This sounds like a school report, doesn’t it?

There were great sales at the quilt shops.  Even though it was questionable if I should even step foot into a quilt shop, I received an e-mail which was simply too good — FQs were half off and if you bought 10, one was free.  Essentially, 11 for the price of  5.  So, earlier this week, I planned to go to my local quilt shop.  Since my young quilting friend was over for the weekend, I was going to take her.

When my sister heard my plans, she asked if she could go.  Certainly.  Then before we left, her daughter wanted to join us.  Or maybe her momma just wanted her along since my niece has recently gotten engaged and a wedding quilt was planned.  Either way, the four of us spent the day together — shopping, eating Chinese food and quilting.

I think my young quilting friend got the most of my purchases.  No pictures — she had it put up darn near before we got into the house. (She’s good that way.) Mostly red FQs since she’s planning a quilt for her aunt and my red stash is low — I haven’t replenished it since I made my sister’s wedding quilt.  This evening when we went back out she also  got some Spongebob fabric to make the quilt she’s working on for her cousin bigger and the backing fabric for it.

My niece has picked this quilt for her momma to make:

I just have to teach my sister how to make HST squares and QST squares – all nice basic quilting skills — the trick to this quilt is the color placement.  A design wall is going to be very necessary.

After they picked out the chain fabric, background fabrics, and 8 red FQs (see comment above), they raided my stash for green, turquoise and blue fabrics.  The pattern called for 32 FQs (each star is a different color), but each star only uses about 3 1/2″ x 13″. I think after we took this picture we substituted at least one fabric and there may be other substitutions before it’s finished.

So, what did I come home with?

10 FQs and a 1 yard piece which was on clearance.

As for the sewing — my young quilting friend made significant progress on her quilt.

She’s still assembling it and the borders need to be cut.

Before I pickup up my sister and niece, my sister worked on the quilt she started on Wednesday.  She made one block and thought it came out 1/2″ smaller than it should have and she couldn’t figure out why.  Turns out her ruler was 1/2″ bigger than she thought.  The blocks were the right size.  She is very relieved — and smart enough to stop after only making 1 1/2 blocks to figure out what was wrong.

As for my quilting, I still need to stitch two long seams and put the borders on my quilt.  But, with all the running around, all I got done was pinning the two bottom sections together so I know how they go together.

But bottom line, it was a great day filled with family and quilting.

My sister posted this picture on Facebook about 6  PM this evening and asked if she could come over to get more fabric.  About an hour later she called and then came over.  She spent the evening cutting up 2″ blue strips into rectangles and supplementing them with strips from my box of blue fabric.

She did a fantastic job with her 1/4″ seam.  The next step will slow her down just a little.  She has to sew 6 blue rectangles around half of these blocks.  When she gets those done she’ll come back to raid my orange box.  However, she may have some of her own orange fabric by then.  We are going to a quilt sale Saturday morning.

While she was here I managed to get the last two rows of blocks sewn together. Two more long seams and then its time for the borders.

I took the day off today and spent much of it in the sewing room.  Significant progress was made putting the quilt together.  More wasn’t done because I had a new quilter in my sewing room today.

My sister asked if I would teach her how to quilt.  Since we were both off from work today she came over and dug through my stash.  She knew she wanted to make an orange, blue and yellow quilt but didn’t know what quilt.  I pulled out Successful Scrap Quilts from Simple Rectangles by Judy Turner and Margaret Rolfe and she flipped through the book. Many of the quilts are made with 2″ x 3 1/2″ rectangles — a size that I have in my pre-cut stash.  She decided to make “Spectrum”, which is the cover quilt.  Her blocks are going to be orange with yellow centers and blue with yellow centers.

I think in the end she found 80 of the 128 yellow rectangles she needs.  A quick lesson on using a rotary cutter and ruler and she cut the rest in no time — mostly from my 2″ strips.  I think she came up 10 or 15 short where she had to pull from my stash boxes.  She’s not going to be as lucky with the blue and orange.  Sydney’s first quilt was primarily blue and the orange is in the Orca Bay box.

