Christmas strata - ta da..

All sitting on my hips by now, but oh so yummy on Christmas morning!

For the post with the recipe, click here.

 

Christmas breakfast strata

31 day blog writing challenge

Well, it has been fun to take part in the 31 day blog writing challenge, but I have a houseful of people arriving today so I am going to call it quits at day 23. Normal weekly service will resume after the holidays! Cooking and feasting and presents and enjoying small people is going to be the order of the day for a while! Even quilting and dyeing take a back seat to that!

So all that remains is to wish you all a very merry Christmas from myself and the photo bomb queen (who denies all knowledge of whatever it is she is being accused of)!

Forthcoming attractions: 

In 2016 I plan to 
1. Experiment with the new Procion MX pure grey dye
2. Start selling hand-dyed fabric
3. Take a class with Carol Soderlund (squee! so excited!)
4. Work through the many Craftsy classes I have signed up for 
5. Continue practicing on the Handi Quilter Sweet Sixteen
6. Finish the 10 donation quilts I started this year
7. Finish 2 quilts in time to enter them for shows
8. Follow through on these resolutions! Gonna get my jiggle on!

Handi Quilter Sweet Sixteen Day 17 - Christmas fused quilt

Stitching through the multiple layers of the fused fabrics proved no problem for the Sweet Sixteen. Even more exciting was that I had no tension issues with the multiple color changes involved. I used both Isacord and Sulky threads on the top and Bottom Line on the bottom. This was the first outing for the Bottom Line, and it performed very well. The dealer's tip about tying the new thread onto the old and pulling the new thread through to the needle proved invaluable with the many colors I used. I would have hated to rethread from scratch every time!

Detail of stitching 

 My favorite spiderweb stitch on the star

A pillowcase finishing and1-2-3 done.

Fused Christmas quilt

I haven't done such a quick project in ages, so satisfying. I was just feeling quite pleased with myself when the chemist came by. Hmmm, she said. The tree needs ornaments she said. ^&%^$%# I said. 

These beads look a bit like presents, but they will be so much work to sew on. I am over this project now. 

Bigger beads draw too much focus.

These might work, but w-a-a-y too fiddly.

 Silver to echo the star? Ooh, look, I meant to make earrings with some of these silver beads! Focus! Attention span of a gnat, I swear...

Large and echo the colors and the stitch pattern on the tree. Done deal.

If Santa doesn't get the hint it won't be my fault!

Detail shot with beads in place.

Handi Quilter Sweet Sixteen Day 16 - Christmas fused quilt in process

So far all my Sweet Sixteen experiments have been with pieced tops. Now I am going to fuse a top and then quilt it on the Sweet Sixteen. I wonder how different that will be?

When I am between projects, or stuck during a project, I sometimes fuse my scraps. So, today, when I want to fuse a Christmas tree, I can pull out my supply of pre-fused scraps and dive right in. 

I am assembling my Christmas tree on release paper. Laura Wasilowski has a couple of great fusing classes on Craftsy if you are interested in learning the basics. The brown stuff behind the white release paper is a goddess sheet, which is basically a pressing sheet designed to allow you to peel the fused project off it after ironing. I like to add as many protective layers as possible as 1. I am a klutz and 2. I hate cleaning fusible off things they shouldn't be sticking too, like my iron and my ironing board. 

A mixture of leftovers from batiks and hand-dyes. Once I have the rough shape blocked out, I will give it a good press and then cut it out. 

The background is some white on white print that I dyed. The printing stays white and the background white cotton takes the dye. I must have scrunched it as it is mottled. 

I stabilized the tree on release paper while I assembled the shape. The presents are very simple shapes, so they are ironed straight on to the goddess sheet awaiting their ribbons. The great thing about the goddess sheet is that when the ironed shapes are removed from it, the backs are very shiny. This is helpful as it is sometimes difficult to tell which is the front and which is the back. 

When fusing on the ribbons I am using another smaller goddess sheet between my iron and the fusible. The ribbons are very thin and it is really hard to see if they are the right way up. 

Sure enough I got one the wrong way up. Without the goddess sheet that sucker would be stuck to my iron about now. Luckily, I can peel it off the goddess sheet and start over. 

Fused Christmas tree ready for stitching!

