Berries and Cobblers: Blackberry Cobbler, Berry Cobbler

I think I can confidently say that you can divide the world up any number of ways, but for our purposes today, the world contains two kinds of people:

cake people and pie people.

Hallooo halloooo and hallloooo all you pie people: I am one of your Nation!

I just love pie. More than cake. Infinitely more than cake! A good pie is a study in contrasts...flaky, crispy crust against succulent, juicy filling...the saltiness of the crust against the sweetness of the filling.

Growing up in a very small Northern-ish Ontario town, we did not have a lot of access to fresh summer fruits. Strawberries were not widely grown in the area when I was a child, and while rhubarb was plentiful, it does not on its own make much of a pie. The baskets of ripe cherries and peaches that pour out of the Niagara Peninsula did not, in the 1960's, generally find their way to little Haliburton, and when they did, it was at great expense. So the standard pies in our houshold were apple, cherry (made with E.D. Smith tinned cherry pie filling), and raisin.

Y'all who are my age will remember raisin pie. A waste of good buttertart materials, I say.

It was not until I attended university in the Pacific West that I met up with blackberries. Walking along a Gulf Island road during a camping trip with the young man who would become my husband, I noticed fat, black berries hanging off prickly, dust covered bushes. "Are they edible?" I asked. He looked at me, incredulous. "Try one", he said, and I did. The rest was history!

It became our tradition to go blackberrying every year; here the blackberries begin to ripen in August, and thanks to the cool and uncertain coastal summers, some years the entire crop fails in the face of late summer rains. Last year's crop looked to be the best ever, but as it came to ripen, we had weeks of sustained rains. The berries molded on the vine.

It was very sad.

This year we are set to have perfect blackberry weather, and I will happily carry on our annual summer tradition of "all the fresh blackberry pie you can manage while the season lasts". But I will also make blackberry cobbler...I adore fruit cobblers and turned to them when I had toddlers and no time! It is much, much easier to manage a berry cobbler recipe than a berry and pie pastry recipe; you can bung it together before the toddlers lose interest in batter, bowls and spoons, after which they wander off to get into trouble!

My favourite cobbler recipe, which I think I found decades ago in a La Leche League cookbook, features a very unusual technique for producing a crispy, sugary crust. It is heavenly with blackberries, but I can personally vouch for the fresh peach version as well. For a little preview of heaven, ladle thickened cream over each serving. Oh my.

It all comes down to this: Berry Cobbler...

 

Crispy Batter Cake

350o, 45-60 minutes

 2 c. berries (my favourite is blackberries) and/or sliced fruit (sigh, Ontario peaches!)

Juice of half a lemon (add in a bit of zest, too!)

Batter:

1 c. sugar

6 T. butter

1 c. milk

2 c. flour

2 t. baking powder

½ t. salt

Topping:

1 c. sugar

2 T. cornstarch

½ t. salt

1 1/2 c. boiling water

-preheat oven

-prepare a lasagna or large cake pan (8” x 13”) (butter, flour)

-spread cleaned fruit on bottom of pan

-sprinkle with lemon juice and zest

-in a large bowl, cream together sugar and butter

-whisk together in another bowl the flour, baking powder and salt

-add flour mixture to creamed mixture alternately with milk

-pour this batter over the fruit in pan

-for the topping, combine the sugar, cornstarch and salt, sprinkle all over top of batter

-immediately before baking, pour the boiling water over the topping and batter (really!!)

Batter cake is done when deep golden brown.

Serve with cream whipped just enough to be thick, so you can drizzle it from a spoon, all over your gorgeous cobbler! I prefer a Chantilly cream, ie. whipping cream with a bit of sugar and vanilla added.

Or serve with ice cream (but try that thick cream, it is fabulous!).

Ode to Half Square Triangles (HST's): how to make half square triangles

" If you can make Half Square Triangles, you have mastered 95% of quilt patterns."

