EVERYONE LOVED THIS BREAD!!

PULL APART ORANGE BREAD (oven 350)

2 Tbl. yeast

1/4 c. warm water with pinch of sugar

1 c. scalded milk, cooled slightly

2 large eggs

1/4 c. sugar

1 1/2 tsp. salt

1/4 c. shortening

finely grated zest of 2 oranges

3 1/2 c. flour

For icing:

2 1/2 c. powdered sugar

5 Tbl. butter, melted

2 Tbl. freshly squeezed orange juice

Sprinkle yeast over sugar water in mixing bowl; let stand about 5 minutes. Add milk, eggs, sugar, salt, half the zest and shortening. Slowly add flour, mix until combined. Knead until shiny and elastic--3-5 minutes. Place in oiled bowl; cover with plastic and let rise until doubled, about 1 1/4 hours. If wish to make dough the night before, you can let it rise in fridge overnight. Preheat oven after risen. Make filling by combining remaining zest, 1/2 c. of the powered sugar and the butter. On floured surface, knead dough a few times then roll out to 18 x 14 inch rectangle, flour as needed. Brush bottom half of dough with about 1/3 of filling, then fold over dough. Brush about 1/3 more of filling over bottom half of dough and fold over again to enclose. Let rest about 5 minutes, then lightly roll out to 12 by 8 rectangle. Brush half with remaining filling and fold. Cut into squares and place in pan, with edges facing up. Let rise about 15 minutes until doubled. Bake until golden brown...30-35 minutes. Remove from oven, let rest 5 minutes in pan, then transfer to cooling rack. Make a thick icing by whisking together remaining powdered sugar and orange juice. Drizzle over pan.

This isn't my recipe but can't for life of me remember where I found it. And did it differently as is my wont to do!! I apologize for how recipe shows up on here...can't figure out how to format my posts :( In the 1970's we were stationed in Germany and I found a wonderful little cookbook with German recipes but in both German and English. My favorite recipe is her pound cake. She used zest and lemon juice for her cake, but after years of making it, I decided to pulverize a whole lemon in Cuisinart (take out seeds first) and put it in instead while adjusting flour to make a good cake batter. I did it this recipe after first zesting an orange somewhat. It ended up a very nice dough and filling wasn't as zesty but rest of the bread made up for it. Also, just added water for icing. Additionally, can't find any loaf pans after a remodel a few years ago!! So used 8 and 9 inch springform pans for a triple recipe--ended up higher than if I do it again, but such a hit. Bread rising

COLOR BREAK

Needed a break from black and white!! This is the June block for Starry Night Mystery BOM at Wish Upon a Quilt. It's really much brighter than this and one of my favorites so far. Major fan of purples and yellow is it's complement, so works beautifully. http://www.wishuponaquilt.com/cgi-bin/Store/store.cgi?cart_id=2763892.19987.s0&product=Block_Of_Month1&productid=starrynight_cool&keywords1=starry+night&sales=0&lastmenu=

BLACK AND WHITE SUPERNOVA

These are the first two blocks for a supernova quilt I'm making. Here's a site with a tutorial and a hot link to a bunch of photos on flickr: http://freshlypieced.blogspot.com/p/supernova-quilt-along.html I spent a lot of time cutting out every block in advance then put them in labeled baggies as she suggested. Her directions are wonderful, but I'm working in black and white and it was just not making a lot of sense to me how to sew what I call half square rectangles. The first two were sewn AND CUT incorrectly. So...to make a lot of work for myself but save my sanity, I made small mock-ups of every square. Crazy, crazy, crazy, but it made sense to me and now when sewing they help me orient everything ok. Here's a few of the baby quilt blocks--gotta think of something to use them for! Maybe laminate them and let grandkiddos play with them for matching games.
This is the back showing the ironed-open seams she suggested and think works well for these blocks. Each block is 45 pieces and takes awhile to sew and press. They were done in an assembly line way. She suggested laying out your strips in gradations for each block and I did that for the first two, then just started putting things together in ways that seemed fine to me. There will be 25 blocks and I decided each one would have a different center and the two outside "point" fabrics would be different for each block. On fabric.com I found a LOT of fabrics I thought I could use. And ordered a bunch :) !!! Several came and are wonderful prints but the fabric is more like canvas so will be used for something else. Two I thought were cute had ants on them but when they came they made my skin crawl to think about sleeping under those very real looking ants, so they'll be made into something for picnics!! Food and ants...now there's a concept!

Blogger's Quilt Festival--Home Tweet Home

Always so exciting to see what's happening at Amy's Blogger's Quilt Festival! http://amyscreativeside.com/#success

I had a post all created that's now missing but since blogger has been so iffy lately, I'll just post the one picture now and hope to update later. Home Tweet Home by Cynthia Walker, but done in other colors from her. First applique quilt I've done--at least on this scale. Used pelon interfacing method for all but small circles which were done by gathering material around templar plastic, starching, then releasing them from plastic, trimming and sewing down. Love how it turned out and will probably go to someone who hinted very strongly it would look good on their wall! That is when I'm ready to part with it!! Need to add a rod pocket for hanging. Backing is from an old sheet and looks so pretty. Enjoy the festival--always fun!

Just added some more pictures--the teacup and crossed flowers are my two favorite blocks. The border is a bit hard to see but is heart within a heart and then little heart between the doubled ones.

PENTAGONAL FLOWERS

Saw these flowers made on Fons and Porter's show last week. It was on a show about weaving fabric--such a cool thing that must be tried later! Found an equilateral pentagon someplace online and traced it as best I could from my screen. There are directions online for drawing a perfect one. Mine's imperfect, but works just fine! It's about 3" on a side.

