Retreat Preparation And Home Made Tonic Water!

On Thursday BJ, Lauren and yours truly leave for the Montrose San Juan Fall Quilt Retreat, yippee! We will have three days retreating with the San Juan group and three days at our mountain home. We have all three been deciding which projects and how many to take, remembering that we have an entire week to sew and only my small SUV to carry us and all our gear, including sewing machines and some clothing!

Saturday BJ and I kitted up a couple of quilts each, all cut and ready to be pieced. I think I have maybe four projects ready, it's best to have them cut because there is a lot of chatter, laughter and other distractions at the retreat [e.g. 28 other quilters' projects in progress] and the likelihood of cutting errors is high!

Everyone is encouraged to bring "snacks" to share during the retreat so this evening after young Matthew went home I made up a pan of caramel brownies [they have home made caramel baked in the middle] that are already packed away................

and a double batch of my Grand Marnier/orange/cranberry biscotti. if you'd like the recipe leave me a comment and I will post it. It is super simple and inexpensive, you can make an entire batch for the price of one Starbucks biscotti!

That way there are plenty to take, some for JW and some to leave for DH.

When I bake I usually try to make several things so there's only a one time mess to clean up-that's the worst part of cooking, I need a Sous Chef or maybe just a personal dishwasher!

Since I was on a roll and had some citrus that needs using I decided to make a new batch of my tonic water mix. Some time ago I rebelled against the commercial tonic water- either you get a neuro- toxin [aspartame] or something that messes with your metabolism [corn syrup].

We like gin and tonic occasionally and the store bought tonic water also has an off taste that does not compliment a good gin.

On an internet search I came across this website, with lots of info on home made tonic water and other drinks like non-alcoholic ginger beer a favorite from my childhood when my Mum kept a "ginger beer plant" on the kitchen window sill and made the very best ginger beer I ever had. It was a major refreshing treat, on a hot Aussie summer day, cold, sweet and strongly gingery.

I have yet to try to duplicate my Mum's ginger beer, but it's on my "to do" list!

Here is my tonic water mixture simmering away and filling the air with the delightful scents of orange, lemon, lime, cardamom, and allspice, what's not to like. Everyone who has tried a G and T at our house with my homemade tonic mix has pronounced it excellent and way superior to the commercial tonic.

In case you are interested in trying it, here's how I make mine.

4 cups water

3 tsp. dried lemon grass[or one large stalk of fresh]

2 Tblsp. cinchona bark powder[see below for ordering this, it's the origin of quinine]

2 oranges, zested

2 lemons, zested

2 limes, zested

1tsp. whole allspice berries

pinch of cardamom

2 Tblsp. citric acid

1/2 tsp. kosher salt

Zest the fruit then use a reamer to squeeze out most of the juice. Place fruit, zest and juice in a large saucepan, add remaining ingredients and water and simmer for 20 minutes. Strain out fruit and allspice etc with a colander, then pour the liquid through coffee filters- it takes a long time to strain because the cinchona powder is dense. I just leave it overnight then if necessary pour it through fresh filters and leave it again. It may still be a bit cloudy if like me you get tired of waiting for it to filter, but that doesn't affect the taste. You can also run it through a French Press.

We make our G an T's in a tall glass, using two-three tablespoons of the mix, depends on how much bitterness you like, two-three tablespoons of agave syrup, about two fingers of good gin and top off with plain soda water. You can add more or less agave syrup too if you like it more or less sweet. I like mine very citrusy so I add a wedge of lime to serve. That's another really good thing about making your own tonic mix you can adjust the flavoring to your personal preference.

I bottle mine and keep it in the fridge for months.

This is very bare bones info. so please check Jeff's blog for everything you ever wanted to know about mixing drinks including places to purchase cinchona bark powder. Many people have made adjustments to Jeff's original recipe as I have so it's interesting to see what others have done with it.

I just ordered another 5 ozs. of cinchona bark from one of Jeff's sources, Tenzingmomo.com in Seattle.

More Quilts Of Valor

This past week these two scrappy QOV's were completed.

They were pieced by Nancy in Montrose, CO. Nancy's DH requires full time care so she uses her home bound time well, piecing quilts, many for missional purposes such as the outreach to our heroic wounded warriors.

To save some time these two tops were loaded on the long arm together after joining their identical backings with a basting stitch.

The tops were not quite the same length but that did not matter and a single piece of batting was used for both tops to keep it all even and smooth.

The quilting is the easy and fast freehand peacock feathers but they still need labels before I mail them off to Alycia for distribution through the military hospital chaplains.

Today another CW replica memorial quilt is going off to the mother of CW4 David Carter, one of the pilots of the Chinook helicopter that was shot down in Afghanistan in August.

There is a post and pics. on the HOB blog here.

White Chocolate Mud Cake.....Happy Birthday BJ And Lauren!

Today was our AZ Huggy Bunch sewing day and this past week BJ and Lauren each had a birthday so I am making them a cake, from a very "naughty" recipe called White Chocolate Mud Cake. Naughty as in heaps of calories............

lots of white chocolate and butter, sugar, eggs and some flour! I used wholewheat white flour so maybe there is a little more nutritional value!