Brenda Brayfield, quilting teacher extraordinaire

Simple blocks like Pinwheel and Card Trick,  sawtooth borders,  complex blocks like Crown of Thorns or Bear's Paw; all are built on that rock-solid chassis of quilting, the Half Square Triangle (HST).

http://sewmamasew.com/blog2/2010/04/simple-triangle-block-sew-along/

HST's are single handedly responsible for the oft repeated sentiment amongst non-quilters that quilting is just too danged fussy and all quilters are joyless perfectionists. While it is true that HST blocks do not look their best when inaccurate, I  would like to rephrase the above criticism and say "there are few sights as pleasing as a quilt constructed with clean, sharp points; the effort required is well worth the heartache involved!".

The illustration below details the traditional method of HST construction, where two squares are layered together, sewn with a double seam on the diagonal and cut apart. This is generally the first method you will be taught in any Quilting 101 course:

http://www.popularpatchwork.com/news/article.asp?a=6842

I might as well come out and say it now...I hate this method! There are so many steps in which one can make tiny accuracy errors, and invariably, no matter how careful I am, I make enough to render any HST project an exercise in endless frustration. I like HST's, but I like them dead accurate with clean and sharp points; they just look so darn pretty that way!


Not only is the traditional method demanding in terms of accuracy, it is S--L--O--W. Slow as treacly molasses! Many quilting projects made with blocks constructed using HST units demand the production of scores of HST units, ditto for patterns using sawtooth borders, so it was with some determination that I went in search of a method of HST production that was not only easier to get right, but faster to get finished.

Mercifully, there are many other ways to make HST's!

The first method I turned to was the "no waste" method. I was not particularly motivated by low or no waste...after having to discard several blocks worth of work and materials thanks to accuracy issues, I realized that the lowest waste is generated by the most reliable route to accuracy! Below is a quick illustration of the classic no waste method:

http://learn2quiltonline.blogspot.com/2011/01/how-to-make-lots-of-half-square.html

You simply put two squares right sides together, sew around the edges with an accurate 1/4" seam, and cut the sewn shape apart on the diagonals. Voilà, you now have four Half Square Triangle units! The major drawback here is that you are left with a lot of exposed bias edges. Not too big a problem if, like me, you wash, dry and starch your raw goods. A good starching gets you through a lot of bias issues! The major advantage of this method is that you get four HST's at a time (note: 4 HST's = 1 pinwheel). Faster, but still not fast enough.

There are plenty of HST rulers out there...essentially you sew strips of fabric right sides together, and cut them into triangles, which unfold along the sewn line into half square triangles. I tried a few of these clever rulers, but they were not much more accurate than the traditional method, and a bit tricky to cut out with the rotary cutter. And while faster than the traditional method, the ruler method was still too slow for my purposes:

http://carole-quiltingadventures.blogspot.com/2011/02/mass-production-half-square-triangles.html

**For all of the above methods, I found it was best to admit that I was going to have accuracy problems, and to make the HST's slightly over size, then cut them down to the required size and accuracy:

http://www.frugalquilting.com/triangle_half_square.htm

Finally, I was pointed toward Half Square Triangle papers. You can get these through a variety of sources...there are free downloads on the web and there are commercial products, ie. Thangles. Both are great methods, very quick and very, very accurate!

But in the end, my own addiction to HST projects, particularly the construction of pinwheel blocks, of which I am inordinately fond, led me to the Triangulations CD  . At last I could easily print off triangle paper (I use copy paper quite successfully) of any required size, and end up with loads of HST units sewn with maximum efficiency and truly impressive accuracy.

This was the answer I had been searching for! My approach now is to sew up sheets of the Triangulations sheets in whatever size is required, pop them into a work bag with a pair of scissors, and then when I need to keep my hands busy ie. watching tv, on the bus etc., I take out a sheet, cut along the lines, remove the paper from the HST's, and put them aside for pressing.

