Small, fast update

Just a quick update: my folks are in town and I haven't found as much time as usual to sew. Mom brought a whole bunch of stuff for us to make Christmas ornaments together. We looked it over and thought it was going to be pretty easy and we would whip out a dozen in a few hours or so. yeah, that didn't happen. But we are experimenting and I'm documenting so I can share what we did with you.

I bought some fat quarters today to make patches to appliqué onto my son's quilt where the it has frayed.

The fish fabric is "Go Fish" for Timeless Treasure Fabrics of SoHo.  The plaid fabric is BungleJungle by Timbeck for moda. I don't know who makes the triangle fabric.

Yes, I know they don't exactly all match but I liked them all for different reasons and couldn't put them back after they were in my hands.

Onto what I have worked on this week.

Where I was last week:

Here I am today:

Not much progress.

With school starting next week-my oldest is starting Kindergarten!-I'm trying to capture these last few days of summer with them and not really worrying about much else. If I finish this week that would be great but...not too hurried.

Have a good week!

Kate

School Orientation!

Hello Friends!

Hope your Monday is going well. Have a good weekend?

I just got back from Orientation for Preschool! Bubba starts in a few weeks. Initially, I was a little worried about him being away from me (he is at a very clingy stage right now) but he was very excited to go look at his classroom and meet his teachers. He was not a happy camper when I told him it was time to go home and he cried all the way home. I think school will be great for him! I just can't believe it's already time. Where did the summer go?

Moving on....

Sewing-wise, I didn't get much done this week. We're doing lots of work on the house and the garden while the weather is gorgeous so sewing took a back seat this week.

Here is where I was at this time last week:

This is what I've accomplished:

Since last time I backstitched the quilt block in the upper-right hand corner, added in the quilt block on the lower right hand corner and added in the acorns and leaves. 

I'm kind of hoping to get the rest of this done this week--I'd like to cross it off my list!

Alright-that's it for this week! 

Don't forget to Like me on Facebook and to follow along on what happens outside of the blog on Instagram.

Work on your art!

Kate

Progress!

A little business first:  I've started an Instagram account for the blog to show the happenings of our day-to-day life here. You can find me at instagram.com/sewingbylottery Come check out the fun!

I've completed quite a lot on the Autumn cross stitch. This week has been pretty awesome in that I've been able to devote at least an hour each day to cross stitching. Let's hope this streak continues!

Here's what I had done last week:

And here's where I am at this week: 

I backstitched the the center frame,added the sunflower and finished the corner square last night

A little closer look at the backstitching. 

I think it is coming out really well. I can't believe how fast it is going!

I did have to spend some time on Saturday and Sunday fixing my son's quilt. A while ago-maybe two or three months-his quilt desperately needed a wash (with that dark blue fabric all his drool stains just show up!). When I took it out of the washer I noticed the quilt top had sheared away from the batting and the backing in one of the corners. It was very strange. 

Not even sure how that happened!

Plus the seam where I had connected the two ends of the binding had frayed very badly as well-no picture for that one. Luckily the part where the quilt top was frayed was on the same side as the bad binding so I got out my trusty seam ripper and took out about six feet of binding. I still had some of the striped fabric and was able to add a little patch to the frayed part up in the corner.

Voila!

I also had enough of the binding left over and was able to fix that as well. I even had enough time to re-attach all the binding!

However, as I was looking at the quilt top to see if there was any more damage I noticed that many of the nine patch squares had separated. Remember, this quilt was started at least 20 years ago and my mom said when she first started it she didn't really know all that much about making quilts or seam allowances.

There's about a dozen of these little separations. Bummer. 

She suggested we just dump the quilt and she make a new one for him but I don't think so! This gives us an opportunity to make something really awesome. I'm thinking we should appliqué various nautical patches onto the quilt: whales, anchors, boats, etc. I think that would make it really cute!

Alright, I've been a busy lady this week sewing-wise. Don't forget to check me out on Instagram and, if you haven't already, stop by and say HI on Facebook as well or comment below!

Have a great week!

Kate

Summertime!

It's summer! The last couple of months have just FLOWN by here in our house. We've had pre-school "graduations" (very cute but ridiculous to call it a graduation), beach excursions for birthdays, tea parties, matching shirts for Father's Day, fireworks in the backyard, cousins and aunts and uncles visiting, and I have two extra helpers in the kitchen lately wanting to help with every meal I make (sometimes a good thing, sometimes not so much).

We've also decided to put our house on the market but before we do we have had to do some sprucing up around the place. But with all this packing up and cleaning I have been doing a lot of de-cluttering and have gotten rid of so much stuff.  So. Much. Stuff. It's amazing. It's  kind of embarrassing how much stuff we have but it feels so good to give it away and get what's leftover organized.

