Scrappy Pillow

As I mentioned in previous posts, I was given a lot of scraps (some true scraps, some rather large and I wouldn't call them scraps) from David's mom. I have been looking for projects to use a lot of them because my bin is starting to get rather full. I found a scrappy pillow in a library book I wanted to make but the instructions weren't very clear and I wasn't sure of the technique they were using. So I did something similar but my own design. I did buy a pillow form but next time I will get a pillow from Goodwill or something to recover. It's an 18 inch pillow that I plan to use for the back of my sewing chair since, especially being pregnant, my back needs more support when I work for a long time.

The front is random sizes and shapes of the scraps in all different directions and ways. As David says, it's a Jamie original. I did run into the problem of not knowing how to do corners (a set in seam I believe they're actually called) so then I started overlapping things and not everything is sewn with right sides together. I also tried to use different stitches on the front to add to the scrappy look. I think the zigzag stitch worked really well with this. So I just kept adding things until it was big enough (19 inches at the smallest points) and then I cut all the sides straight.

The back is two 15 x 19 panels of strips going two different directions. In the future, I would've made them smaller so you could see more of both of them but this was a learning project. This part was much easier and took less planning than the front. I also forgot to hem the last strip that's on top so right now it's fraying and ugly but I may go back and do that (but I'll have to take the pillow out. It does come out rather easy. It's just a hassle to do it again because originally, we sandwiched it wrong and had a wrong side facing out. Seam ripped the whole thing and resewed it so I'm kind of over it.)

The front.

As you may have guessed, there are side pieces you can't see in the picture because of the pillow's poof. Some of my favorite scraps ended up on the edges and you can see very little of them but at least you can see them (in person).

This is the back. The raw edge that I may or may not redo is the black and white thicker strip right before the strips change direction. If I redid this, I would make that top square (with the vertical strips) skinnier so you can see more of the one underneath. The one underneath goes all the way to four inches from the end of the pillow so it seems like a waste to me. It did use a lot of scraps though! I'm still looking for more projects to use more scraps though because you always have plenty of them!

Penguins

Over the weekend, David's mom and I made penguins! They're about nine inches tall and are supposed to stand up by themselves (her does, mine has some trouble). We found the tutorial here per David's suggestion. Even though the pattern makes 3 penguins, we each only made 1 because they're a little tedious (especially with all the hand sewing) and I didn't bring enough yellow felt. For once, we actually understood the instructions the first time but we did make a few adjustments. For instance, we sewed the wings on individually instead of at the same time. When we tried it at the same time, the penguin got too squished and it looked funny. We also used yellow floss on the feet instead of black floss because we thought this looked better.

The sewing on the machine and the assembling the penguins was actually fun and really not as bad as I thought it would be (although when you are sewing the tummy on, be sure to not sew through the whole thing or you'll get the other side caught in it too) but the hand sewing was a bit much for me. I don't mind hand sewing usually but this was thick stuff (since everything was stuffed) and harder to do. I even split a seam (or rather, David did) when trying to stuff the wings. One of the harder parts was turning out the little pieces like the beak.

Here is how mine turned out.

The under wings are the same fabric was the tummy. It's kind of hard to see that in the picture. So as you can see, he stands by himself but not very well. I think it's because I didn't stuff him as much as was suggested. He also kind of lost his tail when I stitched it poorly and I think that would help with his balance. Isn't he cute though?

House Quilt Blocks

As I mentioned in a previous post, I am making a house quilt. Don't expect me to finish it anytime soon though because this is my first (and probably only) quilt and I have other projects going on right now too. With the design I'm doing, I needed to make two more houses (I was given 10 houses from David's mom who wasn't going to do anything with them). I didn't think it sounded too hard and I knew from looking up designs that there were lots of tutorials out there for making your own. My houses are all from different people (David's mom won them in some sort of drawing thing) so they are all different styles but basically the same (not that that makes any sense...sorry).