Ready for stitching! With the pre-fused fabric, that didn't take long at all!

Christmas breakfast strata

Christmas morning, what a great time to dirty the house and spend the morning making breakfast for the hoards, right? Wrong!

This strata (essentially a savory bread pudding) has become our Christmas breakfast tradition, and it's brilliant. All the preparation takes place the day before and it bakes while we open presents. There are no leftovers because it's yummy, and my family has eaten two veggies first thing in the morning, without even noticing!

So, funny story, I went to the grocery store after work specifically to buy eggs to make this, and came home with cookies and various other things, but no eggs. You will have to imagine the eggs in all of the pictures below. Senility is so annoying....

Christmas breakfast strata (serves 8 adults and 2 kids)

And imagine the eggs - cage-free, organic please!

                                                              INGREDIENTS

• 8 cups of bread. I know, that is a ridiculous measurement. A bagel is about a cupful. I use Breadsmith wholewheat hamburger buns and 6 is plenty because they are large. If you choose to use cheese bagels you could omit the cheese in the recipe.You could be very frugal and freeze all those last bits of the load no one wants, until you have enough to make this. Stale bread works wonderfully well, but it needs to be "real" bread, bread with body and character. Wonder bread will dissolve...
• 3 onions chopped (we like onions - you might want to add less, or more.. this is an "-ish" recipe rather than a very set in stone one)
• 1 large package of fresh spinach (fresh veggies will give off less water than frozen - we don't want to dilute the egg custard with water)
•  2 cups of strong cheese, grated
• 9 large eggs
• 1 package bacon - we use turkey bacon
• 2 3/4 cups of milk
• garlic to taste. I love this garlic in a tube. It is always ready to use, no getting your hands stinky etc. I keep it in the freezer so I always have it on hand. A tube lasts for ages and it tastes like real garlic, unlike that dried stuff.
• seasoning to taste - this is your choice. I use sage because it plays so nicely with onions, a pinch of nutmeg because it plays nice in custard based recipes, and cayenne pepper because we like spicy food. Salt and pepper are good. You could also use parsley, mustard, anything that will go well with the rest of the ingredients. Amounts depend on your taste. I used probably a heaped teaspoon of dried sage, a goodly pinch each (such precision) of nutmeg and cayenne, and probably half a teaspoon of salt and a good grind of pepper.
• knob of butter - I normally cook with olive oil, but if I am going to cook onions it has to be butter. My husband will invariably ask what I'm doing because it smells so good, and the answer is always "frying onions in butter"!

Saute the onions in a knob of butter till they become translucent. Roughly chop the bacon into 1/2 inch pieces and add to the onion. Add a couple of garlic cloves chopped, or about a 2 inch squeeze if you are using tube garlic. If you are using raw bacon cook for longer, if you are using turkey bacon saute for about 5 minutes till the everything is nicely combined.

 Grease a large, deep ovenproof casserole dish and layer the bread, spinach, onion and bacon mixture as if you were making lasagna. In between the layers sprinkle cheese and seasoning. End with a bread layer on top. Smoosh the spinach well down so it doesn't incinerate on the top when baking.

 In a separate bowl beat the eggs and milk, then pour over the "lasagna". Let it stand for 5 minutes, then take a fork and push the top layer of bread gently into the liquid, so that the top won't be dry and nasty. You are going to have to imagine the picture for this one due to a certain shopper's incompetence...This dish is actually a little overfilled. It would be better to have the last layer end about an inch below the top of the dish. The strata then needs to sit in the fridge overnight so the bread can absorb the liquid.

In the morning, take the strata out of the fridge first thing so that it can get to room temperature before baking. You could add some grated cheese or mozzarella to the top before baking. Set the oven to 350 and bake for at least an hour. Put the casserole disk on a baking sheet to avoid spills in your oven. The strata will puff up and look wonderful! Insert a skewer to make sure it is done. The skewer should come out clean. If it comes out covered in runny egg mixture it needs to bake some more. Once it is done let it sit for about 5 minutes before trying to dish it up, and be careful! It will be very hot.

And now for something completely different: magical pianos and resolutions

Still making lollipop shapes with the HQ Sweet Sixteen, so no new sewing pics today. 

