Sew the Day

Getting back on the horse, with a dolphin

sewtheday — Sat, 12 Jan 2013 05:41:08 +0000

It’s a new year, in case you missed it. Life has been super crazy over the last 8 months. Between school, deployments, being a geographical single parent, travel, illness, and a death in the family, I’ve really let my blog fall by the way side…Eek! I’m resolved to do better this year. With a lighter course load and my husband returning from overseas soon, I should be able to scrounge up some sewing and blogging time.

This week I did manage to make a sweet little dolphin for a dear friend’s little girl. She turned 5 yesterday and we had a wonderful time with them yesterday afternoon at the new Children’s Museum of Tacoma.

Here is the dolphin I made for my friend’s daughter. After some serious thought, she named her Jane.

Jane was made from the Dizzy Dolphin pattern by Funky Friends Factory. Pauline has some rocking awesome patterns. :)

I have another one all cut out and ready to be sewn. It will be in my shop next week some time.

More Blackberry Jam

sewtheday — Fri, 07 Sep 2012 08:56:26 +0000

While Ginger Boy was enjoying his first day of Pre-K, Ginger Baby and myself went blackberry picking. With the help of my friend, we picked 8 pounds in about an hour.

After running all the berries through my Kitchen Aid to remove the seeds, I had 10 cups of juice and pulp.

I found a recipe on AllRecipe.com.

I altered it a bit since I had slightly different ingredients, but not by much…

1 (1.75 ounce) box of powdered pectin
1/2 cup sugar
4 cups blackberry juice
1 green jalapeño pepper, cleaned and minced
3 1/2 cups sugar
7 half pint canning jars with lids and rings

Directions

Mix the pectin with 1/2 cup sugar in a bowl. Stir the blackberry juice, pectin mixture, and minced green jalapeño together in a saucepan; bring the mixture to a boil for 1 full minute. Add the 3 1/2 cups sugar and return to a rolling boil until the sugar has fully dissolved, about 1 minute. Remove from heat; stir while off heat to remove bubbles and foam for about 5 minutes.
Ladle into sterile jars leaving 1/4 inch headspace. Seal jars in a hot water bath. Refrigerate jelly after seal is broken.

I ended up with 7 half pints.

I really loved the Blackberry Lime that I made last year, so I had to make more! I just used the Blackberry Jalapeño jam recipe and swapped out the pepper for the lime juice.

1 (1.75 ounce) box of powdered pectin
1/2 cup sugar
4 cups blackberry juice
1/2 cup of Lime juice (I use bottled)
3 1/2 cups sugar
7 half pint canning jars with lids and rings

Directions

Mix the pectin with 1/2 cup sugar in a bowl. Stir the blackberry juice, pectin mixture, and lime juice together in a saucepan; bring the mixture to a boil for 1 full minute. Add the 3 1/2 cups sugar and return to a rolling boil until the sugar has fully dissolved, about 1 minute. Remove from heat; stir while off heat to remove bubbles and foam for about 5 minutes.
Ladle into sterile jars leaving 1/4 inch headspace. Seal jars in a hot water bath. Refrigerate jelly after seal is broken.

I ended up with 8 half pints from a full batch and 7 4oz jars from a half batch. I did have 2 more ounces which I put into another 4oz jar and put in the fridge for immediate use.

Summer Canning

sewtheday — Mon, 27 Aug 2012 08:45:51 +0000

The blackberries came late this year and have only ripened recently, probably due to the chilly summer we’ve had. At any rate, I came home with 8 pounds of blackberries! I froze 3 pounds and proceeded to make up some jam with the rest. I followed the recipe at Coconut & Lime for Blackberry Vanilla Bean Jam, but had to change it up just a bit so that I could use what I had on hand. I didn’t have any Certo so I just used some regular boxed pectin instead. I ended up with 10 half pint jars. They took a good 24 hours to set up, but they did eventually set.

I do like those wide mouth Kerr Jars. I’ll have to put them on my list to buy more!

I stopped by the Schilter’s Farm stand and picked up 40 pounds of peaches, taking advantage of a coupon they were running. :)

I made spiced peach jam with some of the peaches with cinnamon and nutmeg, based on SB Canning’s Peach Jam recipe. 9 half pints.

The bulk of the peaches I simply canned in light syrup. There are few things finer than the brilliance of summer peaches in the middle of a gray Washington winter.

The peaches had rosy flesh around the pit and it was that which made the syrup turn such a pretty color.

Lastly, I made just a small batch of raspberry jam from some of our You-Pick raspberries from Picha Farms. This lone half pint was what was left over from a cake filling I made for my son’s birthday. Raspberries are his favorites. :) I used the Raspberry Jam recipe from SB Canning, minus the vanilla.

I have a bunch more peaches to get to and lots more jars to fill. I’m hoping to get to tomatoes in the coming weeks.

Vanilla Check-In

sewtheday — Mon, 30 Apr 2012 06:39:25 +0000

I’ve been letting my vanilla sit for just over a month.

This is what it looked like the day I started the batch.

I give it a shake or a swirl ever couple of days and it is coming right along.

This is what it looks like now.

It’s really starting to turn a lovely color. It definitely needs more time before it can be used. It still smells heavily of alcohol. This will subside as it sits.

I’m so looking forward to being able to use the extract in a couple of months.

Raspberries Canes and a Box of Rocks

sewtheday — Tue, 17 Apr 2012 22:56:05 +0000

Raspberry Canes

Last fall my husband’s aunt gave me three golden raspberry canes for my garden.