This is what I found to match them the best. The instructions even make two houses so it was perfect! I did have to tweak them a little bit (like when making the triangle squares) because I wasn't making two of the exact same house. The finished blocks are supposed to be 12 1/2 inches (with seam allowances, that gives you 12 inch blocks), which matches my other houses. However, I went wrong somewhere (probably in cutting because my cutting doesn't seem to be very accurate no matter what I do) and my houses are basically only 12 inches. I think I'm going to add a "border" to help my seam allowance so my houses aren't that much smaller than my originals. I know it's not my current seam allowances because David's mom approved of my houses and said that I'm getting really good at keeping those even.

These are my houses (sorry for the weird angle and the fact that they're in one picture).

Despite not understanding most sewing instructions, I was able to make these with minimal help from David translating what I was supposed to do. As you can see though, especially on the green and black house, not all my strips are the same length so I'm probably going to have to cut them straight before adding my border. I am pleasantly surprised with how they turned out though. What's funny is that when picking out the fabrics I thought for sure the one on the left would turn out prettier than the one on the right but now that they're done, I like the one on the right better.

Log Cabin Pot Holder

I'm sorry I was unable to post yesterday due to technical difficulties. I finished my log cabin pot holder though! I found the pattern in a library book. It was rather simple to make, although a little tedious with all the cut, sew, cut, iron but it was fun. It was also my first real binding, since the other binding I've done was on my brother's blanket and I cheated by zigzagging the edges instead of folding them under. This time, the binding was real easy (except for putting it on the pot holder. I did struggle with that a little bit) because I got to use my brand new bias tape maker! I had bought mine on sale, but even if you don't find a sale, they're still only a few dollars and totally worth it.

This thing couldn't be any easier to use and it works amazing. You put in your strip of fabric and pull the maker along it. Out comes your edges folded over so all you have to do is iron as it comes out! I did pin mine too but I think it was unnecessary. Here is a picture of it in action.

So you see, the strip goes in (right side down) and goes through the metal piece. You pull the little metal tab along (no resistance at all!) and it comes out with your edges folded up! They make multiple sizes and mine is an inch, which I think is pretty versatile but I would still like other ones. The thing is really small so storage shouldn't be an issue. I love this thing!

So back to my pot holder. I did top stitch the whole thing but I forgot to use the bigger stitches. I think it looks fine but in the future, I need to remember to switch the stitch size. So this is the front.

 As you might be able to tell, I had a hard time with one of my corners still exposing the raw edges after I sewed it. Like I said, this was my first real binding. So the outside is all cotton (measuring to an 8 inch square) and the inside is supposed to be batting but I don't really keep that around so I used leftover fabric from my tote because that was batting between two pieces of cotton and I figured that was basically the same thing. The back is also cotton.

You can see that my binding on the back is wider than my binding on the front but that actually made it easier for me to sew. I'll still have to practice my bindings but now with my bias tape maker, I don't dread them! You can also see my top stitching really well on this side.

So it was a pretty easy project to make but did take a little time (doesn't everything?). I think an experienced person could make this in an hour or less but it took me about an afternoon.

Magic Cabbage Soup

Over the weekend, David and I were sick. As I had mentioned last time I was sick (not that long ago!), pregnant people can hardly take ANYTHING to feel better. David can take whatever he wants and we even have lots of different options but he just doesn't for whatever reason. So I was looking for a soup recipe that would help us feel better. We didn't want anything spicy (even though it can help clear out the sinuses) and we're sick of chicken noodle. That is when I found cabbage soup.

We based it off the recipe found here and changed it to what we needed. Hers is actually vegan (depending on the broth you use) but it's lacking protein. You could just as easily use beans but we decided to use brats because we were unsure of the cabbage and knew that brats and cabbage tasted good together. We also used chicken bouillon (since that's what we had).

So here is what ours was.

• half yellow onion, chopped
• 1 head of garlic, minced
• 1 large cabbage head, chopped
• 5 large carrots, peeled and sliced
• 10 cups water (with 5 chicken bouillon cubes)
• 1 14.5 oz can of diced tomatoes with onion and garlic with liquid
• 1 frozen package of 6 Polish sausages, chopped 

Then we threw everything into a pot but the bouillon and the sausages. We didn't cook the onion ahead of time (and we even keep ours frozen so we don't cry when we cut it).  Then we waited for it to boil (high heat) and added the bouillon and the sausages, put a lid on it and let it simmer (low heat) for 20 minutes. The end! It's so simple. The prep isn't that bad (although truly David did all of it) and you can just leave it on the stove and walk away while it simmers.

