Thimbleanna – Page 139 – My little online diary.

One Down, One to Go

11 Comments / July 18, 2008 February 18, 2011 / Chat

Wow, that was fun! Thanks for all your great comments on sewing machines. I had a great time reading what everyone had to say. As suspected, people who sew are very passionate about their machines!

It’s kid moving weekend here in ThimbleannaLand. Both boys decided they needed to move on the same weekend — guess it’s good to get it done all at once. We moved TheFirstChild and SweetiePie into a cute two bedroom apartment yesterday. It’s going to be just perfect for them and I can’t wait to see it all finished — you know, with pictures hung and clothes all over the floor! (Ok, SweetiePie, you know I’m kidding LOL!) SweetiePie was so sweet and let me set up the kitchen which was great fun for me. By the time they had the truck unloaded, I had the shelves all lined and the first of the boxes unpacked. All those wonderful wedding gifts fit just right and it looked so cute with some pretty cake plates and bowls displayed on top of the cabinets.

Anyway, they’re moved now and tomorrow we take TheSecondChild back to school. His computer center job for the school year can use him this summer, so there’s no use having him hang out at home being bored, right? So, with all this moving, not much inspiring happening around here.

I have, however, been the lucky recipient of a few cool items. A very clever handcrafted, personalized pad of paper made by Sweet Melly:

This was supposed to be the weekend that I was going on a quilty trip with my quilty peeps, but the kid-moves canceled all that. I was SO disappointed, and while moping around, it occurred to me that we’d be driving right by Clementine’s, so I’m going to drop by in the morning and I’ll be lucky enough to meet Melly. Woohoo — I’m so excited!Â I’m hoping she might reveal a few paper pad secrets during our visit too. It’s so cute and I just love it!

I also received the “consolation” prize during Cassie‘s recent pin cushion giveaway:

Some “consolation”, huh? These hot pads are adorable!!! I just love them and they’re perfect. I would show you the condition of my current hot pads just to prove how much I need new ones, but you’d slap your hands over your face screaming “My eyes, My eyes!!!”

Look at the binding on these hot pads:

The binding job is incredible and I’m hereby, publicly begging Cassie to show us how this is done. For the life of me, I can’t get bindings done by machine straight stitch to be even on both sides. I either have to sew one side by machine and then hand stitch the other side, or use a zigzag stitch which hides the imperfections of my binding. Maybe if if you go to Cassie‘s blog and leave her a comment too (you should run over there anyway, she’s got an adorable new chaise lounge that she recycled), she’d tell us how she gets these perfect corners and straight stitching on both sides. Please, Cassie, Puhhhh-leeeeezzzzzz?????

I’m a bit behind on reading your blogs and with the move this weekend, it will be a few more days, so I’ll catch up with you all during my move recovery when all my muscles are sore and the only thing I’ll be able to do is sit in front of my computer. In the meantime, I hope you enjoy your weekend!

XOXO,
Anna

Sewing Machine Poker

41 Comments / July 14, 2008 February 18, 2011 / Chat, Sewing

A few days ago, Nanette posted about her Bernina sewing machine and she mentioned that if she didn’t have a Bernina, she’d have a Pfaff. Now, if you know me very well, you know two things: a) when I discover little tidbits about you, I’m known to tease you incessantly (ahem, mashed potato Kim) and b) I’m a die-hard Viking fan. Much to TheSecondChild’s dismay, I’m not talking about the Minnesota Vikings. I’m talking Viking sewing machines which totally slipped under poor Nanette’s radar.

So, Nanette, I see your Bernina, and I’ll raise you a Viking! And since we’re on the blogger playground, all our quilty peeps will probably pound me to a pulp! Quilters are Bernina-Lovers. They go together like Fred and Ginger; like peanut butter and jelly; like needle and thread. What’s up with that? I blame this on PKM‘s celebrity, Alex, and on quilter word-of-mouth.

Not me though. My heart belongs to Husqvarna Viking. (Notice I didn’t say Singer Viking Pfaff. Or Pfaff Viking Singer. Or whatever they’re calling themselves. We’re not happy about this little indiscretion one little bit, so let’s not talk about it, ok?) This is the Viking I learned to sew on — the grandmother of my current baby Hester.