When assembling HST projects, I like to keep my seam lines aligned, and work carefully to ensure my points come out neat and sharp. To do this, I press seams open, and pin carefully with fine pins on either side of where seams join. This prevents the seams from shifting apart during sewing. And I am very careful to sew with a very accurate 1/4" seam. You can also watch your seam lines as you sew the points together to make sure you sew right across, but not above or below, the point itself. And I am not afraid to rip out when a point is either buried or left floating.

(the one exception to this approach is when I am making deliberately wonky, folk art type blocks or units, à la the Collaborative/Liberated Quilting method I learned from Freddie Moran and Gwen Marston. That method demands you pay attention to balance and design rather than perfect accuracy)

Here is a shot of one of my "made it by accident" blocks, one I ended up liking very much and used in a nice little lap quilt I have under construction. HST's look fabulous in black and white prints...give it a try in your next project!

Pillowcase Party

Are these not gorgeous!!!???

I had a bit of pillowcase madness last fall, when I decided to buy massive amounts of Christmas flannels and sew up Christmas/Winter themed flannel pillowcases as stocking stuffers for pretty much everyone on the gift list. I think I sewed up about 30 pillowcases by the time I was done.

In our house, we love the holidays and the challenge is always to add that special holiday magic to the season even as we fall farther away from our more traditional religious childhoods and families of origin, and are increasingly pulled into the commercialism that we now all associate with the holidays. Years ago we began adding in little traditions of our own, beginning with what is now a gargantuan holiday/winter mug collection that is brought out of the attic on December 1st, and returns to the attic on January 1st.

I decided the same approach would work well with holiday themed pillowcases. The trick was finding fabrics that had that truly magical feel, that "can't go to sleep on Christmas Eve/miracle of falling snow" component.

Luckily, in 2010 there were a couple of good holiday flannel releases, and I had tucked away a fabulous print from 2008...not sure at the time what I would make with it. Here is a detail from the set I made for my bed (the snowman fabric is the body of the pillow):

I used the now famous "sausage roll" pillowcase method, the pattern for which is now available all over the web (I have used the Rainy Day Quilt School tute) and is filmed on Youtube.

Sadly, the 2011 flannel releases have been thin on the ground. There are a couple of nice cotton lines out there, but very little flannel done in sufficiently lovely and magical winter/holiday themes. Shelly Comiskey's "I Love Snow" is so far the only line that strikes me, but I keep my antennae up at all times for great flannels: flannel prints in designs and colours that appeal across all ages and sexes as well.

Back to my luscious, '60's floral flannels, above. Once transmuted into pillowcases, they will go into our camping gear, and become a nice little tradition for our summer excursions. 

What flannels are your favourites?

Update Sunday July 11
 The first of my popart pillowcases are complete! 

Collaborative Quilting Part III: Deconstruction

One of the very best things about the Gwen Marston Freddy Moran books is that they have, particularly in the second volume, taken some time to point out critical &/or significant design elements. That practice not only gives the reader and student a nice peek into the Freddy and Gwennie design process, it helps inform your own process. Marston and Moran place a high value on the inclusion of unexpected elements, which by confounding expectation, cause our eye to stop and say "hey, what gives??" This forces you to look carefully at the composition, and have a little conversation with the quilt in hand.

A perfect example of this approach is represented in the quilt below:

 Photo from the Sue Spargo blog, taken at Sisters, Oregon. Quilt by Marston and Moran, "What a Star!" p. 186 of "Collaborate Again"

First, the colours. Not many times in our quilting lives do we finger a schoolbus orange fabric sprinkled with red dots and say "hmmmm, what a fabulous background fabric this would be"! And yet, it works so very well here. In the notes on this quilt, the makers point out the salient design elements: mixing of liberated and traditional (precision) pieced elements, filler strips both pieced and plain, split blocks, unexpected colour shifts in the sawtooth borders. In addition, you can see blocks constructed of both high and low contrast elements ie. stars that stand out from their background fabric, and stars that blend with it; a small twist on the traditional that makes you stop and look around the quilt for similar unexpected elements.

