A give away quilt!

 

This was an embroidered Quilt top that I picked up through the round Robin Quilt Group.

It came From one of the churches in Garnavillo, a gentleman named Kevin Dutka embroidered the blocks someone from the church, set the Quilt together, and I long armed it. The idea is any of his embroidered quilt blocks were to be given to children or money raised be used for children’s projects. 

I have the Quilt completed, and it will be silent auctioned at the local library here in Fayette as part of their fundraiser for friends of the library this will happen on watermelon days, September 12, 2026. I’m crossing my fingers that it does well. I enjoyed quilting it and had to search for the binding as it didn’t come with any fabric, I was able to go to Farmer’s daughter in Oelwein and found the perfect piece. I then stitch the binding on, and we’ll get it to the library by September 1 so they can display it for their auction.

A note about stitching the binding on I used invisible thread and I really like how it looks I will be using this method in the future. 

It is done

 Earlier this month, I took out this top that was almost complete. I just needed to add the final border of the friendship stars. The quilt is City Square. by Scott Flanagan, it was a free block of the month or really border of the month last summer. 

I took most of the fabrics out of my black-and-white stash didn’t seem to make it a lot smaller but I still feel good that I used some of the fabric in that stash or pantry as some it (sounds less illegal that way). 

All that’s left is to get it in the Quilting frame so hopefully it can be done by Quilt show in October. Wish me luck.

Winterset Camping

We went to Winterset and camp in the City Park. It is a nice campground that has full hook ups. It is not super large area but nice to visit the attractions in Winterset. 

We went during the quilt in the bridges and to support the guild that had a table at the local quilt show. Camping was with Kandi and Mark and it was a fun weekend going to the different quilt displays thru out the town and it would be a fun thing to do another year. 

On day two we went to the John Wayne Museum that has grown by a lot since the last time we were there. They have a beautiful facility with a lot of different things to see at the museum along with the home that John Wayne started out in. I don't think he grew up there his entire life, but I could be wrong as I am writing this several months later from when we went and visited. 

We went to the John Wayne museum in Winterset 

 

A project for someone else on my long arm

 

This beautiful cross Quilt was brought to me by a friend who needed it quilted. So, with a little learning curve, I put it on the short way running the long light on the rollers.

This beautiful cross quilt was brought to me by a friend who needed it quilted. So, with a little learning curve I put it on the short way running the long light on the rollers.

That meant I was spending a lot of time rolling it back-and-forth to finish the long stretches of quilting. So, I ended up taking it off the frame and putting it back on running it, so the long sides were attached to the rails that worked so much better. I was able to complete it last night and sent it home with its owner this morning.

Focaccia

I started yesterday with a bunch of Sourdough that I had feed and needed to use. So did a search online and found a recipe for Simple Sourdough Focaccia from alexandracooks.com 

I had 500 g of sourdough, so I multiplied this recipe x 5 to make it 

100 g of active sourdough starter

10 g or 2.5 t kosher salt

440 g of water or 1.75 cups room temperature water I did not plan ahead so used filtered water from the refrigerator and warmed it a bit. 

512 g or 4 cups of bread flour

3 T extra virgin olive oil 

Flaky sea salt 

I added about a Tablespoon of garlic granulate and 1/4 c of dry onion flakes. 

cut a bunch of Basil leaves up and added to the dough. 

Place starter salt and water in a large bowl, stir with spatula and slowly add flour mix again until flour is completely incorporated.

After about 30 min to 1 hour, I did a fold of the dough and did this with each turn of the bowl (I used that's a bowl from Tupperware to raise the dough in after it was completely mixed. 

I let it sit on the counter all morning and until around 10 pm and then shaped into pans using 3 squares 8 in pans and 2 9x 13 pans. I left the 3 8 in pans out on the counter covered and the 9x13 I put in the refrigerator covered and pulled out in the morning and let warm up.  Sprinkled the tops with 

When I got up, I started out with a slower oven but ended up switching the temp up to 450 in my convection oven and baked the 8 in square pans.  I left the temp up and put in the 9x13 pans but to get the top browned the bottoms got rather dark. Waiting for them to cool now. 

New Adventure

 I got a call from a friend, and she has decided to sell her Nolting Long Arm quilting machine. The next question was I interested in buying it. Well, I first had to talk to Fred. Then after we discussed it and I found out what she was asking for it. We decided that it was a go. So about two weeks ago I purchased the longarm and moved it into my upstairs sewing space. 

It was quite the challenge making it fit as the table is one of the longest ones at 14 feet, after some planning and we updated the room with a new floor it was put in place.  So today I put a quilt in the frame and will be starting my first attempt of quilting a whole quilt. I have done several table runners but now it is on to a much bigger challenge. 

Wild Rice and Craisin Bread

 Well, my experiment worked

So here is the recipe for the bread sort of  I just kind of add things together starting with a recipe and then going from there. 

2 loaves

2 cups of warm water

2 Tablespoon of honey

1 Tablespoon of yeast

mix in a mixing bowl

Add 2 teaspoon of salt

4 Tab of butter

1/3 cup of wild rice that was left cooked in about 2 cup of water until the rice is soft about 45 min. 

along with about 2 cups of left-over wild rice and white rice mix.  You don't need to do the white rice but it was a mix we had the leftover of, so I just added it in. 

I would guess about 1/2 to 2/3 of wild rice cooked until done would be best for the recipe. 

Now for Craisin after cooking the rice I added about two handfuls of craisin into the hot water of the rice and let it set to cool.  I added it to the water, honey and yeast in a mixing bowl. make sure that the rice water is not too hot.  I think there was about a cup of water in the cooked rice after that I added the salt and butter and blended in the bread flour slowly 

I put in about 6 cups of flour 2 cup of wheat, and the rest is white bread flour or until it made a dough that pulled away from the side of the mixing bowl as you mixed it. 

This was set aside to raise once it doubles in size, I dived the dough in half and added to the bread pans and let it raise on the countertop until it filled the bread pans.