Someone posted this on Facebook today. Really worth a watch, it will bring a smile to your face! This guy encapsulates my New Year's resolutions (hey, it's only 2 weeks away, people!). He is on the older side of the spectrum, he is on the chubbier side of the spectrum, and he isn't going to win Mr. Sexy 2015, 2016 or any other year. But when he sees a magic piano in a train station he responds with curiosity, engagement, and has a rip-roaring time with it, including adding his own flourishes with the bells.

I hereby resolve:
1. Not to be oblivious to the magical things in 2016
2. To engage with things that arouse my curiosity and creativity
3. To fake it till I make it, and if I can't play the piano, to look for some bells to ring
4. To keep dancing and to hell with all the bits that jiggle!

Handi Quilter Sweet Sixteen Day 15 - bearding

So I knew batting sometimes had a scrim, but (and here I may be the last person on the planet to find this out) cotton batting without a scrim also has a side that should face the quilt top and a side that should not. How did I find this out?

Urgh! Bearding city. 

Look at these puncture marks in the batting! The Sweet Sixteen doesn't mess about. It's no wonder it was punching those cotton balls out the back of the quilt. And yes, unpicking stippling is so much fun.. When you see these little black or brown speckles, which are apparently cotton seeds, these need to face your quilt top. The nice clean looking side of the batting, needs to face the back. A little counter-intuitive...

Also I still haven't got the tension perfect. I had blue on the bottom and variegated pink on the top. Look at all the blue that came through as soon as there's thread build up, and possibly when I slow down. I could spend the rest of my life getting the tension perfect...or...

put plain pink on the bottom and move along...

The variegated thread is a lot of fun. The same thread pops differently on different color backgrounds. These take a lot of concentration! I can do one strip of 7 a night and then I start to gibber. I'm not going for a mechanical exact duplication of the pattern, I like FMQ to look like a person did it, not an embroidery machine, but I do want my stitches to hit where I want them to hit. Still shaky on the travel stitching from time to time. 

I'm just excited that I managed to get my head around getting the swirls to go in the same direction on the actual quilt top. In the samples above I reversed direction, sewing both backwards and forwards, but my brain can't reverse the pattern. The only way I could get the swirls to go the same direction, without my brain blowing a fuse, was to rotate the quilt for each swirl, so that my starting direction was always the same. I am spatially challenged, what can I say...

Variegated pink thread on blue hand-dye

and on pink hand-dyes

This pattern is based on Leah Day's lollipop tree pattern.

Handi Quilter Sweet Sixteen Day 14 - useful links

This post is very  link heavy because I intend it to be a reference page for me.

One of the great things about the internet is that education can be a marketing tool, and that is just fine by me! People add value to their products by giving away expertise. A company that has many useful "threads" is Superior Threads, they have everything from cheat sheets and trouble shooting, to really terrible jokes (which are clearly rubbing off on me). Also, great thread and good thread charts. If you buy thread online then get a thread chart. Computer monitors are not the best color matching tools, especially for variegated threads.

So here are links to reference tools specific to the HQ Sweet Sixteen:

Great basic chart on thread tension

Longarm needle guide

Longarm machine thread reference guide

This page allows you to cross reference what you find in the needle guide and the thread reference guide, so you can see which # needle to get for which thread

Brilliant trouble shooting flowchart

Videos by Dr. Bob

Type "Thread therapy with Dr. Bob" into Youtube, to find some informative stuff there too. I like  that Superior is not just trying to sell you thread, they also want you to have a good time using it. 

I really like Isacord too, but if you use it you are on your own. No information, no jokes! Sewforless has good deals, especially at Thanksgiving. For solid Isacord colors in humungous spools this is an amazing deal.

Thus endeth the links...





 

Handi Quilter Sweet Sixteen Day 13 - threading tip

There are a LOT of places to thread on the Sweet Sixteen. Here's a handy tip from the dealer: When you want to change thread:
1. Snip the old thread at the cone 
2. Remove the old cone and put the new cone on the spool pin
3. Tie the new thread onto the cut end of the old thread and trim the knot. Don't cut it too close or it will come undone with the pressure of going through all the thread points. Ask me how I know...
4. Pull the thread at the needle until the new thread feeds through all the threading points and reaches the needle
5. Check that the thread is well flossed through the tension disks
6. Cut off the knot and thread the needle with the new thread
7. Check your tension if you are changing to a new thread type as opposed to changing color but keeping the same thread

Handi Quilter Sweet Sixteen Day 12 - bobbin wind fail

I wound some new bobbins, plugged them in and began to sew. After a little bit there was that noise that lets you know the sooner you stop and do something about it, the less unpicking you are going to have to do. I pulled out the bobbin, and oh, the horror! I had to put the Christmas cactus in the shot, or it was just too depressing!