It becomes clear as you examine the quilt that these unexpected, non-conforming elements give the quilt its charm and depth of character.

I have become especially fond of those filler strips. They are, all on their own, tiny design challenges.

You could lay in a simple strip of fabric, but what if you decide to take that space and fill it with a custom-designed filler composition instead? Will you use tiny stars or tiny Freddy's Gardens? All elements the same size or different sizes? Floating on the background fabric or a new fabric? Sashed? Split?

I was particularly charmed by the row just inside the outer black & white sawtooth border, which features regular blocks of either stars, churn dash, or broken dishes. That's interesting enough, but the spaces between the blocks, normally reserved for plain background fabric, have instead become mini design fields containing smaller and interestingly placed stars, churn dashes etc.

And do I need to point out the border of wiggly coloured lines on black? I'd like to meet the fabric designer who had the guts to submit that design for printing! That fabric is wild, strikes me as rather grotesque, and I can't imagine saying "I'll take 3 yards!"...but it totally works in this quilt.

We talked in class about what drives the composition of a quilt like this, and how you digest it visually. For me, a successful quilt evokes pure emotion, and from the Marston/Moran quilts I get a jolt of unfettered  joy. These are not particularly restful quilts, but they are vibrant, resonant, and engaging.

Like most good friends.

p. 102/103 Collaborative Quilting

Part I
Part II

Collaborative Quilting Part II: Fabrics

It is worth taking a moment to discuss the fine points of fabric acquisition.

To gear up my stash for the Freddy Moran and Gwen Marston experience, I first turned to collecting black and white fabrics, something completely new to me. I was astonished at the variety available (having never noticed them before, **blush**), and at the effort fabric houses are putting into creating new and useful black and white prints. I quickly learned that these prints fall into three categories: prints that read primarily as black, prints that read primarily as white, and prints that read as grey. This last group, the busy and generally small scale black and whites that read as grey, are of limited use in the Marston/Moran style of quilting. In general, any fabric that is middle of the road in terms of contrast value, neither high nor low contrast value, adds to the "mush factor" in these quilts.

Many of us have experienced the mush factor via charm pack projects: if you construct a project out of charm packs in any one collection, the fabrics all fight for your eye time, and individual, lovely prints (no matter how prettily they match in terms of palette) get lost, utterly lost, in the visual confusion. The way to remedy this is to add high contrast sashing or rows, and this baby quilt pattern from the Moda Bakeshop site is a perfect example (below). The busy-ness of a charm pack has been pleasantly tamed by the visual rest-stop offered here by white fabric:

Marston and Moran use black and white to accomplish the same end, often sprinkling in "reads as black" or black fabric through the blocks themselves, and/or using black and white sawtooth or checkerboard strips to visually separate the more colour-full elements. Note that even in sawtooth or checkerboard construction, high contrast is a must for clean, sharp and sophisticated design. I quickly found that in making my first strips of sawtooth that the best look came from pairing one "reads as white" fabric with one "reads as black" fabric.

Also useful are fabrics which are some variation on black and white stripes: a big favourite of mine has been this wonderful irregular stripe:  Micheal Miller "Ebony Reeds" CX-3529:

In terms of choosing coloured fabrics, Freddy advocates (wisely) the choice of highly saturated, pure colours, that is to say, colours that are not tinted with black or white. Designers like Brandon Mably and Jane Sassaman spring to mind here, but most bright collections (ie. Moda's "Happy") will contain some winning pure saturates.

