It’s done! I’ll be sharing this quilt on Thursday afternoon at International Quilt Festival (Houston) at the Open Studios from 4-6 and then talking about it more at the Saturday Sampler from 10-Noon. I hope you’ll be there! Here’s a detail photo:
Thanks for the comments to my in-progress post. Good point, Jan, that having folks fuse their own works way better logistically than me doing a printed photo version–that would have to be for a single class I think, or perhaps as part of a multi-day workshop. But honestly, I like the idea of folks doing their own thing a lot better–no cookie-cutter-quilting in my classes!
What a concept…I’m making an art quilt! Not a very large one, but still! I’ve been wanting to teach a series of workshops called Quilting the Good Life. Part of it will be Quilting the Garden. I figured everyone loves flowers, they aren’t as fiddly as getting a face right, and it is easy enough to change the colors to one that suits the student. And lilies only have six petals, so easy enough to fuse up in a class and get right to quilting–especially compared to something like a dahlia or peony or rose!
On Saturday at International Quilt Festival I’ll be participating in the Saturday Sampler and talking about Thread-Coloring, how I use thread like a colored pencil to tint or shade the fabrics underneath, to bring the fused applique to life. I made this piece to help illustrate that demonstraiton, and hope to begin teaching it as a class.
Let me know if you ‘d be interested in a class like that, either in person or on line….would you rather fuse up the lily, or have me supply (for the cost of printing) the photo printed onto cloth which students would then quilt in class. By quilting a photo (maybe printed by Spoonflower?), we could skip the fusing step (which can take a lot of time) and get straight to learning the thread-coloring bit. Would that interest anyone?
I’m also thinking about doing some online teaching. Should I? I’d love to teach more QUILTING, not just the fusing part but the actual stitching. And maybe my Edge Finishes / Binding class. If you could pick which class(es) of mine you’d take online, what would that be? THANKS! Feedback is good!
It’s all about apples. The prep work for teaching in Houston is nearly done, and the last of the apple trees are seriously laden. They won’t last until AFTER going to International Quilt Festival in Houston, so I figured I’d best harvest today.
This all started in early 2011 when the owner of this property (which became ours in February 2011) told me the previous summer he had harvested 52 **bushels** of apples and had them made into cider. Let’s be honest: I have NO interest in being a farmer, harvesting 52 bushels of anything, let alone turning it all into cider. But….How could I let all those good apples this year go to the critters and bugs? I have to do something with them….
This year we had a bumper crop of apples and peaches. We had maybe 30 peaches (the previous two summers our maximum was 3, yep, three) and a gazillion apples and even a tree-full of pears, tho the latter never got above 2 inches long (if that).
Back when rhubarb started growing, fellow Frayed Edges member Kate Cutko made us a rhubarb crumble that was delicious–and really easy: Ch0p fruit. Make a crumble topping. Make a slurry of water, cornstarch and sugar. Put half of crumble in bottom of baking dish, add fruit, top with remaining crumble, pour sweet slurry on top of everything, and bake. Then EAT.
I figured I could try that recipe with apples instead, and it worked! The only problem was that our apples are SMALL–some no larger than an apricot (and not the honking big ones they now grow, but regular apricots), which meant a lot of peeling. So I boiled ’em a few minutes until it was easy to peel (turns out the peel is thick, these were clearly apples meant for animal feed a century-plus ago!). Sliced up fruit, etc. Both Kate’s and my recipes are at the end of this post. ENJOY!
Here is what I learned today:
After moving to Maine, I learned that a barn is just a two-horse (or even one-horse) garage of yesteryear. And I learned that every farm had at least two apple trees. We now live in Hope, one half mile from Appleton (as in AppleTown). Everywhere in Maine you see in the re-grown forests apple trees, still living on for decades after those who planted them died and the farms disappeared.
And recently from Fedco Garden Supplies, I learned that most of those apples were used for animal feed and cider. Guess there’s a reason why the previous owner had ’em made into cider! Fedco has a totally cool page about old Maine apples here and more information on how to prune and revitalize old trees. Wonder how much it would cost to have True (Bragg, Eli’s wrestling coach who has a tree business) come prune these two trees? But only after I take more photos. That tree needs to be a quilt!
I’m planning on turning some of the apples into applesauce. The others will become fixin’s for crumble. I think I’ll slice up and freeze the larger apples. Then I’ll make a batch of crumble, and just bake up one portion at a time. However, I can attest that if you make an entire crumble and no one else in the house will eat it (what is WRONG with them?), your crumble will keep up to a week and re-heat very nicely in an oven-proof bowl in the toaster oven. Good with cream. YUM! Next time I’ll take pictures before I eat it all. Ahem. I have no one to blame for my tight pants but me, but at the moment I’d eat a bowl in a nano-second!
Here’s Kate’s recipe (which is Jane’s Recipe):
Janes rhubarb Crumble
1 c brown sugar
1 c oats
1 c flour
1 stick butter
Mix all together and spread half of the mixture in the bottom of a greased 9×11 pan.
Over that, spread 3-4 cups of chopped rhubarb. Top with remaining crumble mix.
In a small saucepan, mix
1 c water
1 c sugar
1 heaping Tbl. Cornstarch.
Heat until thickened. Pour over rhubarb\crumble.
Bake at 350 for 30-40 minutes.
Best served with vanilla ice cream or yogurt.
And my variation:
Topping:
Mix all topping ingredients together and spread half of the mixture in the bottom of a greased round casserole dish.
Liquids:
- In a small pyrex measuring cup, mix
- 1/2 c water
- 1/2 c sugar
- 1 heaping Tbl. Cornstarch.
- Heat in Microwave for 1-2 minutes until thick.
- I think I added a bit of cinnamon and cardamom here, too.
Peel, core and slice apples. Toss with thickened liquid. Place in pan. I used a round souffle / casserole dish–probably 3 inches deep, 9 across, and I filled it nearly to the top with apples.
Add remaining topping to (well duh!) the top.
Bake at 375 degrees (sorry, haven’t a clue what this would be in Europe…we bake cakes at 325 to 350 degrees, so just a bit warmer temp).
I forgot/misread Kate’s recipe, so I put the liquids on the apples instead of on the top (I thought the crumble would get soggy). I think next time I will try it on top as the crumble was powdery from the flour. Or I’ll pulse the crumble in the mini food processor to get the butter into much smaller pieces.
Be Humble for you are made of Earth, be Noble for you are made of stars.
Sheesh…. you’d think I’d take a PHOTO of one of my quilts before donating it and sending it off! Yes, Labyrinth is going to be a part of the International Quilt Festival silent auction this year! Alas, I did NOT take a good photo of it! At least I will be going to teach at Festival and will swing by and take a better photograph then!
This quilt was for our local Coastal Quilters challenge, 13 x 13 inches, with the theme of Exit. I figured an entrance and exit are the same, so I made this labyrinth and did bobbin work using Razzle Dazzle on the edges of the “stone.” The green is one of my hand-dyes, and the background is quilted with two quotes. The one surrounding the maze is apparently a Syrian proverb, Be Humble for you are made of Earth, be Noble for you are made of stars. I love that!
The second quote is from one of the China Bayles mystery novels:
I’d already done a bit of both [rest and thinking], enough to realize that the only thing wrong with my life was an overabundance of *good* things. All I needed to do was search out the center–the thing I wanted most to be, wanted most to have and do–and use it as a compass.
Susan Wittig Albert, character China Bayles, in Rueful Death