Oh, Fransson!

November Fabric Focus

Happy Thanksgiving!  I'm getting ready to go to my parents' house for turkey and board games this afternoon and hope that everyone else has something nice planned too.

 
My November project for Sew, Mama, Sew! is up today.  You can find it here.

I'm guessing that most of you are already familiar with their annual Handmade Holidays feature but, if you haven't already, check out their daily posts in November featuring links to gifts you can make yourself, handmade gifts you can buy and gret holiday recipes.   

 
This is a simple gift project -- A fabric folder holding laminated fabric-backed recipe cards.  The cards are held together with both fusible webbing and iron-on vinyl.

For those of you who have been having trouble finding iron-on vinyl: My JoAnn told me that they no longer carry it on bolts.  I'm not sure if this is a nationwide thing or not, but thought I would mention it.  My JoAnn still had it in the 2-yard rolls in the notions section though and, according to their staffers, will continue to carry it this way.     

   

In other news, I will be BACK next week.  (Well, I guess I didn't really go anywhere, but I will be back to blogging.)

Quilt Along Part 13: Making the Quilt Sandwich

This post is also available as a pdf download.  As a friendly reminder, this pdf (or printouts of it) may not be republished or distributed without permission.

Download Making a Quilt Sandwich

  

Start by laying out your batting on a clean, smooth floor.  Spread your quilt top on the batting, smoothing out any wrinkles.  You may need to actually crawl on the top of the quilt to do this.  Trim batting to within about two inches of your quilt top.

 

Starting from the top, carefully roll your batting, as shown.

 

Continue rolling until you have a batting tube like this and set it aside.  Don't worry about pinning the batting roll.  The natural tendency of most battings is to cling to fabric, so your roll should hold itself together without any help from you.

 

Now spread your quilt back on the floor, right side down.  Starting at the bottom of the quilt, use a strip of  painter's tape to secure the edge of the quilt back to the floor.  Move to the opposite (top) side and, pulling the quilt back ever so slightly toward you, tape the center top to the floor as well.  Repeat with the left and right sides and each of the four corners, each time pulling very gently, but not stretching, to make sure the quilt back is completely smooth.

 

Bring back the batting roll and, starting at the bottom, slowly unroll the batting and top onto the quilt back.  You have several inches leeway on all sides, but want to make sure that a) all parts of your quilt top are "inside the edges" of the quilt back, and b) your rows are perpendicular to the sides of the quilt back and parallel to the pieced row on the quilt back.  If you see that you're off, don't hesitate to re-roll your batting and start over.

 

Depending on the width of you top back fabric, you may have several extra inches at the top of your quilt.  Don't worry about that for now.

 

Once again, smooth out your quilt top and batting.  I usually do this by starting at the bottom and crawling up the center of my quilt, smoothing as I go.  You want to make things smooth, but be careful not to warp your fabric as you work.  If you notice that your smoothing is making your blocks wonky, ease up a little bit and work them back into a nice gridded shape.

 

Once your fabric is arranged the way you want it, use curved safety pins to secure all three layers at the center of each block.  If you're new to free-motion quilting, you may also want to place pins at the intersections of the sashing and around the edges.

 

Placing these pins is awkward at first, but it's something you're likely to get the hang of with practice!

 

Once you've placed all of your pins, use scissors to trim through all layers about two inches from the edge of your quilt top.

 

You'll want to handle your quilt sandwich with some care.  However, if you've done a good job with smoothing and pinning, you should be able to flip your sandwich over and have the back be as smooth and even as the front.

 

Here are both of my sandwiches waiting to be quilted!  I'll be back on Sunday morning with tips on free-motion quilting.

ETA:  I've started a thread in the Flickr Group for those of you who use spray adhesives (or other fusible-type products) to share your experiences.  It's here.

Urban Legend Cookies

 

Just a quick post today to share another cookie recipe.  These are Urban Legends, a ground oat, chocolate and butterscotch chip cookie based on the old e-mail forward classic, the "Neiman Marcus Cookie."

Download Urban Legend Cookies

Enjoy!

Saturday Cookies

 

I now have eight of twelve kinds done.  The latest four include Chocolate Crinkles, which are really messy to make but also really tasty.

 

This recipe calls for Dutch-Process Cocoa.  Since my grocery store was out of the kind I usually get, I used this Guittard Cocoa Rouge.  For the Bittersweet Chocolate, I used Guittard Bittersweet Chocolate Discs, which also had a lovely taste and smell.

Next, I made Spicy Ginger Crinkles which I rolled in Demerara Sugar before baking.

 

I also made these Cocoa Espresso Crinkles.  I can't find this recipe online (and it's not my recipe, so I can't post it or send it out) but it was in the Better Homes and Garden's Christmas Cookies Magazine this year.  This is a similar recipe that I've made before and that is very good.