The timing of my first visit to Back Porch coincided with the release of the Kaffe Fasset "Spots and Dots" line, and the fabric below revealed itself as one of my "super fabrics", a flexible mixer in clear colours that pleased my eye greatly:

And it turns out, bright polka dot fabrics in all scales will be a good addition to your Collaborative Quilting stash. Brightly coloured stripes, again in various scales, are also reliable stash bets. Both spots and stripes make fabulous binding fabrics.

When it comes to putting these brights together, keeping the contrasts dialed up is again the key to success. You want to include in your base fabrics high value and low value along with high hue balanced against black or black and white. In my mug rug photo, repeated below from an earlier blog post, you can see the contrast principle at work:

The centre black and white is small scale (and also dotted), and balances against the third row of larger scale, rectangular black and white stripes. The sapphire spot fabric is paired with a glowing cerise and orange stripe (so again, round with squares/rectangles, and hot colours paired against cool colours). Turquoise appears in many of the prints but is not dominant in any. The binding works not only in picking up that turquoise, but offering a dramatic hit of black. I stitched in the ditch (so as not to muddy the clear colours) with a variegated yellow and orange thread, which shows really nicely against the sapphire blue backing (the blue from Patrick Lose's "Mixmasters Dot to Dot" collection).

To begin with, I simply chose fabrics from my stash and laid them against each other on my cutting table. It quickly became clear which paired in a pleasing yet dramatic way.

Working in small projects like these mug rugs is a great way to experiment with colour and design without committing to a huge and expensive project. Liberated log cabin mug rug projects are especially well suited as a learning curve project in colour and design.

Past choosing small projects, I found that in tackling my class project, really my first "Freddy and Gwennie" project, using a strip quilt format worked well. I sewed parts into strips (ie. a strip of pinwheels, a strip of flying geese, a strip of 16 patches on point). Why? Because on the design wall, you can easily lay your strips side by side and start shoving them around into pleasing arrangements. It quickly became clear what background colour for my setting squares worked well, whether to add borders on all sides or just 1 or 2, what sawtooth and checkboard elements worked well between strips, etc.

Where did I get all these fabrics? I shopped brick and mortar when and where I could, faring well at Back Porch. But most of my local fabric stores are heavily traditional, and most in any case only stock a limited number of the new collections, and a limited selection from any one collection at that. Online vendors were a big help, and I could scan their offerings fairly quickly and comfortably, particularly when they allowed sorting the fabric images by colour. I find screen representations surprisingly accurate.

A good site to begin with is www.quiltshops.com, and from there I shop hard for free or no shipping. I like Desperate Quilters and  Quilt Expressions  in  particular, not just for their selection and pricing, but the fact they tuck fun and useful little gifts (like note pads, pencils and pens) into my orders. Thanks, ladies!!

Other online shops I have used include FabricWorm, EQuilter, Fabric Shack, From Here to Quilternity, Hancock's of Paducah, Pink Chalk Fabrics, Sew Mama Sew. There are tons out there, you just have to track down the fabrics you are after, and using Google Images is a good way to turn up hard to find fabric sources. Incidentally, a good online fabric house will advise you if they are not able to fill your order precisely, and will give you the option of adding another fabric before placing your order. Since I often gauge my order to be maximum yardage for a shipping cost category, it can be a real extra cost to me when the fabric house ships me a short order. I track my shipping cost per fabric yard quite carefully.

Enough for today!

(to be continued...)

(Part I)

Collaborative Quilting Part I:Empty Spools Seminar, Asilomar by the Sea

It all began with a decision to take a long overdue romantic weekend away together, for which we chose the Monterey Peninsula, booking a stay at the transcendent Old Monterey Inn. During the course of that delightful weekend, I followed the advice of fellow Stitcher's Guild posters and popped into Pacific Grove's Back Porch Fabrics. Not only was Back Porch the single best quilting store I have ever been in, the selection of quilts hung on the high walls was gallery-worthy. I was struck by one in particular, similar to this one, below:

Based on "Sticks" by Marston and Moran

Now, I am not a huge fan of modern and abstract quilts (perhaps blinkered by my Virgo nature!) but this one really spoke to me. Under the quilt was the tag "from page 180 of Freddy and Gwen's book". I found a book by these ladies and quickly turned to page 180 only to find a page on making liberated star blocks...and realized that there were TWO books! The first was Collaborative Quilting, the second was Freddy and Gwen Collaborate Again. I bought them both.

