Super Mom – No Cape!

Today I’m sharing the third section of the Morning Glory Border.

The pattern for the Morning Glory Border Part #3 is available as a pdf to download here.

Morning Glory Border Part #1

Morning Glory Border Part #2

Each spring and fall, Amy from Amy’s Creative Side hosts her bi-annual Blogger’s Quilt Festival to coincide with the spring and fall Quilt Markets.   This first week, May 17th to 24th, bloggers can link up and share their favourite quilts in a variety of categories.  Then from May 24th to 30th the voting for a favourite in each category takes place with the winner being announced on May 31st.

This year, each blogger is allowed to enter two quilts.   For my entry in the throw quilt cateogory,  I’ve chosen the quilt I named “Aloha Ohana.”

Regular readers of Super Mom – No Cape! will have already seen this quilt a couple of times.  First, as a Jelly Roll 1600 quilt top I made last spring while Dave was working on a contract in Grand Bend, ON.   At the time, I had planned to make a quilt for each of our children for Christmas and that one was made with our middle daughter in mind.  Then fate intervened and that six month contract was cancelled after only two months.  The top was packed away in the bottom of my suitcase; traveling with us from place to place over the next several months.

Then in February, our middle daughter was diagnosed with a serious illness.  We are oh so grateful that she is now on the road to complete recovery but when she called with the news, Dave and I experienced first hand the feeling of total helplessness that can sweep over a parent.

To feel like I was doing something, anything… no matter how little, I decided to get out that quilt top and turn it into a finished quilt to send to her.

I made this label to attach to the back of the quilt:

I wanted her to know that her Dad had helped me make the quilt too.  He helped to get the quilt top, batting and backing ready to quilt.  He made all the meals during that time.

When my shoulders and neck ached in protest from doing the hand basting and then maneuvering the quilt while doing the machine quilting and then again while hand sewing the binding to the back, Dave provided much needed massages so that I could push through and get it finished to send to her.

Before doing the machine quilting, I hand embroidered the words Aloha, Ohana, Love and Hope through all three layers of the quilt.

From 2000 to 2004, we lived on Maui and it became home of our hearts.  It is our fondest dream to return to live there again one day.  For the backing of the quilt I chose this beautiful Hawaiian style fabric featuring hibiscus and plumeria blooms to remind her of home.

I also used that fabric to make a matching tote for the quilt.

And here is the finished quilt:

My original post about the Ohana Aloha quilt can be found here.

I decided to name the quilt “Ohana Aloha” because Ohana is the Hawaiian word for family and while Aloha is most often recognized as the Hawaiian word of greeting, it has much deeper meanings and when a person chooses to live their life in the Spirit of Aloha it becomes a word of blessing.

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Sew Darn Crafty Link Party #115

Made by You Monday

We would pass this mailbox each time we made a trip to the Perdido Key Library and finally one day we remembered to take the camera along to get some pictures of it.

I think that it maybe supposed to represent the Blue Herons we saw quite often there at the beach looking for fish.

Here’s the second part of the Morning Glory Border pattern.

The pattern for the Morning Glory Border Part #2 is available as a pdf to download here.

Morning Glory Border Part #1

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Sew Darn Crafty Link Party #115

I mentioned back in this post that since moving back to the mainland from Hawaii, we always find it funny that so many recipes are labelled “Hawaiian Something” simply because they have pineapple in them, regardless of whether you’d ever find that recipe eaten in Hawaii.   And so when I created that recipe, I just couldn’t resist calling it Hawaiian Chicken.

Now today I have another recipe to share using pineapple coconut juice as a base for the sauce and since I’ve already named one recipe Hawaiian Chicken, I’ve decided to call this one Aloha Chicken. 

Recipe for Baked Aloha Chicken

• 2 chicken legs cut into 2 thighs and 2 drumsticks
• 1 small onion, sliced thinly
• 1/2 c pineapple coconut juice
• 1 tbsp mustard
• 1 tbsp soy sauce
• 1 tbsp sesame oil
• 1/4 tsp garlic powder

In a small measuring cup mix pineapple coconut juice, mustard, soy sauce, sesame oil and garlic powder.

Slice onion.

Place chicken pieces and onion slices in a casserole dish.  Pour sauce over the chicken and stir to coat the chicken pieces evenly.

Bake in 350 degree oven for 45 minutes.

Half way through the cooking time, remove the lid from the casserole dish to allow the chicken to brown nicely.

Transfer chicken pieces to a plate and serve with baked potatoes (or rice) and your favourite vegetable side.

