Quilts, pillows, and tons of bags

Yesterday we had a busy quilting/crafting meeting. It is nice when so many of us get together and talk like if we hadn't seen each other in years!
It's amazing how many new projects we have all together! and of course we also have our long big huge projects that keep us entertained for months.
Yanina finished her fish quilt, so cute!


Claudia, the bag girl is making a bag for a friend.

She is also made another one for herlself. She said "this is the first one I have made for ME from scratch!" It is so nice! And it really amazes me where does she find all those colorful fabrics, she says in Walmart but I just don't seem to look with the same kind of eyes! Because I never find them!


And one more for herself. The white circles are pieces of paper that she uses as a guide for quilting.

Yanina is into pillows now. And she likes to make the patchwork part like a puzzle. She had all these tiny pieces that she arranged into 4 flowers that will form the front of a very nice pillow.

And she cut pieces in paper of two new projects. As I said, she is fast!

Gisele made this beautiful quilt some time ago but it still needs to be finished. She decided to work on an old project rather than starting a new one (unlike me that I never finish my projects, well, hardly ever).

Amisha joined us for the first time. Here she was explaining about the quilt she is starting to make. It is simple, just rectangles, but it has many different fabrics in orange and white. It looks really nice.

And Camila was cutting fabrics for her big "storm of the sea" quilt. Here they are admiring Gisele's quilting bag.

As for me I am finishing up a quilt that I cannot show until it's all done and in the hands of its future owner.
And of course we enjoyed delicious food! Pilar made this amzing strawberry merengue pie that she promised to post the recipe soon. Gisele made Bruno's banana cake, also amazing, and also brought some egyptian treats, like baklaba. Amisha also made a delicious banana bread.

Great fun! I am looking forward to next Sunday!

How to make labels

The first craft blog I ever read was Dona Chita, by a Brazilian woman who makes wonderful softies. She calls her softies 'Kokoro' (heart, in Japanese). She makes small little labels for them and I thought it was such a great idea. I decided to make labels for my softies.
Here is what you need:
T-shirt transfer paper (about 9 dollars for 6 sheets at Wall Mart), ribbon, iron and a computer with printer.
Using a graph software, design your label and print on paper to see how it looks and adjust the size, so it matches the size of the ribbon. Once it is the way you want, print on the transfer paper (my printer has a T-shirt transfer mode, that means it prints backwards).



Cut the strips and iron it on the ribbon.


And sew on you softies
 

Great news!

I thought I will just share the good news. Gisele and I won the whipup "whiplash" contest we participated on! Each of us made a bag, then posted it in our respective blogs and sent the entry to whiplash. I was really surprised and happy when I saw that both of us had won. Gisele presented the tutorial on this bag and I presented this cocktail purse. I am so excited and I am looking forward to see what are we going to get on the mail. We will keep you posted!

Once again Sunday fun

Once again we meet last Sunday. And once again we had a good time. I would say that for a change we were quite productive!! We were just 4 but we hadboth projects to show and projects to work on.
Pilar, almost done with her baby quilt showed us all her progress.


Yanina had a bunch of scraps from a lady that makes seminole quilts. They are really amazing pieces, very intricate with many small pieces. This is a style I would like to try one day.


Amazingly she is working on her second quilt already! in two weeks!!! She is learning how to hand quilt and most likely she will come with it all finished next week. She is fast! Gisele is finishing her baby quilt, looking great.


And I was quilting but I also finished this bunny, named Patricia. Do we look symetrical in the picture?

Crazy frames

Since a couple of weeks ago, we organized a kid's farewell party for Mexicans girlfriends. In that occasion we did a craft activity for the children. Each one had a photo frame to decorate and to bring home as a gift. It was so fun that I decided to repeat it at home. This is the result of a nice afternoon where Santiago, Gabriel and me collect some stuff from the playground and combine colors to decorate the frames and these lovely towels hungers.