These books were a revelation. Never before had I seen such masterful colour handling, and such an unfettered, joyous approach to quilt design. Best described as "sophisticated-primitive", the designs are based on elements in traditional quilts, but respun in a modern esprit, in modern fabrics.

I took the books home and read them, scanning the photos over and over. I definitely wanted to make something like these, so I went hunting for a workshop by the authors. First in line was a 5 day seminar hosted by Empty Spools, on the ground of Asilomar Conference Centre in good old Pacific Grove. The stars were obviously lined up, so I signed up.

The format of the class is to prepare a number of parts with which to stock what Marston and Moran call "The Parts Department". Living on opposite coasts as they do, they make stacks of quilt elements independently; blocks of various sizes in stars, churn dash, pinwheels, flying geese, free form houses and trees, even chickens and Freddy's signature "Freddy's Garden" blocks. Whether precision pieced or made in a casual "liberated" style, these are made in a rainbow of colours, and to prevent visual overload, are judiciously balanced with strips of black and white elements; sawtooth, straight strips or alternating black and white blocks. These disparate, pre-made elements are brought together when the authors meet, and they design directly with the parts, up on the design wall. The quilts tend to come together very quickly out of a well stocked Parts Department.

In preparation for class, then, I had to put together some parts of my own, and a quick survey of my stash revealed a complete lack of suitable fabrics. I am young in quilting years, having taken my Quilting 101 class only three years ago. And having spent the intervening years largely focused on building my nascent precision piecing skills via kit projects, not only was my stash small, it was very traditional. And I didn't have a single solitary black and white fabric. For the Freddy and Gwennie style, that would simply not do. Mercifully, Christmas was just around the corner, so I used my tidy sum of Chrismas present money to lay in a suitable range of fabrics, largely by shopping online. I hunted up online fabric houses that offered low or no shipping for large orders, and scanned the sale offerings, which often feature bright, outlandish fabrics perfect for the Collaborative Quilting style, but anathema to the more traditional approach. And I got a swatch card for Kona Solids, and stocked up on saturated solids.

As the eye-popping packages began to arrive, I quickly found that certain patterns and fabrics really stood out as particularly well adapted to this new approach. When one of these super-fabrics appeared, I would re-order, stocking 5 yards against future quilts and parts. To my surprise, my favourite pieces leaned heavily toward a sapphire blue/orange combo, and the turquoise and red combination from one of the Marston/Moran quilts. I found myself using colours and combinations I had never dreamt of before.

Given that this saturated palette, balanced by blacks and whites, was new to me, I decided to make a series of "mug-rugs" (aka coasters) in which I would practice my noob colour handling skills:

That proved to be a very good beginning exercise, and I really love using these mug rugs under my endless cups of tea! They also save my cutting mat from warping under the hot cups...

Over the 4 months or so before the course, I made up lots of pinwheels (focusing on combining a black based print with coloured fabric), liberated stars, Freddy's Gardens, black and white sawtooth, nine patches (made of 1" strips), and 16 patches (made of 1 1/2" strips). 

I learned quickly that when new fabrics arrived, it paid to cut three 1" strips, and three 1 1/2" strips right away, and then sort them into drawers by light/dark/black & white. 

 After my shopping spree was over, I had small Rubbermaid drawer units:

filled with sorted strips. I could then, at leisure, pull out sets of strips, sew them together, and then when cut into the actual base units needed for assembling the 9 or 16 patch units, stow those base units in their own drawer, ready for assembly. In this way, I could slip up to my studio and sew up a few units without any need to do design or cutting work, meaning even small chunks of time were  highly productive.

