Chrysanthemum Whale Tutorial

Ornaments are a great way to use up scraps of material. And this little guy, Chrysanthemum Whale, is a happy little whale that likes to swing from tree branches, bask in the sunlight, and protect any presents you place under your tree. He is the newest member of my Christmas tree ornament family. And below I will show you how to create one for your home.

• gather your supplies: your scraps of material, craft batting, pencil or fabric marker, embroidery floss and needle, embroidery hoop, paper, ribbon for the hoop, fiberfill
• trace or draw your version of a whale, or any other shape or animal that you like onto a piece of paper. Remember to include space for the seam allowance. I usually do a 1/4" seam allowance. A good way to do that is to draw the shape the desired size for the finished product, then trace around it the amount of space you will use for your seam allowance.
• Make sure that you make your whale facing the direction you want the front to be. Draw a face on him to remember which way is front.
  

• After you cut him out, place him face down on the scrap of fabric you will use for the back. Trace, cut and set aside.
  

• Take the scrap of fabric you will use for the front right side up and place the pattern on it front side up. Trace but do not cut.
  

• Next, trace or draw the pattern you want to embroider. I used a bunch of swirly lines coming up from a center and a stem for the chrysanthemum. Cut a piece of batting the same size as your fabric and place it under the fabric.
  

• Place both pieces in your embroidery hoop. These are just a few dollars at your local craft store. I bought the smallest one for this ornament. Make sure to center the embroidery design and stretch it taut.
  

• Choose your colors. I chose a soft pink for the petals, brown for the center, and a light green for the stems.
  

• Using two strands of cotton floss, thread the needle and begin your embroidery. For this project I used the stem stitch throughout. If this is a new stitch for you, it is very easy to do. It is a great beginners stitch to learn with. There is a great tutorial for it here.
  

• After you complete your image cut out your whale, including the batting. The batting, by the way, is useful on many levels. One being, it will keep all of the behind work from showing through.
  

• Place your two whale pieces right sides together. You might want to place the ribbon for the hoop now so it can hang in between the two pieces. Make sure the ribbon is all tucked in so that you do not sew over it in other areas except for where you place it. Otherwise you can sew it to the top later. Pin together and sew around the entire whale, leaving a 1" gap for stuffing.
  

• Turn the whale inside out and stuff with fiberfill. The eraser end of a pencil or a crochet hook is a good tool to help get stuffing in the fins. Slip stitch the hole closed. If you did not add the ribbon earlier, sew it to the top of the whale now. You are done!

Below, meet Chrysanthemum Whale's sister, Sleepy Dandelion Whale, and their friendly bird neighbors. The birds are easily done and much quicker, as there is no embroidery involved. Just take your two pieces of fabric and place them wrong sides together. Trace and cut your image. Place each piece right sides together with ribbon in between, pin and sew leaving your 1" gap. Turn the bird inside out, stuff and slip stitch closed. Voila!

Enjoy learning new uses for your scraps? Check out more tutorials at Sew, Mama, Sew!

Sewing Group #3

This week we all picked a free tutorial online for an apron. I made one for my sister Tracy. These make great gifts because you can really personalize them with a myriad of embellishments, pockets, cute ties, long, short, etc. Also, they can be sooo cheap. The one I made for Bubba cost me $1.20. This one cost about $8. It all depends on what you get the fabric for and what type of deals you can get on any embellishments that you want, if any.

Homemade Cards

Most of the time when a friend/relative is getting married or having a baby, I always give money as the gift because that’s what I would like if I were them (unless the gift is homemade, I would LOVE that). Although I think money is a great gift, it’s kind of impersonal especially if you’re giving it to someone you know really well. That’s why I started making my own cards. You can find paper and other embellishment material for cheap if you hit the sales right. There are so many possibilities. Then all you need is the dark cardstock for the envelope and for the price of buying a card, you can make many, many cards with a more personal message. I’m in the process of making my own stamp to put on the back of the cards I make.

The envelope is made to fit the card. I make one big piece, fold it in half, and make it the top of the envelope. Then I stitch the remaining sides with colors that match the card. I try to use the color scheme of the event I’m making the card for.

If you have any cards that any of you have made, I’d love the see them!

Sewing Group Mtg #2

I never posted about what we did at our last sewing group. We made purses. There are plenty of free tutorials out there for handmade purses, so we all just found the one we wanted to make, bought the materials, then met to sew it all together.

Here is the tutorial I used. I made 2 variations of the same bag. The instructions for this one were kind of confusing at first, but just read through it and begin and then you'll realize how easy it is.

The design is for a reversible bag, but I made the soft pink one reversible, but not my sisters.

Smoked leg of lamb

This is a recipe that Joseph (Krhea's husband) have been in love with after watching it on the Primal Grill (PBS). In Joseph's words "It was the best meal Ive ever had." Go Adam!

1. First, pierce the leg of lamb all over with a paring knife, making each incision about 1" deep.
2. Fill the incisions with fresh rosemary, black olives, and fresh slices of garlic.
3. Brush all over the leg with olive oil (kind of sounds like changing a diaper)
4. Rub it all over with salt, pepper, and dried rosemary.
   
5. Make 2 pouches of the wood of your choice in aluminum foil. Poke holes in the pouches to allow the smoke to escape. Place them by the lit burner. Dont forget to soak them according to package instructions. Place the lamb in the grill that has been preheated to 370 degrees. Make sure the lamb is not directly over the flames. It needs to be cooked in indirect heat. Basically, only turn on one side of the grill; place the lamb on the unlit side.
   