Not only is this delicious (we decided even with our additions, it serves about 4 or 5 people, not 10-12) and easy to make but it's great at making you feel better. It feels really  nice on sore throats and does help clear out your sinuses.

We both decided we would eat this soup even when we aren't sick. It does seem like it would be a little bland without the flavor of the sausages and bouillon but that's just my opinion. When you're sick, you can't really taste anyway. If we made this just as a great soup to warm up with, we might add more seasonings (I was thinking Italian seasoning would probably be a great addition).

Missing Sock

You always hear about the dryer "eating" socks. It's even a favorite topic in comic strips. However, I have never had this happen to me. The closest it's ever happened is one would fall in the basket below the washer when I was transferring to the washer. But then, I would find it right away because it was sitting in plain sight.

Well, I have officially entered the realm of a dryer eating socks. Unlike David, I match up all my socks into pairs when I fold laundry and this past week, one of my socks was missing. Most of my socks are white but a few are colored and this particular one is black so I thought that it would be easy to find. Boy was I wrong!

I went back downstairs and checked all the baskets, the washer, the dryer, the floor, everything related to the laundry room and nothing. So I went back to my folded laundry and checked most of the items for cling (I used vinegar to help with static cling but with how dry it is here, it still happens a little bit). No luck.

It has now been four days. My sock refuses to show up. Of course it's like my favorite pair. I know this may seem trivial to some people, especially if you knew how many pairs of socks I own but I just don't understand where it could've gone!

I'm not even convinced it's still in the house so if any of you see a black with blue trim, size 9 sock, please let me know!

Christmas Tree Softie

Because I would like to be a seasonal house, I am working on making decorations for all the seasons. I have to jump ahead and do all of the seasons and holidays because I won't have that much time (or any time) once Teeny comes. I sort of skipped Thanksgiving for now because my fall decorations work for Thanksgiving too. So I moved on to Christmas.

I found this Christmas tree softie tutorial and got really excited. I thought they were adorable and looked relatively easy to make. Rather than make my patchwork random colors the way they did, I made mine alternating red and green. I was also really happy that they made both a big one and a little one so it would follow the theme with my pumpkins.

I picked out all my fabrics and cut them to size, which took much longer than I thought it would but mostly because it always takes me a while to pick the perfect fabrics for a project. I followed their suggested method to make the patchwork. I was really scared of it because I didn't have much experience with the fusible interfacing but it worked out fine. I actually used fusible web and attached a thing fabric to the back (both sides of it were sticky) to make it stiffer. This was PLENTY stiff. I was kind of surprised you needed it so stiff if you were going to stuff it anyway but I knew better than to stray from the directions.

When I made the patchwork, I did back stitch but it turned out it didn't matter because you cut off the bottom anyway. Because of this, when you turn it right side out or back to inside out, you rip out stitches because the tree is SO stiff and because you had no way of knowing where to back stitch ahead of time. This frustrated me greatly! On my big tree, it was okay because the quarter inch seam allowance for sewing on the felt bottom covered it (although getting that bottom on was no easy feat either...). The little tree was basically ruined. I had the option to resew it by hand but it hardly seemed worth it because the tree turned out so small. After the bottom was sewn on the little one, I realized that this one wasn't going to make it. It didn't have a pretty side to display. All sides had something wrong with them. Mine turned out looking like a traffic cone because the bottom was sort of squared off. Also, because you use the leftover scraps of your first big square, the squares are much too big for the little trees and only two rows (if that) get displayed. This was beyond repair so I decided to be done with it.

Here is my big tree.

To hand sew it closed was also a big deal because of how stiff the fabric was. Even my sewing machine with my walking foot was starting to struggle.

I will not be making this again. They were really cute but there has to be easier way to do it because this was just ridiculous!

