major banks you were unable to get any money or the maximum of $100. Some shops pulled from the back of the cupboards the old slide credit card machines, but very few did. Why ? Because dishonest people were going with maxed out credit cards and using them, one petrol station started out using this method then a couple of days later when the slips were sent to Sydney for processing it was shown quite a few people had done this, so the "Cash Only" sign went up.

Situations like this brings out the worst in people.

Now to my quilt blocks my Mum gave me the book for this quilt as a present this year ? I think . Why the fabric colors, well I was down at my parents house when I got given the book and I wanted to get started, so Mum got some fabrics out and we went from there. I believe there are 111 blocks to make and I have completed 47 , so nearly half way.

All the blocks in the photos have been hand sewn and yesterday I gave them a nice big steam press. Some of the blocks have very tiny pieces or funny angles I am going to foundation piece them on the machine after I have hand sewn all the other blocks.