This suited my situation perfectly...not only was I able to fit sewing in and around my usual roster of chores, but we are very involved currently providing support to a dying family member. The intensity of that situation leaves us mentally and emotionally "on empty" when we get home, and I found the simple sewing of units together from pre-cut elements the perfect way to zen out and regenerate. And working with the cheery colours and finished units was a real joy and solace in a dark and sad time.

Having all the base bits ready to go also helps you make the colour quotient in the 9 and 16 patches truly random as possible, which is the aim. For most traditional quilters, the most difficult element of the Collaborative Quilting style is letting go of the urge to match things! These quilts do not tolerate the quilter being "matchy". Balance and  proportion are brought about by clever manipulation of the groups of elements, not so much by planned colour work.

(Part II)

Chocolate Brownies

Some years ago, when my first two were small, and the mommy gig was new to me, I realized that my maternal toolbox was missing an essential skill: the making of truly fantabulous brownies. At the time, the internet was in a fledgeling state, all ASCII, no images, but I ran an internet wide contest for The Best Brownies Ever. I got tons of submissions, and for 6 weeks we baked several pans of brownies daily....cakey brownies, chewy brownies, fudgey brownies, every sort and size you can imagine.

My husband, at first ecstatic to return home to our warm and chocolate scented kitchen, soon learned to dread the nightly plate of brownies. "Try them!" we would urge, and judge which was the new best recipe.
Many, many squares of chocolate later, we had our winner. The winning submission was made by Dave Woodall; the recipe was his grandmother's, and we are all fortunate she was the kindly sort of cook who not only shares her recipes, but shares them complete and un-edited, sans strategic omissions and booby-traps...


Today, you can buy those wonderful little One Bite Brownies in the grocery store, and I think they must be based on Dave's grandma's recipe. But nothing beats a pan of these brownies fresh out of the oven, warm and oh so delicious! We love them with good vanilla ice cream.

Grandma Woodall's Brownies

2 squares unsweetened chocolate
1 c. oil, canola or corn
2 c. sugar
3 eggs
1 1/2 c. flour
1 t. baking powder
1 t. salt
1 c. broken nuts (optional)

Mix the flour, baking powder and salt with a whisk.

Just barely melt the chocolate in the oil (in microwave is easiest).

Add all other ingredients in the order shown, taking care that the eggs do not cook in the warmed oil/chocolate mixture, adding flour mixture last.

Pour the completed batter into a greased and floured 9" x 13" pan.
Yes, it has to be that pan size to cook properly!

Bake 350F
30 minutes
Let cool at least 15 minutes before serving.

Optional garnishes:
Press half walnuts into each square before brownies cool.
Drizzle with chocolate glaze...white chocolate looks nice.

Enjoy!

A Milestone

Wizard quality free motion machine quilting - by Diane Gaudynski

It is funny how random events change the course of your life. Two years ago I was preparing to go out and shop for a nice longarm machine and frame. Unfortunately, the recession hit, and our income stream vanished overnight. So much for a big hobby purchase like a longarm! That would have to wait for better times.

I was at the point in my quilting journey where piecing was coming together and I was beginning to make things I actually wanted to quilt up and keep...but that was the problem! How was I to do the quilting?

I had hand quilted when I was younger, before babies arrived and the sewing was put away. But even then, bouts of quilting gave me instant tendonitis in my right forearm. And hand quilting was slo-oooo---ow going. I am not content to wait months to finish any given piece.

The easiest option was to send my quilts out to be quilted by a pro. But the artist in me objected: I wanted to control the quilt creation process from beginning to end. For better or worse!

I could also use my walking foot and quilt in straight lines. While there are times I do like straight line quilting, I would feel too limited if it were the only kind of quilting I could do.