All covered in a white chocolate ganache and I am adding strawberries for extra pizzazz because all white sounds a bit boring, doesn't it? And don't we need some fresh fruit to make it nutritionally acceptable? And aesthetically pleasing?

Here's the recipe, if you dare.

White Chocolate Mud cake

250 gms. butter

150 gms. white chocolate [use the good stuff, Ghiradelli is the better choice]

2 cups sugar

1 cup milk

1.5 cups all purpose [plain] flour

1/2 cup self raising flour

1tsp vanilla

2 eggs lightly beaten

White Chocolate Ganache:

1/2 cup cream

300 gm. white chocolate

Grease a deep 9" round cake pan: line base and sides with parchment paper.

Combine butter, white chocolate, sugar and milk in a small saucepan over low heat until smooth and combined- do not boil. Transfer to a large bowl and cool 15 minutes.

Preheat oven to moderately slow [320degrees F].

Whisk flours into liquids and stir in vanilla and eggs. Pour into lined pan and bake one hour. Cover with foil and bake about another 30 minutes. This cake is moist and dense, not light and fluffy.

Leave cake in pan for 30 minutes then turn out onto a rack. When cooled spread with the ganache.

White Chocolate Ganache

Bring cream to a boil in small saucepan, pour over chocolate stirring until the chocolate melts. Cover and refrigerate until thick enough to be spreadable, stirring occasionally.

Ann's Sampler

No posts for over a week, sad, I have been laid low with a virus that segued into an asthma episode and asthmatic bronchitis. Still have the cough and some wheezing even on the steroids and the terribly windy weather today here is kicking up all the stuff that makes me wheeze! But I managed to get through this quilt taking it a little at a time! I simply cannot do nothing, not in my DNA!

This lovely and rather large quilt, 92x102", is custom quilted.

Sorry about the sofa back , the quilt was too large to avoid it!

Hannah helped her sister Ann from FLA. to construct it while Ann was visiting Hannah during surgery recovery.

Lots of feathers here and there and in the borders, that seems to be my default quilting these days!

The thread is Signature 100% cotton in cream on the top and a slightly darker shade more tan, in the bobbin.

The batting is Hobbs, a lighter choice for the FLA. weather and a bit more definition.

Backing is a tone on tone Moda wide back.

Shop Hop Day Two

Yesterday was the final day for Shop Hop Phoenix. Four of us set out from my house and went first to Quiltz, just five minutes down the road. Lauren arrived safely, excited and prepared to enjoy her first experience of this nature.

Thence to The Olde Worlde Quilt Shop on Cave Creek Rd., lots and lots of fabric here, and a plentiful supply of Lauren's favorites the Civil War Replicas, so many in fact she had difficulty choosing.

The furthest away from us on the west side was In Stitches, where we were joined by Andee and her chauffeur, DJ.

Here they demoed a cool tool to make the quilt blocks behind us very easily, Andee is currently tackling a similar block so it was of great interest to her.

From there we visited Bearly Stitchin and by this time lunch was on our minds so we stopped at a nearby Wildflower where I usually love the food, but perhaps my taste buds were hampered by my URTI because my portabella mushroom sandwich lacked flavor.

Quilter's Bee was the next store, BJ's "home store", closest to her house, and then SunValley Quilts where we turned in our "passports" all duly stamped except for Lauren's, whose accident last week cause her to miss all the east valley stores. Bummer! The fabric care package was some consolation for her!

Finally this last stop at Arizona Quilts where Andee went a little wild at the sale rack and where even with coffee and refreshments we were all rather drained, brain and body weary and just plain exhausted. Somehow we all managed to put a smile on for this photo op. with tiaras still in place to show how much we enjoyed the day! Or perhaps it is simply our joy at having survived visiting another seven quilt shops in one day!

I failed to get pics of everyone's purchases, perhaps next time I'll be more organized but no doubt pics will show up on FB or Andee's blog.

I came home and pretty much collapsed. After some chicken soup I was still feeling horrid so I checked my temp, right around 100, don't have my voice back yet, still coughing, yikes, guess I have the creeping crud! No way I will be keeping the little Tin Hat Man tomorrow, just when he is feeling better.

This morning DH went off to church without me and I am taking meds and hoping to feel better soon.

Finished For Friday, Andee's Christmas Sampler Quilt

Andee's Christmas Sampler

Isn't it a beauty?

The quilting is hard to see in pics but nicely subtle in reality, using the beautiful Superior Rainbows thread that sews so nicely in my A-1 machine.

I happened to have the perfect variegated thread for this quilt it seems to have been made for it.

Every block is custom quilted to suit the piecing...........

but in a sampler quilt I think it's important not to distract from the piecing and to follow some kind of theme block to block.

The borders have two rows of simple, graceful, feathers..............

shown here perhaps a little better on the backing.

I love the red binding that frames the quilt.

Currently my house is in turmoil, partly due to the remediation of the leak upstairs in the laundry that also flooded the kitchen. So while the kitchen ceiling was open DH took the opportunity to add a half dozen can lights, it's like daylight in there now! We had intended to rehab the kitchen this fall so we might as well go ahead with that now.