Jamie Wallen, who is my new guru, says the tension on the bobbin winder may be set too tight, so when the thread comes off the winder it relaxes and pools. Not sure why it wouldn't do that right from the start though. Anyone got a bright idea?

The M class bobbins seem terribly flimsy after Bernina's little sherman tank bobbins. I hear the M class are aluminium and can warp if overfilled. Oh joy....

Handi Quilter, if you are listening, I have a suggestion: Make the pin on the bobbin winder able to fit a bobbin as well as a spool of thread. How am I going to get this mess into a usable form again when I can't wind it onto another M class bobbin? I guess it is going to make Bernina bobbins now. Bernina spool pins fit bobbins and spools of thread. Hmmm, I wonder if I could put it on my external thread holder and then run it through the HQ bobbin winder tensioning? I will have to test that out.

Handi Quilter Sweet Sixteen Day 11 - tension

I went to see the dermatologist this week. If you take your pale skin to the dermatologist and tell him you grew up in sub-Saharan Africa, you can actually see him picking out his next luxury car in his head, while he looks over your skin. I have two patches of dermatitis that bother me. I told him that when I stop using the cream he gave me, one of them breaks out, and if the cat rubs against the other, it breaks out. His advice? Use the cream and don't let the cat rub against your face.

Incidentally, Ms Twitch and I have morning love fests where she rubs her face on my chin and purrs like a tractor. It is so cute. Then the chemist researched it and told me the cat has scent glands in her cheeks. She is writing MINE, MINE, MINE all over me in indelible smells. I feel so used.

My point, yes, I do have one somewhere...Although I would like a magic pill to make my skin issues go away, what actually works is following a routine and avoiding obvious triggers. The same applies to the Sweet Sixteen. See? I got there in the end. It seems to me that most of my problems are going to come down to tension. So good tension routines may help me avoid aggravation. 

I am trying to get into the habit of checking the tension every time I change thread, and checking the bobbin tension every time I load a new bobbin. I also found in the blue sample above that changing fabric made a difference. The tension is terribly tight. This is a Legacy muslin as opposed to the grey Kona I had previously been testing with. In addition I changed the needle (so proud of myself...) and wound some new bobbins. Too many variables!

The bobbin tension is perfect. I am so relieved. I do not want to mess with the bobbin case! So to keep making samples, and keep adjusting the top tension. It is so helpful to have the numbers displayed so I am not guessing at where I am going with the tension, and I can take notes and then go back to the exact same tension point.

This Jamie Wallen youtube video gives very comprehensive advice on setting tension on a long arm.
                                          Back to the Kona to try to find a good tension. 

                             Still too tight, too much thread build up in the corners of the bow ties.

                                                                    Getting better

Trying out an echo inside the bow tie shape. This pattern will be good travel stitching practice too. I sew the kite string first as a wibbly wobbly line, then travel back over it, making the bows.


Eventually I seem to have a better tension and I can start making my kite strings on the actual top. I am getting more relaxed when it comes to the real thing. Practice, practice, practice!

The real deal. One thing I have learned is to pick a pattern that won't drive me nuts when I have to do it over and over. I love pebbles, I love the look, the texture, the pattern, but it makes me crazy to do them for any length of time. I find it stressful to keep staying in the designated area and making adjustments to keep the fill pebble shaped. 

Now I need to decide what to do about the solid color areas. That's a job for another day!

Handi Quilter Sweet Sixteen Day 10 - storage

Don't you just love serendipity? I bought my great-neice some Doug and Melissa beads and they came in a nifty wooden box. Because she was flying home, I decanted the beads into organza bags to save suitcase space. And kept the box. It was too cute to toss. And now look how perfect it is for all my Sweet Sixteen paraphernalia!

Compared to the Bernina, there actually isn't that much associated "stuff". 