Third Trimester Hunger

Tomorrow I will be 31 weeks pregnant and I couldn't be any hungrier! I eat a regular sized meal, complete with protein, fiber, and nutrients and an hour later, I am starving. I don't just mean if I have a snack, I'll be good. I mean hungry! My stomach growls, my head hurts, and I just have to eat!

I'm worried about the weight gain from it. I know Teeny is growing a lot and needs more calories but even without these extra meals, I already feel like I'm eating a lot. My weight gain has been very good this whole pregnancy (or so my doctor says. I feel huge most days but I have only gained weight in my bump area so I suppose they're right). I just don't want to eat a million calories these last months and then balloon up.

On the bright side, this is the one pregnancy symptom that my husband can actually relate to because I've been eating like a teenage boy. I'm going to eat us out of house and home! It also makes leaving the house difficult because I need to pack snacks or make sure I'm going somewhere where I can eat.

It has gotten to the point where I will have to wake up in the middle of the night (no need to set an alarm. My growling stomach is loud enough!) to have a snack before I'm able to keep sleeping.

This is ridiculous!

Designing My House Quilt

Okay let me start this off by saying I am not a quilter. I currently do not have any desire to make quilts. Mostly because I like to make useful things (even if they're just decoration, like my turtle or pumpkins). Quilts are very time consuming (I'm told it takes an experienced quilter about 40 hours to make 1 non-complicated quilt) and once you have a couple displayed and some on the beds, I'm not sure what you do with them. I suppose you could sell some but they seem rather hard to sell. Plus, I'm not really interested in selling my stuff either, especially when it takes 40 hours to make.

David's mom is a quilter. I have recently gotten her into more sewing things since we started doing our Sunday projects but her passion is still quilts. She has given quilts away, she has sold quilts, she has quilts displayed in her house, she has quilts on the beds, and then she still has totes in storage because she just has that many. I could never be like that.

However, when we were starting to clean out her sewing room (a few weeks ago, we rearranged and had to go through everything before it went back in the room. I got a bunch of scraps and some useful pieces of fabric she didn't want anymore), she gave me a 10 quilt blocks that all have houses on them. She didn't really like them and couldn't see herself making anything with them but she had won them and didn't want to just throw them out. I thought they were really cool and I thought it would actually make a pretty cool "Welcome Home" quilt to hang up in the foyer.

I took them home and didn't look at them for several weeks. Then yesterday, I decided that if I actually wanted to make this, I better get started soon since I don't think I'll have much time once Teeny gets here (this pretty much motivates me to work on any of my projects). So the first step was determining what I wanted the quilt to look like. I learned about sashing, cornerstones, borders, and all that good stuff from David's mom. She has a (very expensive) computer program that helps you design a quilt. After playing around with it for about 2 hours, I finally found something I like. The houses on it aren't my actual houses but similar styles and the coloring is just random (because mine will be too) but below the picture, I'll explain.

With the way this is designed, I need to make two houses of my own to make it work but this was the best solution. I like the inverted square colors on the two borders. The cornerstones in the inside (all the little squares) are going to be the same color to help tie the quilt together. The sashing (lines between the little squares) are going to be a mix of different colors and prints (what can I say? I like color). Then the black square is going to be a plain colored square (most likely) with a saying on it, such as welcome home or home sweet home or something like that with iron on interfaced letters in different colors. The final quilt is 72 x 72 so it's huge and will probably take up most of the wall but if I went any smaller, then I had to get rid of houses (out of the original 10) and I couldn't bear to part with any of them. Plus, I'm not really interested in a smaller quilt. There was the option of doing a 52 x 52 but I didn't like the way it turned out. Plus, on the big quilt, the black space is 26 x 26. That gives me a lot of different opportunities. On the 52 x 52, the space was only 12 x 12 and that doesn't give me a lot of room to play around.

I'll be sure to let you all know as I progress on it how it's coming along but for now, the first thing I need to do is make two more houses.

Super Easy Chicken Parmesan

Now that I am feeling better in my pregnancy and able to do more cooking for myself, I am basically back in charge of making and deciding on dinner. I don't mind recipes that take hours but when I am trying to get a lot done in a day, sometimes you don't have hours to spend on dinner.