Meantime the laundry is still disrupted, appliances in the loft while DH tiles the floor there. I hope by Monday I can do laundry again!

I will post pics of the renovated kitchen whenever it is finished!

Meantime I have come down with a nasty URTI, thanks probably to #3DGS, laryngitis, painful coughing etc. Yuck. And tomorrow is our second shop hop day, I am going, I will not breathe on anyone, LOL!

Little Tin Hat Man!

He has been very ill again, high fever.

Shop Hop 2011

This is my first experience of Shop Hop. There were four of us all told today who convoyed around the south-east quilt shops in Phx., there were to be five but Lauren was involved in a horrible accident five minutes from my house in which her car was totaled. The good news is that apart from cuts, bruising and general soreness she does not appear to be seriously injured but we would all like a few minutes alone with the idiot who caused the accident by jumping out in front of Lauren's car on the 101! We hope and pray she will be ok to join us next Saturday.

So after confirming that Lauren was not able to come with us BJ, Alissa and I headed off to our first stop, The Three Dudes quilt shop. These guys are award winning quilters and know that shoppers need sustenance so they always have great coffee and cookies available!

When we walked in their door a little girl looked at us and said "mommy those ladies have tiaras"! If I had a spare I would have given her one!

Next stop was The Quilter's Ranch, another place where our tiaras were a hit!

Here's where we met up with Andee and DJ. DJ played chauffeur, doorman, porter and photographer but she cannot hide the fact that she is beginning to catch the very contagious quilt pox!

The Cutting Edge was our next quilt shop on the list, and once again we had our photos taken! It's in old town Chandler in San Marcos Place. We paused for lunch there at a nice bakery in the Square.

It was fun to add yet another 'new to me' quilt shop as I had never been to A Quilter's Oasis, where they were demonstrating a cool tool, Deb Tucker's "Square Squared Ruler" [Square 2]. Andee and BJ both fell for it so I know where to borrow one, LOL!

The final store for the day is one of my favorites of all the wonderful quilt shops in our area, The Bernina Connection on E. Indian School Rd. It's hard to choose between them, but some have collections more to my taste I guess and geographical distance also counts. Bernina Connection is a checkpoint for Quilts Of Valor so I go there more often anyway to pick up and drop off QOV's.

Val, one of the two women owners, was so kind, when she heard about Lauren's accident and I explained that we were making up a "care package" of these CW replica fabrics.......

she sent a collection of F8's to add to the bag.

My Stash has increased by the fabrics below, I love the blue/brown combo. I have no particular design in mind and will add a couple of other fabrics, a brown and a blue to this collection.

The stripe is for the border, that much I know!

The Batiks below are for a commission quilt that I will soon be starting, it has to be ready for a Christmas gift.

I don't plan to add any more as I think I have a fairly good variety of dark, medium and light now plus blenders.

Next Saturday we will be visiting the quilt shops in the northeast part of the valley, another long day, I think we will see eight stores! We need to take our vitamins and get lots of sleep this week!

Kentucky Whirligig Quilt

Here is BJ's very first "original design" quilt and she is so happy with it she says she will never part with it!

The origin of the design was nine patches which then became "whirligigs". The outer border is also her original idea.

BJ is first and foremost a "scrap stash" quilter but she will purchase new fabric to enhance her ideas.

It's quilted with a freehand all over flower/leaf design using a beige thread. I had thought about quilting the Kentucky state flower [BJ is from Kentucky originally and still sounds like a Kentuckian!] but the state flower is Goldenrod, not a very good design for this quilt.

Backing is a small red print that reads as a solid, and makes the quilt reversible.

Nice work BJ!

Tomorrow is the first day for our little group to check out the Phoenix area annual Shop Hop, we will be heading out at 9a.m. to begin our tour of over a dozen quilt shops. We only expect to cover half of those tomorrow but we will all still be weary at day's end.

Hide the plastic, LOL!

This Week's Quilting

The two Seuss quilts below are now ready to return to the piecer.

Both have the Dr Seuss backing, the first uses red thread because I chose to quilt the blocks and borders separately. The red stop border has titles of different Dr.Seuss books written there.

Using Hobbs 80/20 batting gives a little more definition, I have been using it a lot more recently and I like the lighter weight too. The weight is of particular concern on king and queen sized quilts, they can become real heavy weights!

This one is about 74" square.

Close up of the blocks, showing the "puffier" look of the Hobbs batt.

Dr. Seuss backing.

This Seuss quilt got freehand peacock feathers in white thread.

The Quilter's Dream batting is a firmer product so the quilting isn't as well defined.

Another of Leslie's tops is going back to her next week. I started out quilting freehand cherry blossom in the body of the quilt but quickly saw that I would struggle to see where I had quilted, so out came a panto! It looks appropriate for the design and certainly easier for me not to have to strain to see the thread path.

The border is quilted with freehand gingko leaves, the only place where the quilting really shows.

BJ and I were the only ones from AZ Huggy Bunch to sew today, this was her progress on joining blocks of a UFO.

My effort was to combine the blocks we made for our group QOV and prep the backing so it's now ready for me to quilt.