The first thing I bought were extra bobbins and needles. The bobbins could have been made for that long thin divider! I like to wind lots of bobbins before starting a project, so I don't have to break concentration and go wind bobbins. I'm always amazed at how many I get through, although these M type bobbins are great because they hold so much more thread.

Extra glasses, check. I only have nine pairs and still can never find them when I need them. Sigh...

Scissors, because there is no thread snipper on the machine. Seems like that would be an easy addition. I'm really missing it.

Cheater needle for burying threads. Fabulous things, the hole in the top makes them easy to thread even with a minimal amount of thread tie off. I try to bury as I go as it's just too depressing to get to the end of the quilt and have a mountain of thread ends to deal with. 

Seam ripper. As my mother, the cheer-leader, pointed out: a machine that goes that fast will mean l-o-t-s of unpicking if you mess up. Thanks, Ma!

Dust extractor, and boy does the lint accumulate in the bobbin area, even though I haven't even used cotton thread yet. Superior Threads very kindly sent along 4 spools of thread as part of a welcome package. So far I've used their So Fine, in addition to my usual go-to Isacord. 

Alternative hopping foot. Bernina has clearly brainwashed me. I find myself looking for additional cool feet. Nope. Two hopping feet come with the machine, one open toe and one closed. You can buy couching feet and that's it for the Sweet Sixteen. Of course Bernina has brought out their own version of the sit down midarm machine, the Q20, and all their feet are apparently interchangable on that machine. Pretty sure I would have to mortgage the farm first though! 

Lots of screwdrivers and allen wrenches. These are essential. With the Bernina I can tip it on its side to get to tricky angles. Not so much with this machine - it is pretty substantial!

Needles. Clever packaging, 10 needles per package and they are packed in twos with a resealable opening every two needles. Ever opened a package of needles and had them all fall in your lap because there was one opening for all of them? I need to experiment with different needle sizes too. My to do list grows...

Handi Quilter Sweet Sixteen Day 9 - pattern practice

I know this is lame, but I find stippling really hard. I see patterns everywhere. I have an OCD personality. If I can't impose order on things I start to twitch. I saw an advertisment for a FMQ class which said that the participants must at least be able to stipple and my reaction was: why are they starting with the hardest part first? I worry that my randomness is insufficiently random!

I guess it comes down to practice again, but I also find it helpful to have a motif to work around, rather than a big empty space to fill. These cute little frogs pop a little more with stippling in the background. I'm working white on white so mistakes won't be a show stopper while I practice. I'm hoping it's not like cracks in the pavement; if I cross a line, no bears will get me! Hopefully the quilt police won't find me either! Click to enlarge. A great thing about the Sweet Sixteen is that it is so forgiving of stops and starts. With the Bernina, despite my best efforts, I would sometimes get a jag as I took off again after a stop. The Sweet Sixteen takes off smoothly and it is almost impossible to see where the stop was.

I do need to be careful of hovering in one place though. I've had a couple of nasty thread lumps build up because I am dithering about where to go next. Instead, I need to stop with the needle down and contemplate my options. The other thing I've  found is that if I make a stitch with no fabric in place the thread creates a knot in the bobbin area with the Sweet Sixteen. The Bernina just sighs deeply and brings the thread up again, in the hopes that I won't be a twit the second time around!

What does a frog need in the surrounding stripes? Some tasty snacks! I was going to do flies, but then I thought that might be kind of gross, so instead I have a flittery butterfly kind of thing. It was very forgiving to sew. The echoed wing meant that if I made the first wing too small, I echoed around the outside, and if I got it the right size then I echoed around the inside. 

Did I mention I love hand-dyes? The color variation makes for really interesting fabric.

Handi Quilter Sweet Sixteen Day 8

Phew, still managing a post a day as part of this challenge. 

So yesterday I mentioned that the more relaxed I am, the better the stitches. A relaxed attitude is a little difficult to achieve right now as I am catsitting for the chemist, who is swanning around England on a business trip. Well actually she is laid up in a hotel room with stomach flu, but still.

Now the chemist is very health conscious. She even thinks tofu is food. But her cat makes Garfield look like an underachiever. Here is my very scientific cat measuring system.  This is the chemist's cat. She takes up 4 kitchen floor tiles.

