Fruitcake Softie, For the Fun of It

I’m not one to make a lot of purely-fun projects (I like to make things I “need” so I don’t end up with piles of clutter), but I decided to give a last-minute go to the Holiday Softie Awards.

 

I started last night, using mostly fabrics from my Denyse Schmidt fat quarter pack. (Let’s see, I’ve now made napkins, a house, a baby quilt top, a halloween banner and a fruitcake using fabrics from that stack. My mom took some to make me a quilt And there is still more!) Anyway, I loved the fabric I used for the side and pecans, to me it looks just like a fruitcake wrapper.

 

It was really fun to stitch this thing (although, lesson learned, I could use a thimble), and I am especially proud of the pecans.  I’ll have to pepper in some more whimsical projects to spice things up now and then. Wish me luck!

Whoooo’s in the Halloween spirit?

Sorry, I had to.

I finished my halloween garland today. It was a relatively simple project idea formed  while I was in the Martha Stewart Crafts section of Michael’s. I first saw the owl stamp on someone’s blog (can’t remember where, but they recieved it in a swap). I walked all the way around Michael’s with the itch to buy something, then wandered my way back to the MSC section in a daze because I wanted to make something halloweeny, but not disposable.  Here’s what I did:

First, I sewed some fabric flags  that were slightly larger than the stamp. (With wrong sides facing, fold a piece of fabric twice as wide as the stamp plus two inches or so in half. Sew up one long and one short side. Turn inside out, press). I made twelve. I painted the foam stamp with acrylic paint and stamped each flag.

(Tip: Start with white paint, then orange, then black. It’ll just be easier!)

After that, I trimmed all of the flags to the same height with my rotary cutter. As you can see, I’m in the middle of some other projects which I had to push out of the way.

I pinned each flag into the fold of a double wide bias tape, spacing them about 2 1/2″ from each other. I sewed a straight line for the length of the tape, making sure to catch all of the layers, and voila! A garland!

Although I intended to hang it the wall somewhere, it looked best on the couch with its other handmade friends. Now I have a halloween decoration that’s not just junk I’ll throw away after this month is over. Plus, I busted some of my stash. Mission accomplished.

Yum.

Cooking seems to have hijacked this week’s posts. It’s not that I’m not crafting- but I’m working up a lot of submissions so I can’t really show them off. Also, I actually did that wonderful little thing called meal planning this week, which is why I actually have good food to make each night. When I actually have time to think about what I want to buy and make, this can be a good thing– because, for instance, I can use tonight’s leftover roasted asparagus in tomorrow’s quiche. Although living with Paul does mean that sometimes there are no leftovers. I asked him if he didn’t like leftovers beacause it seems like I’m the only one who eats them, and I actually try to make enough for two meals so I don’t have to eat sandwiches for lunch every day. He replied that he just usually ate everything and there were never leftovers. Men.

 

Tonight I made this tasty(& simple!) apple cranberry pie for dessert. I had asparugus and chicken baking, some cranberries on the stove (to un-dry them), a pie crust thawing and apples being peeled when I got a phone call I’ve been from someone I’d been meaning to contact myself. I must have sounded like a crazed person when I answered and hung up shortly. Hopefully I can explain tomorrow.  But back to the pie: the pie was YUM.  I overestimated the number of apples I needed, so for future reference, 1 gigantor and 1 normal apple are all it takes (& I like to mix the variety for a sweet-tart pie).

 
After dinner I worked on a little project for Halloween. Hopefully I’ll finish it this week so I can show it off.