Anyway, she took a baggie of yellow rectangles and a spool of thread home with plans to sew them together and press them.  Next time she’s over she’ll pull the blue and orange fabric.

Sydney will be back in the sewing room this weekend.  She’s got to finish the Sponge Bob quilt for her cousin.

Sashing still needs to be attached to the right most and bottom blocks, but that would imply  that I had the blocks in the order they will ultimately reside in.

I’ll stare at the picture and decide which ones need to be moved to where.

I’m just not a food blogger.  I forgot the picture again!

This week I made One Pan Chicken and Potatoes from the Tasty Kitchen website — with a few changes.  I’m getting where I cook like I quilt — can’t do anything according to the directions 🙂

Ingredients:

• 1/2 cup oil  – I used canola since that’s what I had
• 1/4 c Balsamic vinegar – I used Regina Balsamic Vinegar since it was in the cabinet
• 1 teaspoon of Dijon Mustard (is that the same as the spicy brown mustard I used?)
• 2 teaspoons Honey (no one said how much honey qualified for a honey recipe)
• 1 Tablespoon minced garlic  (I guess that’s about 3 cloves minced)
• 1 teaspoon Worcestershire Sauce
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 3 teaspoons Tony Chachere’s Creaole Seasoning (the recipe called for Italian Seasoning — but this is what I use on pizza, so I figured it would work)
• 1/2 teaspoon smoked paprika – mine wasn’t smoked
• 1/2 cup shredded Parmesan cheese (got mine from a green can)
• 4 good sized red potatoes
• 5 frozen chicken tenders

Preheat the over to 425 degrees F.  Cut potatoes into bite size pieces and place into a gallon zip top bag with the frozen chicken tenders.  Mix everything else in a blender until smooth. Pour into the bag. Close and mix until everything is coated evenly.  Pour out into baking dish, putting the tenders on top of the potatoes.   Place dish into preheated oven for about an hour.  Turn the tenders every 20 minutes.  Roast until the potatoes are tender and the juices in the chicken run clear.

The recipe indicated basting would be required, but the ‘vinaigrette’ was rather thick, so I found I didn’t need to do anything, but did flip the chicken.

I’m a simple cook — 2 or 3 ingredients, so it is surprising that I was able to make this from mostly from my pantry.  I  had to get  garlic and potatoes.  The best news, is that both my husband and  I enjoyed the meal.  I won’t make it next week, but it will be put in the rotation — perhaps w/a bit less garlic.

Hop over to see what others did with Honey this week by following the links over at Patchwork Times.

In my mind I had great hopes of getting this top to the flimsy stage Saturday night so I could report the fabric usage on yesterday’s stash report — the one I didn’t write.  As usual my eyes were bigger than my stomach I thought I could get more done in the time I had available.

It was right at midnight Sunday that I finished the framing on these blocks.  I don’t know that I’ll finish the top this week or not.  I really need to do a bit mountain of a laundry and of course taxes are looming.

Be sure to hop over to  Patchwork Times to catch the links to other design walls.

Boy there’s a lot of fabric in a cotton shirt!  I knew this after all I measured one to come up with my “shirt standard” of 1 1/2 yards.  For the last few days I’ve been cutting up shirt fronts.

I’m not sure how many shirts this represents — no, I do know.  The stacks of fabric with the yellow head pins are for a Nifty Thifty quilt.  I’ve cut 20 shirts fronts – 10 light and 10 dark.  From one side of the shirt front, I’ve gotten the fabric for 10 Nifty Thrifty blocks (one is sewn) with 9 pieces of border pieces, 9 spool blocks, 24 strips for Rectangle Wrangler a stack of 2 1/2″ strips, 2″ strips, 1 1/2″ strips, a pile of strings and a few 2″, 2 1/2″ blocks, 2 1/2″ x 4 1/2″ bricks and a pile of 1 1/2″ squares for my postage stamp quilt.

