New from Prints Charming

Hooray! I finally have my hands on some of the prints in the new quilting fabric range by Prints Charming for Spotlight. I guess I'll have to make a new quilt...

Discovering pretties

Several years ago, I had an urge to make a pretty quilt. I wanted to include soft colours and lots of muted floral fabrics. Since these weren't the sort of fabrics I normally purchased, I remember that I started to collect small pieces that I thought would be useful.

 

I cut them in strips and sewed them together to make a quilt top. Simple and, yes, pretty.

Today, I took this top out of my cupboard and into the light and fell in love all over again. It needs to be a few rows bigger, so that's a task I've added to my sewing list.

To rediscover that different styles and prints make me feel happy is very satisfying. That's why I make quilts - to fall in love. Why do you make quilts?

Pasty recipe

Thank for all the comments about how you store your recipes. I'm so glad to know I'm not the only one who tears them out of magazines but never uses them!

I never thought I would be sharing a recipe on this blog but, due to popular demand, here's what I did to make my beef and vegetable pasties. Purists who like to make everything from scratch, look away now.

 Ingredients:

• a couple of slurps of olive oil
• 125g beef mince
• 1 crushed garlic clove
• 1/2 chopped onion
• 50g tomato paste
• a couple of slurps of Worcestershire sauce
• 1/2 cup beef stock
• a couple of handfuls of chopped frozen vegetables (I used corn, carrot and broccoli)
• 4 sheets shortcut pastry
• 1 lightly beaten egg

Method:

Preheat oven to 200 degrees C. Heat the oil in a non-stick frypan. Add garlic, onion and mince. Cook until browned - use a fork to break up the mince. Add tomato paste, Worcestershire sauce and stock. Reduce heat to low and cook about 5 minutes. Add the vegetables and cook about 5 minutes more. Remove from heat.

Use a biscuit cutter, cup or plate to cut pastry rounds. I cut a large circle from each sheet to make four pasties; you might prefer to make more, smaller ones.

Divide the mince mixture into the number of pastry rounds you have cut. Place the mince mixture in the centre of the pastry. Brush pastry edges with the egg and fold over to enclose. Brush the pastries with egg. Place on baking paper on a tray and bake 15-20 minutes (depending on the size).

Comment:

I plan to make more of these, with different fillings. Spinach and cheese with pine nuts would be tasty, as would a sweet version with peaches.

I am not a domestic goddess

I have a folder that is bulging with pages of recipes that I have cut out of magazines and newspapers. Do you have one of those, too?

Rarely have I ever made any of the food in these recipes. Today I decided this would change, so I sorted through the sheets.

It was fascinating. I have collected multiple recipes for similar foods. It would appear I enjoy a limited range of dishes (or I think I would, since I've never cooked any of them). Lots of salmon or chicken dishes are in my file, as well as vegetable recipes. There are also plenty of recipes for banana cake (how many versions does one person need?)

I've decided to make a recipe from my file every week. If it turns out I don't like the taste, the recipe will be discarded. Here I go!

Today's effort was these beef and vegetable pasties. Perfect for a casual Sunday lunch; they are delicious, so that recipe stays in my file.

Cooking is a satisfying activity but it takes time and inclination. Sometimes I have one but not the other. A domestic goddess, I am not. How about you?

Hand quilted with love

So, my friend Sarah Fielke said to me: would you like to write a post about my new book for my blog hop? OK, I said. Write whatever you like, Sarah said. Trusting, isn't she?

You may remember seeing some of my pictures before on Sarah's blog. Yes, she gave me her password and said: go for it. She was very busy doing other things at the time so she probably forgot to go and check what I did.

What was she doing? She was sewing:

to make:

writing lots of words:

to go into a new book!

So, while I was amusing myself drawing stick people, she wrote ANOTHER book. That would be this one:

It is a beauty. Hardcover, lovely paper, gorgeous photography, clear instructions, helpful diagrams and lots of information about how to construct quilts.

Oh yes, and 16 beautiful projects!

I thought: ooh, I'm going to make this quilt
(Ups and Downs - page 30).

Then I remembered that Sarah makes ENORMOUS quilts and I don't. (How she does it, I don't know.
She's obviously a better quilt wrangler than I am.)

I checked for pretty fabrics in my stash (ooh look! there are a lot of blue fabrics here - better use them up) and decided to make a square quilt with three zigzags instead of five.

Looking at my quilt makes me happy and so does Sarah's book. Surely that's all you can ask of a quilt book, isn't it? 

If you don't have a copy of Hand Quilted with Love, you can buy it here:

Sarah Fielke

Book Depository 

Amazon

Don't forget to check out these other great blogs.
(Bet you don't see stick people there, though.)

SewTake a Hike 4 May
Belinda Stitches 5 May
True Up 6 May
LilysQuilts (UK) 7 May
Creative Dabbling (Australia) 8 May YOU ARE HERE!
Mrs Schmenkman Quilts (USA) 9 May  
I'm A Ginger Monkey (UK) 10 May 
Petits Elefants -(Australia) 10 May
Prints Charming (Australia) 11 May
RedPepper Quilts (Australia) 12 May
HandMade by Alissa (USA) 13 May
Meet Me at Mikes (Australia) 14 May
Sew Mama Sew (USA) 15 May

Last week on Textile Tidings

Six of last week's best links from my Textile Tidings Facebook page:

• ANZAC Day memories - beautiful filet crochet with patriotic themes on the Australian War Memorial's site.
  
• Feast on the extraordinary art quilts of Izabella Baikova.
• 30 April - 2 June: Autumn Glow exhibition of weaving, felting. knitting, crochet by the fibre designers of The Society of Arts and Crafts of NSW.
• I love the subtle colours in this rope basket by Gemma Patford.
• 19 April - 2 June: 'It's all about the journey' Cheryl Bridgart's exhibition of tactile visual stories told through exquisite fine art embroidery on paper and vibrant acrylic paintings. Murray Bridge, SA.
• Great tutorial from Skein Yarn for dyeing silk hankies.

It's not scary on Facebook! I'd love to see you on my Textile Tidings page - you will be very welcome.

There's something about stripes...

I do like a stripey binding. Do you?