6. Grill about 2 hours, or until internal temperature is about 145 degrees; a perfect medium rare.
7. About 20 minutes prior to the lamb being done, slice a red, yellow, and green bell peppers (about 5 of your choice), slice in about 2" wide slices, discard seeds and membrane. Place over the direct heat side of the grill. Season with salt and pepper. Flip them as they start to brown. Take them and place on the serving platter.
8. Lay the finished lamb on the bed of peppers and serve!

This was a DELICIOUS meal. Seriously, not very hard at all!

Grilled Peaches with Ice Cream

Before peaches are out of season I wanted to share this quick and easy dessert with all of you.
All you need to do is:

1. cut a peach in half, throw out pit and all the red stuff
2. grill it flesh side down for just about 3-4 minutes, or until you have some nice grill marks and the juices start to caramelize.
   
3. Place the halves in a bowl, sprinkle with cinnamon; top with vanilla ice cream and caramel sauce.
4. Enjoy!

variations: fresh pineapple

for the love

I've always mostly enjoyed cooking and baking, but lately for some reason I LOVE IT. I have been trying a lot of new stuff and that excites me. Last night for dinner I made

homemade tomato basil soup
roasted asparagus
and broiled french bread with lots of butter.

for dessert:
apple crisp (a new recipe)
vanilla icecream

I love the fall. I've been burning a mulled cidar candle. mmmmm.

when you don't have a dishwasher paper plates are the only way to go...

and listen, I know I could have taken better pictures,
but honestly, I was just proud I remembered to take any.
don't judge me.

tomato basil soup

4 cups chopped seeded peeled tomatoes
4 cups tomato juice
1/3 cup fresh basil leaves
1 cup milk
1/4 teas. salt
1/4 teas. cracked black pepper
1/2 (4 ouces) 1/3 -less-fat cream cheese, softened
Basil leaves, thinly slice (optional)

1. Bring tomato and juice to a boil in a large saucepan. Reduce heat; simmer 30 minutes.
2. Place tomato mixture and 1/3 cup basil in a blender or food processor; process until smooth. Return pureed mixture to pan; stir in milk, salt, and pepper. Add the cream cheese, stirring well with a whick, and cook over medium heat until thick (about 5 minutes). Ladle soup into each of 8 bowls; garnish with sliced basil, if desired.
Yield: 8 servings (serving size: 1 cup soup)

Lace jewelry frames

Sew, Mama, Sew! is having a scrap-buster contest so I figured I'd share this craft idea.

I made a skirt with brown lace and had so many odd shaped scraps left that I couldn’t really make anything wearable out of them. So I decided that it would work perfectly as a jewelry holder. When you live in about 700 sqft, you have to use your space efficiently. The walls have to become storage space and that is what inspired this craft. I bought all three of these cheap but interesting frames for $2.00 at a thrift store. I then used the inside of the frames to trace on a plain sheet of paper the inside shape and cut it out to use as a template. After positioning the template, I freehand cut the fabric with a rotary cutter 1 inch around the template (to have extra fabric on each side to glue to the back of the frame). Gluing one side at a time, I hot-glued the fabric to the back of the frame making sure that it was pulled taut. If you have heavier jewelry, use two sheets of lace for extra strength. Also, when you’re looking for frames, make sure it can be hung on a wall or you will have to buy the hardware.

Beginning Piecing and Quilting: Part 1

Last Thursday was week one of my quilting class. Each week we will make a few squares - each of which will involve a different technique. By the end of 6 weeks we will have made a sampler quilt top. Last week in class we started on the first block shown below. Before I knew it, two hours was up and we had to do all the rest from home. It was a lot of work to do at home (or so it seemed at first) and I thought it would take forever.

And the first block didn't help that impression any. It, for some reason, was really tricky and took a long time. By the end of it, I thought "I don't think I can get into this piecing thing." But the next one was so easy and turned out pretty and so I got my enthusiasm back. The rest didn't take nearly as long as that first block and so I went back to class tonight satisfied and ready to learn more.






Related to all of this is the amount time I spent picking out fabric and the absolute buyer's remorse I experienced as soon as I walked out of the shop with my selections. I had visions of doing this project in various shades of blue against a stark white background. But, when it came to actually making my selections I got nervous about how that scheme would work. I needed 8 fabrics, some light, some medium, some dark. I tried to come up with a different color scheme...but I just couldn't. I'm bad with color. And I think what I mean by that is that I'm bad at visualizing color - especially when prints are involved - and how it will look together. My wardrobe pretty much consists of solid color pieces because I really have a hard time with prints. It's not because I don't like them. It's something about pairing prints that throws me for a loop. I wish this were different. Anyway, I made the choices you see above and left the shop feeling like I didn't make any choices that I was excited about. And it took me almost 3 hours to finally make my choices. And the color scheme is almost identical to another quilt I've been working on for awhile. It was frustrating.

But, I'm over it...kind of. This is going to be a square sampler quilt (about 52") so I have no idea what I'll use it for anyway, other than something to hang on the wall if I feel so inclined. I'll have plenty of opportunities to make something else. And maybe I wouldn't want to use a really exciting color scheme on something I don't plan on having much use for anyway. Right?!?