David and I have been looking into buying different types of meats lately because we have ground beef a lot and leaner, non-red meats would be better for us. We decided we weren't ready to learn how the heck you make a whole ham or turkey when there's only two of you and no good way not to cook it all at once so we looked at the "convenience" meats. We decided on chicken patties.

My mom used to make chicken parmesan using chicken patties instead of breading them yourself and cooking for an hour. We also never ate it over pasta but apparently, that's quite common.

So here's the recipe:

frozen chicken patties
red pasta sauce (we used a garlic cheese variety but you can use anything)
white cheese (we had an Italian blend cheese we were trying to use up. I believe my mom usually uses mozzarella)

Bake the chicken according to the package but not for the entire time. Our chicken needed 14 minutes so I cooked them for 10. Then spread a generous amount of sauce on each patty, making sure to go all the way to the edges. Sprinkle cheese on top, also going all the way to the edges. Put back in the oven with the broiler on for the rest of the time. Then you're done! It's really that simple and they taste so good.  And by not cooking them for the whole time and then broiling them, the chicken doesn't get dried out. If you want, you can put the sauce and cheese on when they go in and cook them for the whole time but I think the sauce would make them kind of soggy then.

If you don't have pasta with them, you will probably want to have spaghetti soon because you will have lots of leftover sauce, depending on how many patties you make. We only made 3 and used maybe a quarter of the sauce.

If you don't serve these with noodles, you can serve them with basically anything. I would've done a vegetable and maybe mashed potatoes but we weren't very hungry last night. You can also serve them on buns and make a sandwich out of it. We ate ours plain.

New Sewing Area

When I first started sewing, it was all by hand and I didn't have very many supplies so they all fit in a tote I had received as a christmas present (I even blogged about it. I'm not sure if the picture is still there because that was when I was still having difficulty but it was orange with lots of pockets). I could carry it from room to room, depending on where I wanted to sew that day.

Then, when I got my sewing machine (my Goodwill one, not my Brother), I was set up on my computer desk in a corner of the library. The rest of my stuff was kind of strewn about the room and in no way organized. (Although the library wasn't very organized either because it was a makeshift guest room as well). So basically I could never find anything (not that I had much to find) and I didn't have a lot of room to actually sew. I also had to take my cutting mat down to our kitchen island (the library is on the second floor) every time I wanted to use it since I didn't have any other flat surface big enough. That was a pain.

I am currently set up in our dining room because we hardly ever use it and it has a nice table. We also have a hutch where I store more of my fabric. The table is big enough for my machine and cutting mat. The room still has space for my ironing board too (although David did make me a little one before I had been given this one). This is working out okay because I have plenty of space but I have to keep everything really neat because we have to walk through this room every day (it's the only way to the kitchen or the downstairs bathroom). Plus, you can see it from the living room so guests can see it.

David and I talked about making the dining room permanently my area but then it would be hard to block off from Teeny (for safety reasons. The doorway is huge, I believe about seven feet, so baby gates would be hard). Plus, we would've decorated it differently and picked a different chandelier and stuff.

So then we had talked about putting my sewing area in half of the loft. The loft currently houses Cocoa's area, David's big L-shaped desk, and our TV with an old couch we want to get rid of. The TV would move to the living room and I would get the half of the room that David and Cocoa aren't in. It has plenty of storage opportunities but not a lot of space for the ironing station, cutting station, and sewing machine station.

We are still undecided if the TV will stay upstairs or if it will eventually move to the living room but my sewing area is going to be sharing with the library. Our library was converted from a bedroom since it would've been hard and a lot of work to put a doorway in plus the loft stairs come from the library. One wall is completely shelves for books, there's only one window, but there is a closet. So we have one free wall that will mostly be taken up by my new work station.

We just bought the materials for it last night from Menard's. They actually cost about 75 dollars (and we didn't even get the pricey things) but for what we have in mind, the real one would easily cost a couple hundred if not more so it's definitely cheaper this way even though it seems expensive.