I wasn’t sure if they were going to survive the transplant and our wild winter. One of the plants had it worse off and I did loose half of that cane, but they all started leafing outbeautifully!

And look! Babies!

When I received the canes I was heavily pregnant and wasn’t up to too much garden work. So I made a rough bed for them, planted, gave them plenty of water and called it good. After Etienne was born, my mom was visiting and she helped me get a covering of hay on them to protect them from the forthcoming snow.

Spring has finally sprung in the Pacific Northwest and Gardening is in full swing at my house, so I started thinking about the sad little raspberry bed that needed some TLC.

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Box of Rocks

I studied Geology for some time and we took many field trips. Over the years I amassed quite a collection of rocks. Being military we move a lot, and movers are less than amused when they find out you have several hundred pounds of rocks. Well, the box never got unpacked when we moved from Kentucky to Washington nearly 2 years ago and they’ve been sitting in the garage. I decided to put them in the garden so we could enjoy them.

Bennett helped me unpack all the wrapped rocks, one by one. It was like Christmas for him. These are some of his favorites.

—-

Raspberries meet Rocks

I weeded and widened the raspberry bed, fed them some organic compost, and lined the bed with my rock trove. I also put a spare bit of wire fencing up so that when the canes are heavy with fruit I can tie them up for support. I still need to secure the bottom of the fence to the posts with wire, but that can wait for another day.

I’m quite excited about our new garden addition. Bennett loves raspberries, and these are an ever-bearing variety, so we should have a nice crop of berries in the summer and fall. :) I’m also happy that my rocks have a new home. I can see them daily and I can tell Bennett about them and all the different places that they’ve come from.

More Chalkboard Mats

sewtheday — Tue, 10 Apr 2012 06:55:40 +0000

In February I made small chalkboard mats for a busy bag swap. They were so well received, that I thought I’d make them for my March group too.

I just love this Henry Alexander Zoo fabric. I’ve used it quite a few times before, this was left over from making Doggie’s sleeping bag at Christmas.

I had another mama ask about making bigger ones in the penguin fabric but I was out. I was lucky to find more of that fabric at JoAnn’s! I did some size tweaking and made some custom chalkboard mats for her. :)

Felt Chocolate Bunnies

sewtheday — Mon, 09 Apr 2012 06:02:15 +0000

I didn’t end up making the felt eggs for my March felt food swap, but I did make chocolate bunnies!

I made 8 total. Five were for my felt food swaps, 1 for Bennett’s Easter basket, and 2 extras.

They are made from Eco-fi felt, which is made from recycled plastic bottles!

It took me a bit, but after some trial and error, I remembered how to tie straight bows!

I tacked the bows down to themselves so they won’t untie.

Since I have 2 extras, I’ve listed them in my Etsy shop. :)

HAPPY EASTER!

Regrowing Celery and Bok Choy

sewtheday — Thu, 29 Mar 2012 18:55:47 +0000

I while back I’d seen on Pinterest that you can regrow celery from the bottom of the stalk. I had some celery a couple of weeks ago to make sausage casserole, so I thought I’d try regrowing it.

The celery on the left is about 3 weeks of growth! We haven’t has much sun, but I’m hoping that once I can get it in the ground that it will take of. The celery on the right is about a week of growth.

In the middle is baby bok choy that’s been in about a week and a half. In thinking that it would root as well, I did a little searching and found that 17 Apart had a post about it.

I’m excited to be adding some new edibles to the garden! I know the bok choy won’t last out winter here, but I’m hopeful for the celery.

Soft Rainbow Colors Book

sewtheday — Wed, 28 Mar 2012 04:29:07 +0000

I have another baby busy bag exchange this month. I didn’t want to do the same thing as last month, the crinkle squares. I wanted to make something I haven’t exchanged yet to add some variety.

I’d been stumped about what to make and it’s getting close to the deadline, so I just started pulling out fabrics to see what struck me. I found that I had some St. Jude fabric left from making Bennett’s toiletries bag. It’s really cute, bight, and perfect for new project inspiration. I began looking through my color fabric bins for fabrics to match.

I still didn’t have a clear vision until I unknowingly had a bright rainbow of colors laid out on my cutting table. It all came together with a bit of scrap batting as a soft rainbow colors book.

There are lots of different patterns, splotches, polka dots, leaves, vines, flowers and shades for lots of learning for little minds.

I added a length of grosgrain ribbon to the front and back panels to made a sort of handle, perfect for little hands to tote to the car or around the house.

A fun game to play with a toddler learning colors would be to find the page that matches something on the cover. For example: find the color page that matches the color of the giraffe. The cover can also have used for simple counting; how many green things, how many fish.. etc.

The pages are in color order, pink, red, orange, yellow, green, blue, and purple. The cover is the multi colored St. Jude fabric.

I’m just about finished with the other books and will mail them out this week. :)

Best part, everything came from my stash of fabric! Yeah more stash busting!

More Sashiko Rabbits

sewtheday — Sat, 24 Mar 2012 06:01:11 +0000

Well, it took me well over a month to finish this sashiko panel, but it’s done! Lots of other things needed doing… other projects, school exams, and busy bags. :) This is a long term project anyway.

So here are the results.

The rabbits are simple with a geometric rectangle pattern. I made this one with blue thread, the first rabbit was made with red.

I love how the rabbits are all a little different from each other.

Next up is a Dragonfly pattern! I’m doing it in purple! So I think I’ve settled on red, blue, and purple for the colors for Etienne’s quilt. :)