 

Finally, I made these Maple Bar Cookies.  This recipe is from the Land-O-Lakes Butter Cookie Recipe Magazine from a couple of years ago.  (It was called Maple Moons and they made the cookies in the shape of moons.)  I can't find this one online either, but here is a link to the Land-O-Lakes website, which has several other maple cookie recipes.

 

When I'm drizzling glazes and melted chocolate on cookies, I like to use these little plastic bottles instead of drizzling from a spoon.  I find that it's much less messy and easier to get even drizzling.  You can find bottles like this at specialty kitchen supply stores or in the cake decorating section at JoAnn. 

Merry Christmas

 

Merry Christmas, everyone!  These are some photos from our Christmas Eve Brunch.

 

Here's our little buffet.

 

I made this goat cheese quiche with a hash brown crust.  It was really good (and easy to make)!  I added smoked salmon and that seemed to work out just fine.

 

I'm only showing the detail shot of the cranberry upside-down cake, because part of it got stuck in the pan, so it wasn't as pretty as it should habe been!  (It tasted wonderful though.)

 

We also had mimosas and bloody marys.  This recipe is really good.

I hope everyone is having a wonderful holiday!  Pictures of finished holiday quilts and more cookies are coming soon.

Chocolate Covered Cherries and Praline Cookies

 

Two more cookies for today.  My total is now at about 30 dozen.  The first ones are Martha Stewart's Aunt Mary Dillon's Praline Cookies.

 

I use about twice as many chopped pecans in the topping than is recommended by the recipe.

 

And these are the Chocolate Covered Cherry Cookies.

 

I got this Oregon-manufactured cocoa from New Seasons and would highly recommend it.  Wonderful taste and smell!

If you would like to share photos and recipes for your holiday cookies, I have a Flickr Group that you can join.

Frosted Vanilla Cookies

 

More cookies!  These are almost exactly like a recipe from one of those Land-o-Lakes Butter Recipe Magazines from the grocery store.  (It's a couple of years old and I couldn't find the original on their website.)  This is a vanilla cookie made with ground walnuts and a vanilla cream frosting.

 

The only substantive change from the original recipe is using a tablespoon of Vanilla Bean Paste instead of chopping up and using actual vanilla beans.  I get mine from New Seasons, but it's also available at Sur la Table.  It's a syrupy liquid full of little vanilla bean flecks and it gives your cookies and frosting a nice vanilla fleck-y look and smell. 

The original recipe also calls for some kind of pre-packaged chopped walnuts.  I just chopped walnut halves in my food processor instead.

Here is the recipe, with my modifications: Download FrostedVanillaCookieRecipe

   

Lemon Drop Cookies

 

This is the first of my Christmas cookies.  I made up this recipe because I wasn't happy with any of the lemon cookie recipes that I was finding.  These have a really lovely lemony taste and are also nice and chewy.

 

The key is combining granulated sugar and lemon zest in a food processor.  This sugar is used both in the dough and to roll the cookie in before baking.  I got this tip from Cook's Illustrated's Baking Illustrated.  (I didn't care for their recipe though -- The cookies were too crispy.) 

 

If you'd like to make them yourself, here is a pdf: Download LemonDropCookieRecipe

ETA:  For those of you asking about how to do this without a food processor. . .The point of using the food processor is to make sure the lemon zest and sugar are all chopped up together.  This flavors the sugar and releases intense lemon flavor and smell as the blades and sugar granules chop up the zest.  You can still make the cookies using just the zest and sugar whisked together, it just won't have the same intense lemon flavor that can be acheieved by using a food processor to combine them.  It's my opinion that a blender would not work as well and might make a huge mess.  Then again, I've never tried it.  It you have one of those mini processors, it would probably work.  You would just need to process in batches.

Saturday Morning Baking

I haven't posted about anything but sewing in a while, so I thought I'd post some photos of my baking from this morning  This is the Cherry Struesel Coffee Cake from Martha Stewart's Baking Handbook.  The recipe is also on her website.  I'm a little nutty for Martha's recipes.  I have eight of her cookbooks and they're always the first place I look when I'm making something new.

Here's a side view.  The struesel topping came out well, but I think the glaze is a little thin.

Here's another recipe from the same book.  (Also on Martha's site.)  It's a Marble Cake with a white chocolate glaze.  I'm not crazy about the way that glaze looks.  If I make this again, I'll probably make a regular chocolate glaze.

Now I have to go back to sewing.  The deadline for the pillowcase book projects was moved up by more than two months (and one of my projects is a quilt!) so I'm rushing to get everything done.  I just had two more projects accepted for another book by the same publisher, so that's exciting news.

Christmas Cookie Wrapup

As with everything else that happened in December, my goal of posting pictures of every kind of cookie I made completely got away from me.  I want to apologize for being so lame!  Rather than posting the recipes now, I'm going to start the year out fresh with the goal of posting a better selection of photos and recipes next Christmas.   

I want to thank everyone that joined my Holiday Cookies Flickr Pool.  I've added a few more photos today and, if anyone sees anything they want a recipe for, please e-mail me.  I will be happy to send it on.

Thank you!