It will be two tiered (so my cutting station is higher than my sewing station since I usually stand to cut) and will have shelves underneath. It will also have an overhang part so I have space for my legs when I sit at my sewing machine. I will have the option to have shelves above it but for now, I think the shelves underneath will be enough. The table is almost eight feet long and will be two feet wide. I'm so excited for it! We start on it tonight. Then, when it's all put together (which may take more than one day), I will most likely be painting it.

I'll be sure to keep you all posted and I will put up pictures when it's done.

Beef Stroganoff With Cream of Mushroom Soup

I was looking for a way to use up sour cream I had bought on sale a couple weeks ago. I decided on stroganoff. David and I found a really good recipe for mushroom stroganoff a few years back but now that I require more protein (basically if I get anything less than 70 grams of protein a day, I feel really sick and can barely function. I'm hoping this goes away once Teeny is born because I find myself eating a lot of meat) we decided to look for a beef stroganoff recipe.

We asked David's mom for her recipe but after finding out that it takes an hour and a half just to simmer everything, closer to two hours for the whole recipe, we decided to search elsewhere. I know my mom uses cream of mushroom soup in hers so I looked up if Campbell's had a recipe and sure enough, they did! That's this recipe. We mostly followed it but didn't like some of their instructions so I'll rewrite it for you the way we did it.

1 pound round steak (we actually asked the guy behind the counter at the butcher part of our grocery store for his recommendation)
vegetable oil (we didn't measure since we pour it off later anyway but it was about three tablespoons)
1 medium onion, coarsely chopped
2 cans cream of mushroom soup (not diluted)
2 sprinkles of paprika
1 cup sour cream
1 box of medium shells (noodles), cooked (I recommend starting the water for these when you're slicing up the beef. We thought the beef would take longer to cook so we didn't start right away and they weren't done at the same time).

1. Cut up the beef. My parents usually use ground beef for this recipe but David's family's recipe uses the round steak so that's what we used. I would've made the pieces even smaller but anything bite size is manageable.

2. Heat oil over medium-high heat. Cook beef until almost done, stirring often. Add the onions and continue to cook.

3. Pour off fat. With the onions in there, I'm really  not sure how David mastered this step because I would think it would be hard to keep the onions in the pan too but he did it.

4. Stir in soup and paprika. Heat to a boil (this really doesn't take long). Stir in sour cream. Cook until everything is heated through and serve on noodles.

And there you have it! It takes less than a half hour (even for people as inexperienced as us) and for the most part, these should be ingredients you can find in the pantry. It's even short on prep work so you really don't have an excuse.

If you notice, the original recipe only used 1 can of soup and 1/2 cup of sour cream. It was also only 4 cups of noodles, whereas we made the whole box so by doubling these ingredients, you get more sauce. Plus, some people in the comments on the original recipe complained the sauce was too thick and I think they made it more the right consistency.

Broccoli Quinoa Quesadillas

The other day, I was looking for a recipe that used quinoa. We bought a box a while back and I totally lost the recipe for it I wanted to make. This is what I found. Broccoli quinoa quesadillas (try saying that ten times fast!). In the link, you have to scroll past the blog post about the cast iron cookware to get to the recipe.

These were really good and could easily be made vegan. They're also really quick and easy to make (even the quinoa only takes ten minutes to cook). The recipe says that they make 4 servings though and there is just no way. I even upped the broccoli to a cup, instead of a half cup. We were lucky we even got two out of this recipe.

We also broiled them in the oven instead of cooking on the stove top. Only one side browned because we were afraid they would fall apart if we flipped them. They still turned out delicious and we actually do it this way for all our quesadillas (for a while, we were making quesadillas a LOT).

I would be interested in using a different vegetable next time. Broccoli just seems like a weird addition to me. It did remind both David and I of the broccoli cheesy rice casserole (I may or may not have the recipe on here but it's essentially cream of mushroom soup, broccoli, cheese, and rice). We both really like that so we did like these but the broccoli was too chunky. Maybe peas or something smaller would be better.

I didn't add any salt or pepper but I would also be interested in adding in some sort of spice (cumin maybe? paprika?) and see what that does for it. They're not bland, mostly because of the cheese but I do feel they need something.

We would definitely make them again but if we ever had to serve four people with them, we'd double or maybe even triple it.