When I was a little girl, BigDaddy came home one day with this then top-of-the-line Viking. MeMum didn’t even know how to sew. She said this beauty sat in a corner for a year before she even touched it. She had no interest in sewing, but she finally took a sewing class and learned how to sew. They gave it to me when I left for college — what a workhorse of a machine It has gears so you can slow the speed down for heavy-duty sewing. One day I even sewed through the leather backing on an old penny loafer shoe! All these years I’ve thanked MeMum for introducing sewing to me, but maybe I should really be thanking BigDaddy. I mean, what if he’d never come home with that fabulous machine in the first place?

Here is Hester’s mother.

As young newlyweds, we lived in Germany where Husqvarna Viking sewing machines sold for about 1/2 of what they cost in the U.S. (that was back when the U.S. dollar was at an all-time high against other currencies.) It was a deal that was just too good to pass up — I think this was Viking’s first computerized model and I was star-struck.

And here is Hester’s newest little niece.

Just born last week, she lives at MyDadLovesMeBestSister’s house and will be used to teach my cute cupcake niece how to sew. This looks to be a great little machine for a beginning sewer, and of course, I’m excited that they chose a Viking — keeping it all in the family.

Now remember, I’m the shy little girl with braids over in the corner of the playground so don’t hit me too hard. Maybe some of you will come and play with me? ;-) And whatever you sew with, I hope you’re lucky enough to have a love affair with your machine(s) like I do!

XOXO,
Anna

P.S.1 Thanks for all your fabulous comments on Aunt Annie’s Awesome Sweet Rolls! Rowan asked a great question that others of you might be wondering — how much is a package of dry yeast? One package of dry yeast = a scant 2 1/2 teaspoons of dry yeast.

P.S.2 The fabulous Miss Melly has found a fun new obsession. This is my blog on Wordle. Go play and have fun!

Aunt Annie’s Awesome Sweet Rolls

41 Comments / July 11, 2008 February 18, 2011 / Recipes

When my aunt was here (haha, not funny anymore? Ok, I’ll try for this to be the last time!) all the girls in the family wanted her to show us how she makes her fabulous sweet rolls. She makes the best sweet rolls on this side of the Mississippi. No wait….she doesn’t live on this side of the Mississippi. Well, they’re just darn good (really, they’re way better than darn good, but we’re trying to be humble on Auntie’s behalf) and worth every bit of the work involved in making them.

So, here’s how you make them (with a few pictures thrown in for good measure):

Put 3 pkgs of rapid rise yeast into 1 cup of lukewarm water and let the yeast rise a bit — for about 5 minutes.

Meanwhile, melt 1/2 c. shortening and let it cool a bit.

Mix 2 cups very warm water, 2 tsp. salt, 1/2 c. sugar, 4 eggs and 3 1/2 cups of sifted flour in a mixing bowl with a dough hook. (If you don’t have a mixer with a dough hook, you can mix and knead the ingredients by hand.)

Mix in the melted shortening and 1 cup of sifted flour, scrape sides and continue to mix.

Add yeast/water mixture and mix for a few minutes more.

Add 1 cup of sifted flour, mix; add another 1 cup of sifted flour and continue to mix and scrape sides of bowl. (For those of you keeping count, we’re now up to 6 1/2 cups of sifted flour.) Total mixing/kneading time should be 10 to 15 minutes.

The dough will be REALLY sticky so you might want to add another cup of flour (maybe even two if needed, but I think we only added one.)

Put (or pour LOL) the dough into a large greased bowl and cover with a piece of saran wrap sprayed with a cooking spray. Put in a relatively warm place and allow the dough to rise until it’s at least double. (We let ours rise a bit too long — I should have taken a picture — it was oozing out over the edges of the bowl.)

Divide the dough in half and roll the first half out until it’s about 1/2″ thick. Spread some melted butter all over the top, almost up to the edges of the dough. Then sprinkle a mixture of cinnamon and sugar (try 2 tsp. cinnamon + 1/2 c. sugar to start — you can make it as cinnamon-y as you like) on the melted butter.