My shirt boxes are still full!  But I’m tired of cutting, so tonight I’m going to put my feet up and read then tomorrow I’ll sew on the 4-Patch blocks.  The Nifty Thrift quilt is being kitted up to have something to work on at my next retreat.  I’m aiming to have 20 blocks ready to stitch.

Shoot.  I forgot to take a picture of the roast after I pulled it from the crock pot.

• 4 – 5 lb Boston Butt pork shoulder roast
• 3 oz soy sauce
• 2  tablespoons crushed rosemary
• 1 tablespoon garlic powder
• 6 oz frozen orange juice concentrate, thawed
• salt & pepper to taste
• 1 orange

In a small bowl mix soy sauce, rosemary, garlic powder and orange juice concentrate. Set aside.  Salt and pepper all sides of roast.  Place roast into a crock pot (I lined mine with a bag for easier cleanup).  Pour liquid mixture over roast.  Cut orange in half and squeeze juice over roast.  Toss orange halves into crock pot.  Cover and cook on low for 6 – 8 hours.

The verdict?  The meat was super tender and moist.  But there was no orange flavor to it. Occasionally we would get a taste of something — I’m guessing the soy sauce.    I did attempt to thicken the pan drippings into a gravy — it wasn’t very thick but that’s where the orange flavor was.

Will I do this again?  Perhaps.

See what others did with their orange juice by following the links over at Patchwork Times. I’m off to think about Honey.

I’ve got a basket of shirt parts which need to be used since I don’t really have a place to store them. There are also several quilts I want to make using the shirts. So, my solution.  Start cutting for new quilts. Good thing I didn’t say I wasn’t going to start any new quilts this year because I’ve started two this past weekend!

The stack on the left are the dark fabrics for 3 Nifty Thrifty blocks from Bonnie Hunter’s Scraps & Shirttails. The top center are my 1 1/2″ squares for the postage stamp quilt I’ll eventually get done. Mustn’t rush into anything you know.

The stack of fabric pined with the pink pin are 10 – 2 1/2″ x 10″ strips for Rectangle Wrangle from Scraps and Shirttails II also by Bonnie Hunter. This quilt uses lights and darks (and in my world mediums).  For the size I currently plan to make I need 300 strips so I  have a way to go.

Of course the bottom three piles are the darks for my spool blocks.

I would have started Hand Me Downs from the first Shirttails, but even with what I thought were good notes I quickly got confused. I stopped cutting and made my first Nifty Thrifty block. It was a good thing I did. It taught me that I need to cut the pieces for each block and not just the strips. 19 to go, unless I decide to make a bigger quilt than I have planned.

But this brings me to my post title. Those Crazy Mediums.

Mediums can either play as a dark or a light.  I  have no doubts the pink stripe, 4th from the right and the windowpane plaid next to it are lights.  That green in the middle, I pulled from the basket thinking it was a dark, but pair it with the dark green 2nd from the right or the red on the left and it’s a light.  Put it with the pink stripe or windowpane and now it’s a dark. The blue plaid 2nd from the left I thought was a light, again but with the windowpane plaid or pink strips it becomes a dark.

I guess I’ll prep the shirt fronts from the basket and if it’s a medium I won’t decide which team it plays on until I get through all of the shirts.  I can’t just cut strips and decide later (well, I guess I could but see my previous comment about getting confused) since I need a 2″ strip and a 2 1/2″ square from each dark fabric.

In the future I may reconsider cutting fabric for multiple quilts at once.

C is for Contrary Wife  is the third block of Dorothy Young’s alphabet block-of-the-month.  If you wish to quilt along, join the group by clicking on the “Join Now!” button.

Click to join apocketfullofmysteries.