Here is Ms. Twitch. She takes up 2 kitchen floor tiles.

You may quibble about angles and what not, but trust me, the one weighs close to 20 pounds and the other weighs 8. 

What does this have to do with the Sweet Sixteen? Well, the chemist's cat also likes to jump up. A lot. I was negotiating a tricky turn at speed, when suddenly my quilt went sideways as 20 pounds of cat arrived on it to see what I was doing. There were words. Not all of them were printable. I put her on the floor (I think I strained my back..). She jumped back. This went on until I convinced her to sit on the floor and sulk instead, but I then found myself stitching with one eye on the cat and one eye on the fabric. This is not a good look for me. I feel like Rodney Dangerfield.

I will be a more relaxed stitcher when the chemist gets back this weekend and takes her hippo home.

Handi Quilter Sweet Sixteen Day 7 - visibility

The basement men have each, independently, asked me why on earth I need another machine. This from people who, between them, own four different kinds of power saws. 

However, I do have an answer for them. While I cannot deny that naked lust did play a role, my decision to buy the Sweet Sixteen was also motivated by logic and reason, and the reason comes down to visibility.

My sewing room is in the basement. There is no natural light. I was lucky enough to have lots of input in the way the room is laid out, since we finished the basement ourselves. I have nine different lights with daylight bulbs, which give a very good overall light, but I also need good light right where I am working, especially as my eyes are increasingly behaving like middle aged prima donnas.

When doing FMQ, you are working fast and moving around, so you need to be able to see where you are, where you've been, and where you are going. 

Both pictures below are taken on my phone, in the same light conditions, about 30 seconds apart to try to give an accurate picture of the differences between a regular sewing machine and the Sweet Sixteen. Both are taken seated in the spot where I would be if I were going to use that machine. Both fabric pieces are the same size.

Here is the view from my Bernina. Notice how much the machine itself obstructs the view, and the limited circle of very good light.

Here is the view from the Sweet Sixteen. There is so much more clearance between the needle and the machine that the view is unobstructed. Because the machine is angled away from me, and only the needle shaft is in front of me, visibility is awesome 360 degrees. The area that is really well lit is also so much greater.

I rest my case! Now remind me while you need all those saws??

Handi Quilter Sweet Sixteen Day 6 - FMQ practice

When the chemist was little she desperately wanted to do ballet. Gradually she amassed the necessary equipment. She had the tutu, the leotard, the shoes, the tights. She lacked the hair, but that is another story! You never would tell from her long blond locks today, but she was a baldie for ages, poor child. She also had the imagination. You could tell that in her head the spotlight was on, while she swanned gracefully about the stage. Then she went to her first lesson.

What she learned was that putting on all the paraphernalia didn't mean she could do ballet. Not even close. She gave up almost immediately. Which was ironic, since she had one of those books with a cassette tape to read along with. The story was about a ballerina. It had a very unsubtle message that one day the lead ballerina will definitely break her leg at the critical moment, and because you have practiced diligently, you will be chosen to replace her in the end of term concert. We used to do a lot of very long car journeys to visit grandparents, and this story was a favorite. At one point I could recite it in my sleep. To this day we still quote Mrs. Kaye, the ballet teacher, who was always telling people to "Practice, practice, practice!"

Sadly, Mrs. Kaye was right. Good teachers and good equipment definitely make FMQ easier, but I find that to get better, I need to practice. I keep intending to have a stack of quilt sandwiches next to the machine and to do a little FMQ every day. Alas, I share a lot of genes with the chemist, and sometimes I prefer the scenes in my head where all my stitches are perfect, to the reality at my fingertips. In the real world I lose concentration, get tired, and sometimes need a lot more practice to get the designs on my fabric to bear any resemblance to the designs in my head!

Nice free-flowing stitches on the practice sample

After all the practice samples I had been working on, I was, frankly, getting just a little smug. I was fairly happy with the stitches I was making. So I moved on to an actual pieced top. And froze. My shoulders got stiff, my hands were moving more jerkily, I was forgetting to breathe. Oh the stress! Needless to say, the stitches accurately reflected all that loss of relaxation.

Much tighter and stiffer stitches - this is for real, eeeek!

More practice I guess...Right, Mrs. Kaye?