But with packing up and making the house ready for strangers to walk through (ugh) I did put a lot of my sewing/crafting stuff in storage (and by storage I mean my in-laws garage!). I do know myself, though, and I have to keep some sort of project going, so I kept a few of my counted cross stitch projects here at home so I can work on those during down times. My thinking is I can get the stitching stuff done on a few projects and once we are at the new place and settled in I will finish them to completion! I do have an unspoken agreement with myself that I will not purchase any new craft or sewing project until I finish at least ten from my list. Confession time: I may have bought some Christmas fabric for a project that I already have but didn't have the fabric to complete it. That doesn't count, right?

This little plan has worked so far: I've finished an Easter sampler and some Christmas ornaments and now I am working on something for Autumn.

I'm thinking of adding their names somewhere

One for each of the girls

Right now back stitching the quilt.

I'm also going to try and post once a week if only to show the progress that I have made on any given project. 

I have so many ideas running around in my head. My latest idea is to take this giant, ugly quilt top I started eight or nine years ago, finish it and make it into a picnic blanket. I've found we have been taking lots of picnics or going to lots of parks this summer and we need a giant picnic blanket for everyone to spread out on. But I've got some cool ideas to make it awesome. Guess I will have to add that to The List.

What's everyone been working on this summer?? Let me know in the comments below, I love to hear from you!

Birthday Cake

I love sewing, crafting, quilting. Being creative. It makes me happy and provides a great sense of fulfillment.  But it takes quite a bit of time to finish some of my projects. Right now I am working on a new counted cross stitch project. It may be days/weeks before I finish.

So I thought I would share another one of my skills. I really like to cook. I'd like to think of myself as a pretty good cook (minus this weekend when I almost set fire to my parent's kitchen...while my nieces sang "Let it Burn" instead of "Let it Go"). 

Moving on.....my little man turned three this past weekend while I was in Phoenix and we are celebrating his birthday tomorrow. Right now we are pretty casual about birthdays, so tomorrow we are going to the beach to have a picnic and throw rocks into the ocean, coming home to a cake and playing in the backyard, and rounding out the day with his favorite dinner, hamburgers. Life doesn't get much better!

But I did want to make him a special cake. Lately, there has been a lot of construction around us so as we are driving around I am constantly hearing, "Diggers! Mama, look! Diggers!" So what else could I make my birthday boy except for a diggers cake. 

Why, yes, I did use a mortar and pestle to grind my Oreos for the dirt. 

The type of root beer changes each time I make the cake

The kids took naps so I made frosting and saved them a beater each. Lucky kids!

Found the diggers at the dollar store!

Looks and taste awesome! 

I didn't butter my pans very well so one of the cakes didn't come out as easy as I would like. Oh well. I used it to make the construction site and the kids got a piece of preview cake this afternoon.

I'm going to share my chocolate cake and frosting recipe with you but I will warn you of a few things:

1. There is a little bit of time that goes into this cake...not a lot, but more than just your average cake. 
2. All other chocolate cakes will be bland, dry and less desirable to you after you eat this cake. It's so good. It's not too sweet but the combination of the cake and the frosting.....heavenly.
3. Yes, it does have root beer in it. No, it does not have a decidedly "root beer" flavor to it. 
4. I do tend to buy a microbrew root beer rather than A & W or the other type of root beer that is pretty well known but whose name escapes me right now and I'm too lazy to Google.  I don't know why I use a microbrew root beer...my sister would probably say it's because I'm a snob. 

Root Beer Cake

(I can't remember where I found this cake. I've been making it for years, if anyone knows who is the original author, let me know)

2 c root beer

1 c cocoa powder
1/2 c unsalted butter

1 1/4 c sugar

1/2 c brown sugar

2 c flour

1 1/4 tsp baking soda

1 tsp salt

2 eggs

Preheat oven to 325 degrees.

Spray/butter two cake pans and set aside.

In a saucepan, heat root beer, cocoa powder and butter until butter melts. Add sugars and whisk until dissolved. Remove from heat and let cool about 15 minutes. 

In a large bowl, whisk flour, baking soda and salt. In a small bowl whisk eggs until just beaten. Then temper the eggs into the cocoa mixture until just combined. Gently fold the flour mixture into the cocoa mixture. Batter will be slightly lumpy. Do not over mix.

Pour into prepared pans and cook 25-30 minutes. Rotate 1/2 through. 

Frosting

2 oz 60% cocoa, melted

1 stick butter, melted

1/2 tsp salt

1/4 c root beer

2/3 c cocoa powder

2 1/2 c powdered sugar

Beat butter and cocoa powder. Add chocolate, salt, powdered sugar and root beer. Beat until smooth. If the frosting seems a little thick, add a few tablespoons more of root beer until you reach the desired consistency. 

Frost that cake anyway you want!

Eating both the beater and a piece of "preview" cake

Going back for more

Enjoy!