Marcos locos. Hace algunas semanas atras, organizamos una fiesta infantil de despedida para unas amigas mejicanas. En esa ocasion hicimos una actividad de manualidades para los ninhos. Cada uno tenia un marco de fotos para decorar y llevarselo a casa como regalo. Fue tan entretenido que decidi repetirlo en casa. Este fue el resultado de una agradable tarde en la que Santiago, Gabriel y yo recolectamos algunas cosas desde la plaza de juegos y combinamos colores para decorar los marcos y tambien estos amorosos colgadores de toallas.

Fruit Pie Recipe (fruit's kuchen)

This is the recipe for the fruit pie we ate last meeting;

Fruit Pie Recipe (Fruit Kuchen)

Dough (crust)
* 1 butter stick (or margarine)
* 100 gr granulate sugar (1/2 cup)
* 1 egg
* Flour (approx. 3 cups)
* 1 tablespoon baking powder

Cream
* 1 can Nestle cream
* 2 eggs (separate white from yolk)

Beat butter or margarine, put sugar spoon by spoon, when this is cream put an egg, finally add flour with baking powder. The flour must be enough to do a soft dough.
* Grease a pan and dust with a pinch of flour
* Put the dough up to two fingers height in the edge
* Put in oven (350 F) up to dough is cooked (not golden)

This pie can go with many fruits, I preffer sour fruit and you can mix with a little sugar, but can do with strawberry, raspberry, apple (with cinammon and sugar), banana, peach, plumb, apple moose and what you preffer!!!

Cream:
* Beat two egg whites and add two sugar spoons, do a meringue.
* Add Nestle cream can and 1 or 2 yolks. Stir softly.

Put fruit over the dough base and in the top the cream. Put in oven only for goldening. (Broil in oven for a few minutes)

And that is it!!!

Good luck and sweet afternoon!!
Pilar

Esta es la receta de Kuchen de frutas que comimos la reunion anterior, la receta ahora va en espannol para las manos argentinas que la solicitaron:

Masa:
100 grs. de mantequilla o margarina
100 grs. de azucar granulada (1/2 taza mas o menos)
1 huevo
Harina suficiente para que quede una masa blanda (aprox. 3 tazas)
1 cucharadita de polvos de hornear

Crema:
1 tarro de crema nestle
2 huevos (separar clara de yemas)

Preparacion:
Batir mantequilla, agregar azucar por cucharadas, cuando este cremosa colocar el huevo entero, y finalmente la harina y polvos de hornear, hasta que quede la masa blanda.
Engrasar un molde de kuchen y ponerle un velo de harina. Colocar sobre este la masa dejando dos dedos de altura en las orillas. Hornear hasta que la masa quede cocida sin que se dore.
Este kuchen se puede hacer con muchas frutas, yo prefiero las acidas a las que les puedes poner un poco de azucar, pero puede hacerce con frutillas (fresas), frambuesas, manzanas (con azucar y canela), platanos, duraznos, ciruelas o lo que tu quieras!

Crema:
Batir las claras a nieve, puedes ponerle un poquito de azucar, agregar el tarro de crema y las yemas y revolver suavemente.

Poner la fruta sobre la masa cocida y sobre esta la crema. poner en el horno nuevamente pero solo el tiempo suficiente para que se dore la crema.

Y esta listo!
Buena suerte y dulces tardes!
Pilar

Bags, bags and mor bags

I found this tutorial to make a cute bag in tiny happy. It's so nice and easy that I have alredy made 3 of them. The first and last were made using kitchen towels! It is nice to find cute fabric like this in unsuspected place and be able to use it for a very practical bag like this.
This is my first bag, with the kitchen towels. I use it everyday.


This is the second one, I will send it to my sister in Spain. I think she likes these kinds of patterns.


The last one is for my friend here who liked my bag and thought it was practical. She hasn't seen it yet but I hope she likes it.



And my friends Camila, Clara and Gisele also made a bag like this. It's quite popular around here :)

A funny meeting

Carmen's baby quilts

Yanina and her Pitagora's quilt

Camila with her beautiful project

As usual we have had a very funny quilt afternoon.
Everybody was surprised with Yanina's quilt, who is part of the group since last week and already have her first proyect almost finish!
Carmen presented her baby 'quilts, one pink and the other blue, that for sure will make the babys very happy.
Gisele and Claudia have brought their new mini mooppys all with different eyes and mouths, they look very happy.
We had been talking a lot about secrets for sewing machine that by the iniciates, like me, will be very useful.
I had coocked some fruit pies (kuchen) to give a sweet flavor to the afternoon, that, I think we has turned "motor mouth" and we talked about every think...., well, definitely we had a superb afternoon (lo pasamos SUPER!).