Now sprinkle raisins on the cinnamon sugar mixture. We have several non-raisin lovers, so we left the raisins out of the other half of the dough.

Starting on the long edge, roll the dough up and pinch the edges together to seal.

Slice the cinnamon roll into fairly thick slices using either a very sharp knife or a string (in this case we used dental floss, just to insure that there will be no cavities resulting from these rolls LOL.) Repeat all the rolling steps for the second half of the dough.

Place the sweet rolls on cookie sheets and let them rise in a warm place until they’re all squished together — 30 minutes to an hour. And see that parchment paper on those cookie sheets? Don’t do that. We tried it, but it made the roll bottoms just a tad bit soggy and there’s nothing worse than having a soggy bottom, if you know what I mean. Just grease your cookie sheet instead.

Bake the sweet rolls at 375 degrees for approximately 12 minutes.

While they’re baking, make some frosting. None of us goofballs wrote down the frosting recipe! I’d try 1/2 cup soft butter, 2 cups powdered sugar,1 tsp vanilla and a bit of milk until you get it to a little runnier than spreading consistency. (Aunt Annie didn’t make that much frosting but she goes light on the frosting — I go heavy — the more the better!) And throw in 1/2 to 3/4 cup walnuts if you have nut lovers in your family. (When we were growing up, Aunt Annie always rolled the nuts up in the dough with the raisins, but we all like them better in the frosting now.)

After you remove the rolls from the oven, you can let them cool for just a minute or two, but frost them while they’re still warm. (There are missing rolls in the picture above because they were grabbed as fast as she was frosting them!)

If everyone didn’t scarf them up immediately, place the extras in a cake plate where they’ll look pretty!

Usually, homemade sweet rolls aren’t that great after the day they’re made — they’re at they’re very best fresh out of the oven. If you must eat them after the first day (or, rather, if there are any left) they’re best heated in the microwave. Two days after my aunt made these rolls, I had this conversation with a good friend of my sons’:

McDonald’s Boy: Mrs. Thimbleanna, is your aunt still here?

Me: Yes, why do you ask?

McDonald’s Boy: Well, this morning I came over and I couldn’t get TheSecondChild to wake up so I turned the hose on his window…

At which point my ears started ringing….

Me: You WHAT??? I just cleaned those windows!!!!

McDonald’s Boy: Oops.

Pregnant Pause.

Anyway…

McDonald’s Boy: After he let me in, I ate that last half of a sweet roll that was in your cake plate and really, they’re the best sweet rolls I’ve EVER had!!! I was wondering if she could make any more?

Which goes to show that a) he’s had a deprived childhood if a two day old sweet roll is the best one he’s ever had, and b) these are really great sweet rolls!!! I’d love to know if you try these. They do take a bit of time, but after you get the hang of it, you can just whip them out while you’re doing other things LOL!

Have a great weekend!

XOXO,
Anna

Kim Diehl and A Quilt Show

34 Comments / July 8, 2008 February 18, 2011 / Quilting

When my aunt was here (sorry, I warned you!) our local quilt guild had a quilt show and the guest teacher was Kim Diehl. On Thursday, we took a 6-hour class from her to learn her machine applique technique. Here is the project that we worked on:

I have to warn you that I’m not really much of a class-taker, but I do think that something can be learned from every experience. Having said that, my aunt and I had a lot of fun and I did pick up a few tips from Kim’s techniques that I’ll be using from now on. I didn’t get any great pictures of Kim (hey — I was busy sewing!), but here’s one of her doing a demo for some of the class.

Kim is a very nice woman and her instructions are impeccable — very clear and easy to understand. And I think her machine applique is beautiful and darn-near invisible. Her quilting is beautiful too. I found it amazing that she doesn’t use a hoop and she uses a size 5 embroidery needle — put that up next to a size 10 or 12 between — it’s a big needle! I really think I might enjoy hand quilting that way and I might give it a try. Here’s a little sample that she was preparing for a hand-quilting class that she was teaching the following day:

On Saturday, we attended a trunk show/luncheon and MeMum came along with us. I loved seeing all of Kim’s quilts.

I’ve always loved the combo of applique and piecing and that’s Kim’s forte. I was amazed at the number of quilts that Kim has completed in the last 10 years. I’m only showing a few of the many here.