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Pretty and Delicious Link Party # 15

Sew Darn Crafty Link Party #114

Made by you Monday

Since starting my low GL (glycemic load) eating plan in July of last year, I have lost two full clothing sizes. I don’t own a scale so don’t know how much I’ve lost in pounds. I am gauging my weight loss by how my clothes fit.

Weight lose has slowed but I’m still losing so I’m okay with that.  Better to lose slowly and be able to maintain than to lose too quickly and risk gaining it all back.

Because I’m using the fit of my clothes to keep me motivated to stick to my eating plan, I do need to buy new clothes once the old ones get too loose. (I’m currently between sizes where one size has gotten loose but the next size down is still too tight.)

New shirts aren’t that expensive but new jeans/pants can be.  So to save money, when I need the next size down, I’ve been picking them up at thrift stores.

Once they are washed on hot and no longer have that eau de thrift store smell, no one would know that I hadn’t purchased them new… unless of course they read my blog.

Now because I’m shopping thrift stores, I don’t always get pants that are the correct length so I need to hem them. And as you see in the photo below, the person who owned them before me needed them shorter because the hems are frayed in places and had a crease where they had been cuffed.

Here’s how I went about hemming the pants to the right length for me and getting rid of those frayed hems in the process.

It turned out that where these pants were cuffed is the perfect length for me. But if they hadn’t been, I would have tried the pants on, folded up the hem to the desired length and had my assistant (Dave) pin the hem to hold it in place.

First, I unpicked the existing hem.

Then I turned them inside out and pinned the hem to the correct length.

Next I trimmed off the excess fabric leaving me with 1 inch. You’ll notice that even after trimming, there remains some frayed fabric.

Then I folded the fabric under ½” all the way around to give me a ½” finished hem.

As I didn’t have an open arm machine, I then turned the pants right side out to make it easier to stitch the hem close to the folded edge.

And here they are, hemmed to the perfect length:

Note:  I hemmed these pants while we were still in Florida but scheduled this post ahead as I wasn’t sure exactly how the month of May was going to play out as far as where we would be at any given time.

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Sew Darn Crafty Link Party #114

Made by You Monday

This next pattern comes in three parts.  Today I’m sharing Part #1.

Part #2 and #3 will be posted on each of the next two Mondays.

The Morning Glory Border pattern is available as a pdf to download here.

This post was added to the following link parties:

Sew Darn Crafty Link Party #114

Well actually, I tried two new things.

Last week, when we were getting ready to head back to Canada, I decided to get a few embroideries ready so that I’d have some take-along projects to work on during the long road trip and also during my days in the hotel room while Dave was at work. (He started a one-week contract on Monday.)

In the past, I’ve always used white muslin or pieces of white thrifted sheets (well washed) as the base for my embroidery projects. But this time, I decided to use various pieces of the Kona Snow that I had leftover from other projects I’d worked on over the winter.

I really like the way Kona Cotton feels but I do have one pet peeve about it. It has the tendency to fray. And sure enough, once the tracing was done, I noticed that the edges had already started to fray.

Now since finished embroideries have to be squared up anyway, I don’t usually worry about a little bit of fraying. But as this was Kona Cotton, I decided to try something else new.

I set up my serger (one of the things we had managed to get out of storage in Georgia to have in Florida with us) and I serged around the edge of each piece.

Dave and I shared the driving on our trip but as he likes to do the majority of the driving, I had lots of time to embroider and I managed to finish this one:

The lighting in the hotel room isn’t the greatest at the time of day when I wanted to take these photos so I spread it out on the hotel lawn. Let me tell you, I got a few strange looks from other people staying at the hotel.

Here’s a close-up:

The Kona Cotton was lovely to embroider on and I’m so glad I have more ready to be stitched. It is definitely my new favourite fabric for embroidery projects.

And as you can see, serging the edges prevented any further fraying.

The Seeds of Friendship design came from this pattern I purchased last June when we stopped at The Quilt Box.

As I’m once again without a sewing machine, the embroidery will have to wait to be turned into a pillow.

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Finish It Up Friday

Finish Friday #65

Sew Darn Crafty Link Party Week #113

As the new comment plug-in I’m using doesn’t assign numbers to comments, I assigned each person a number with the first person to comment being #1 and so on.

Then I used Random Number Generator to pick a winner.

The winner of the Prosperity and Hospitality Angels is:

Congratulations Deb Murphy, I’ll be sending off an e-mail asking for your mailing address so I can mail the Angels off to you.

Thank you to everyone who entered and helped me celebrate our daughter’s returning health.

These would be great for adding monograms to sachets, handkerchiefs or other small projects.

The pattern for the Floral Alphabet is available as a pdf to download here.

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Sew Darn Crafty Link Party Week #113