Yanina's quilt

Hello, this is my first quilt. Yesterday I got all the pieces together for our meeting but then I did not have anything to do at Pilar's house!

The first thing I did after the meeting was go to buy the batting! Then I spend the rest of the day preparing the backing.
Today I brought my quilt to the office and I show it to everybody here. You can be sure that UFIC is proud of all of us!

Now I have two projects in mind and one of them has to be ready in one month: it is for Jorge's cousin's baby. This baby name is Albany Valentina and will be born in Caracas next August. I have to rush! I am planning to quilt a lot of little fish. Jorge love fish and fishing!
(07/18/2006 - This is what I am going to quilt for this baby!)

The picture is not too good because I took it with the web camera on mi desk. I do not have much space but next year we are moving to the HUB. I will hang my quilt in my new office and the other project I am thinking about: a view of the Cañada in Cordoba, my city in Argentina.

I love to quilt with you,

Yanina

Pilar's Baby Quilt

Estoy haciendo un quilt para la bebe de una amiga que nacera en un mes. Decidi ponerle aplicaciones y para avanzar rapido pense que seria mejor ponerlas con maquina. Yo nunca habia cosido a maquina, pero contaba con la ayuda de las expertas Gisele y Carmen.
Esto ha sido genial, ya que yo supuse que ellas me harian el "trabajito", pero como buenas "profesoras" habian decidido ensenarme en unas horas y....no me quedo otra!!! las aplicaciones ya estan hechas y yo ya aprendi a usar la maquina!
Estoy FELIZ y creo que se me a abierto un mundo con todas las cosas que quiero hacer, de a poco les ire contando y mostrando, mientras algunas fotos del aprendizaje......y un millon de GRACIAS a las profesoras!!

Finally Done!

Last sunday I finished my first big quilt. It took me almost seven months of HARD work, but I'm very happy how it's looks now. The colors I used on it was my sister's favorites because this is a wedding present for her.

Tomorrow this big quilt will be on trip to Chile. I hope it'll arrive on time and safe.

El domingo pasado termine mi primera gran colcha. me tomo casi siete meses de trabajo duro pero estoy muy contenta como luce ahora. Los colores que use son los favoritos de mi hermana porque este es su regalo de bodas. Manhana esta gran colcha estara de viaje hacia Chile. Espero llegue a tiempo y sana y salva.

It was Sunday again, time for our weekly meeting!!

I thought the girls were not coming. Only Carmen and Denise were here at 4 PM. But it turned out the girls were just late because of the World Cup final game between France and Italy.

Here are Carmen and Denise. We were eating, chatting and watching the game, waiting for the girls.

Here is Pilar with her wonderful baby quilt. She made appliqués for the first time and it turned out perfect!!

Here is Teri showing a quilt she helped her 6-year old son John with. He chose a design from the book The Quiltmakers Gift and he sewed most of it. It is really amazing!! Maybe in 3 year I can teach my little one too.


Yanina is holding Matthew, Flor's 4-month old baby.

It was a lot of fun and as always, great food. Yanina made some Argentinean empanadas, Teri made a cake with nuts, I made an upside down pineapple cake and Flor made a strawberry desert. Yummy!

We missed Clara, who is in Portugal, Pasqualine, Camila and Carola. And it was so nice to have Yanina and Denise with us!!

We will meet next week in Pilar's apartment!

Have a great week!

The Florida Museum of Natural History is hosting an exhibit called "Quilting Natural Florida". We are very lucky to live just across street from the museum and my son loves to go there. He walks through all the amazing things a museum of natural history has, he makes comments and he enjoys the lights effects on the objects. We visit the museum a lot.I was very delighted with the quilts exposed. So many different techniques and styles. And it is so interesting how people interpreted the theme.



This quilt was made by an 11-year old girl. Wow!

If you have a chance, visit the quilt exhibit. It is very impressive!!