I could learn to free motion. I had already taken one workshop and I wasn't half bad for a raw beginner. But I could see that learning to free motion well was going to take a long time and a lot of practice. At one trunk show, the speaker mentioned that it took her about 300 hours of practice before she felt she was in control of her free motion quilting. Wow. Even if an hour a day practice allowed me to learn to free motion quilt as well as she could, that was going to take me a year!

by Cassandra Williams - she must have practiced more than a year!

At first I thought I would just put the quilting on hold for a while. I went back to work on my piecing and design skills, which can always stand a little refining. But with the tops beginning to pile up, I realized I had to change my attitude about free motion quilting. I was deeply reluctant to accept that for a long time, my free motion quilting was going to be herky-jerky and wobbly. I have always hated to hand in less than stellar work, and those high standards applied to my quilting along with all my other endeavours. But those high standards were now getting in my way.

I had to accept my own journey along the learning curve in order to progress in my craft.

I looked at the lap quilt top I had just finished. I loved it! And I really wanted it quilted up so I could use it as fall descended. It was time to learn to free motion. I went out to the discount fabric store and bought 10 metres of high quality, discount priced quilting cotton. It was ugly, but it would do. I made up a stack of 24" square practice quilt sandwiches. I set up my D1 on a home made quilting table setup.  And went to work.

I was surprised at how quickly I progressed on simple meandering. After a week of daily practice sessions, I felt that I was ready enough. My meanders are a bit wonky, to be sure, and there are plenty of bobbles where I have not yet mastered the art of stopping, repositioning quilt and hands, and continuing on. And my stitch length varies too much. I get excited or panicky and put the pedal to the metal...not so good for nice, regular stitch length! And I often keep trying to quilt when my hands are totally out of position...that makes for really long stitches as I strain for quickly vanishing control.

Here is my lap quilt all quilted up...what a great feeling it was to take it off the quilting table! Is it perfect? No! Did I improve as I went along? Yes! And was it fun? Totally! Will it be lovely to snuggle under my new lap quilt on winter evenings? Oh, yeah!

Next project up is this adorable doll quilt. The sashing and border strips are only 1" wide finished, and I realized I have to have much more control to free motion quilt those creditably than is necessary for large scale meandering. Onward!

Contemporary vs. Traditional Quilts

Bunny Hill Designs - Uptown Baby

I had to post this quilt by Bunny Hill Designs! I thought it did a lovely job of harmonizing the two ends of the quilting spectrum, traditional (the block designs are largely pinwheel, and the plain areas highlight tone on tone quilting) and modern (colour scheme). Isn't it posh? And delightful! And in this case, makes a great quilt for either a baby boy or baby girl.

I am not a huge fan of very psychedelic quilts, particularly those with multiple sharp pointed elements (which remind me uncomfortably of the horrible visual disturbances that accompany migraine headaches), so for the most part, quilts that are typically defined as modern do not draw my eye. But I do like this next quilt, the pattern for which is available at Blueberry Buckle:

City Park Quilt

It reminds me pleasantly of the patchwork of fields you see whilst flying over the prairies, and of maps and yes, city blocks and parks. And the serene palette (notice the interesting punctuation provided by the two small white squares) is visually rich without feeling like a pop art poster.

Work Quilt #2 by Victoria of Silly BooDilly.

I stumbled onto this quilt on the Silly BooDilly site...wow! The front, pictured here, is made of shot cottons; I had no idea what those were, but I surely want some now! From Kaffe Fassett, they are cottons woven with two different colours, given them a really rich and sophisticated dimension. To the basic pattern of mixed rectangles in three shades, Victoria hand applied and hand quilted 31 smaller patches in a brilliantly chosen array of fabrics and shapes. Her quilting, showcased at her Flickr site, is a mix of machine quilting and hand quilting in brilliantly chosen coloured threads.

This quilt, possibly the most beautiful I have ever seen, is a perfect example of how simplicity can set the stage for masterful colour and design elements.

Inspirational.