Cut two pieces for each flower--mine were contrasting. Sew 1/4" seam, leaving opening on one side. Clip corners and turn--use bodkin to poke out corners. Whip stitch opening. With doubled thread, start sewing at "a" and finish at "z". Pull thread up from knotted end for about three of the petals--they start to curve; pull up from needle end for rest. Tie off. Flower is done but can add beads in center, or make a yo-you for center--about a 2" circle is what I used. Then sewed it on with stitches from center to make divisions. Also sewed three yellow glass beads to center of each flower and little ladybug charm. Every know got tied at least three times because these are going to little girls. Also sewed a pin back to each of them so can be a brooch or pinned on a head band. Applied fray check to every knot.

Voila! Easy peasy--have fun. (just added single flower--so much better picture by hubby!!)

THE CHOIR IS READY TO SING

Owlies have flocked to my house all dressed up. Don't they look like they're going to break into song? What do you think they would sing?

These were easy to make and directions are here: http://moonstitches.typepad.com/photos/tutowlrial/ just click on enter gallery on that page. You could make these in several sizes. For me, the hardest part was sewing on eyes!! Wish there was a way to do it on the machine. I did the bottoms a bit differently by making larger circles that were basted with double thread and pulled tight around cardboard discs. Black and white ones would look like penguins I think!! These are all from scraps of batiks I used in the Baskets in Bloom blocks and are going into my Rose of Sharon quilt blocks.

I fell in love with owls last year while looking at several quilts on Amy's bloggers quilt festival. Several people had used them in various ways. Found a lot of owlie fabrics online and was excited to use a couple of them in little Livie Lou's pink Marabella quilt. For Christmas she got the owlie dolly I made up using a picture her mom sent me.

Appliquing With Asbestos Fingers

Lately, I've been on an applique tear. Just love doing it. Have done various things with applique involved in them over the 55 years I've been sewing, of course, and mostly done it with my machine, but this has been by hand and the satisfaction has been marvelous. Here are blocks and borders from Baskets In Bloom by Janice Joyner at Sisters' Scraps Quilt Shop in Amarillo Texas. It was a BOM but I bought just the pattern recently. Hubby put the four borders together for picture--interesting pattern it makes, eh?

There are some embellishments to put on a few blocks, but done other than that. Have tried various methods of shaping pieces for sewing down--all seem to work ok in some situations. Did a snowman quilt last summer/fall using what I call the lining technique where you sew very light Pellon to "face" the piece and then turn it--this worked fantastically on snowmen and again on most of the Home Tweet Home quilt. http://www.quilt-lovers-guide.com/applique-techniques.htmlww.quilt-lovers-guide.com/applique-techniques.html This place has good directions for several kinds of applique.

Two techniques that have worked for me recently involve the iron--hence asbestos fingers. The first was one I saw in Material Obsession, a book my son and his sweet wife gave me for Christmas. You cut out shape from thin cardboard, cut a little larger piece of material, a little larger than that piece of tinfoil. Lay cardboard on material, then wrap tinfoil around it tightly and iron. I found it works well for a few pieces that you're going to use right away. http://sylvsquilting.blogspot.com/2010/11/tin-foil-and-cardboard-applique-method.htmluilting.blogspot.com/2010/11/tin-foil-and-cardboard-applique-method.html A good tutorial about it.

Latest way I like preparing pieces was told to me by a lady at Attic Window quilt shop in Wenatchee WA. I do it differently than she does, but this works best for me. You can use thin cardboard, but best thing is to get heat resistant plastic. It's not cheap, but figure all the leaves can be used again. It was something like $15 for six sheets and I still have two whole sheets left and some scraps. I also, cut several of each shape, so wasn't trotting back and forth to iron all the time. Especially with 134 leaves needed for four border strips! The other thing is that smaller pieces for future projects can be cut out of larger flower or other shapes. She suggested a starch from her shop but didn't have it in right then, so I just tried cheap spray starch. I've seen directions for dipping a q-tip or little brush in starch, wet edges and then bring those up to plastic and sort of glue them down. My ironing pad got saturated with starch, but I just put a bunch of pieces down and sprayed them--it always seemed that there was lots of extra starch so I put other pieces on them to sop it up. Sometimes that meant a bit too much starch and harder to sew--especially batiks which are just harder to sew for me period, but I cover middle fingers with bandaids most of the time although my finger tips are getting more immune to it all!! Two things I really found out about this process is to clip where you need to just a bit as those "v's" turn a lot better and make it easier in sewing process. And I left about 1/4 inch or more around the pieces to have something to hang onto, then trimmed them before sewing. Another thing is to gather, not pleat rounded areas. One at a time so starch dries. I use the tip of my iron to do this and my fingers got very hot a lot, but they're getting immune to this, too!! Lady at quilt shop uses a mini iron like from Clover, but it just didn't seem to work well for me. Might try it again on next project.

About half the blocks were done tinfoil way, others starching. I'm wondering if using a combo of starch and tinfoil would work well, but needing a cazillion pieces that stayed nice for sewing them. Starching kept them in nice shape during process better than anything else..These three very bad pictures from my phone show how I hold gathered ends in place and what it looks like after starch dries. When piece is dry, remove the plastic and press one more time. I stack them together and put a pin through to keep them in place. Having so much fun appliquing but need to get organized enough to put blocks for two different quilts together, get them and some other tops sandwiched and then quilted--so much to do, but always fun.