I liked that Kim had a few quilts in pastel/brighter colors. I love all colors but I seem to be gravitating to pastel/brights more lately. I blame it on blogland! (And like noblogsorta Brigette, I’m loving pinwheels now.)

In general, we really had a wonderful time. I’ve done a lot of quilt shopping with my Aunt, but I don’t think I’ve ever had the privilege of taking a class with her, so just being able to spend class time together was the best part for me.

I think we both enjoyed Kim’s style and techniques, although we were a little disappointed that the class didn’t focus entirely on the machine applique technique. The first three hours were spent piecing the background for the applique and we both felt we could easily have done that before the class. I’m sure it’s hard to know the different skill levels of all your students, so Kim was probably just trying to be sure that everyone started out on the same page.

The problem was that we were only left with 3 hours to work on the machine applique technique which meant only completing a sample leaf. It would have been nice to get more of the project completed. And for me, it’s sadly a project that might end up in the UFO pile, at least for now, because there are too many other projects that I REALLY want to work on — life’s just too short and our project still needs a LOT of work before it’s finished.

But, that’s ok. I still learned something, so it was very worth it. I would highly recommend a Kim Diehl class if you have the opportunity to take one!

After the luncheon, we walked around our local quilt show. Um….how to say it? One thing we DON’T do well around here is quilt shows. They’ve just NEVER had much to look at. Ever. Maybe I’ve been to too many big shows and I expect too much. I don’t think so though — I’ve been to other small shows that have quality work. Needless to say, I was REALLY disappointed at the quality of the quilts being displayed and almost embarrassed for my Aunt to see what we didn’t have to offer.

Among the small handful of decent quilts that I liked, was this pretty Baltimore album:

This was called the ABCs of Life.

Each block had one or more of the ABCs of life penned in small letters on the quilt. Can you see them?

I loved this idea and I took a picture of the label on the back of the quilt so that I’d be able to remember the ABCs in case I decide to ever do something like this. These ABCs would also be cute in other mediums…embroidery, paper crafts, etc.

So now, you’ve been to see Gene Stratton Porter, been quilt shopping, been to the quilt show and met Kim Diehl with my Aunt and I …. next up, Auntie will be making something yummy!!!

XOXO,
Anna

Happy 4th of July!

48 Comments / July 4, 2008 February 18, 2011 / Cupcakes, Holidays, Quilting

When my aunt was here (sorry, you’re probably going to get tired of hearing that) we were having so much fun that I took an extra day off of work so that we could all sew together. I made some 4th of July table runners for my aunt, MeMum and me.

I backed the first runner with red fabric and after I quilted the center with the white thread, I decided that I didn’t like the white thread on the back of the table runner. So I used an old machine embroidery trick and colored all those white threads with a permanent red marker (brilliant idea #1.) SweetiePie came strolling by and we marveled at how great the back looked — you couldn’t even tell that thread had ever been white.

You know what comes next, right? We flipped the runner over, and AAACCCKKKKK — all that red ink bled onto the cute patriotic print! I rushed it to the washing machine, basting pins and all (brilliant idea #2.) After about three washings (and a noisy machine, ’cause now I’m sure there are a few pins stuck down in that machine somewhere — shhhh, don’t tell, honey, I have no idea why the machine is making so much noise…) much of the ink was still there so I decided the thread and batting were probably holding some of the ink in and therefore, it must be ripped out.

TheManoftheHouse and I spent all night Tuesday night unpicking all those stitches — while the runner was wet, I might add, ’cause I was afraid to let it dry out. As of now, that last runner is all unpicked, with a few pink tinges and waiting to be re-quilted. I’ve learned my lesson and I hope you can learn from my mistake too — although, I’m rather confident that YOU aren’t as dumb as I am!

We’re off to a multi-family cookout and fireworks now. We’re taking cupcakes — yummy. (Recipe here.)

Oh, and check out the spiffy new cupcake saver that SweetiePie gave me for Mother’s Day. She found it at Target. (Excuse me, Tar-jay.)

If you’re in the US, I hope you’re having a FUN and SAFE 4th of July!!!

XOXO,
Anna