quilts – Mandy Cooks and Quilts

What a Summer!

Greetings yall!! Its been almost 3 months since my last post. A lot has been going down at my casa that blogging didn’t fit my hectic schedule. But I am back baby! As promised, we will be showing some new finishes and some delicious muffins, and how to process strawberries for freezing and jam.

To begin, if you follow me on Instagram or Facebook you know its been crazy at my house. My husband moved to Maryland before Memorial Day for work. The kids and I are staying here because it just made sense to keep them in a stable, familiar environment. So my home workload has picked up since my sidekick is not here to help me out sometimes. However, the kids are stepping up and helping with age-appropriate tasks.

Right before the 4th of July weekend, part of an old giant tree fell on my house, rupturing a gas line in my attic and causing a lot of damage to my roof, master bedroom, and bathroom. Thankfully no one was hurt. We have been battling with the contractors to get the roof fixed and the inside repaired. The roof was finally repaired this past week. So hopefully, they will begin on the inside soon. I am missing my Tempurpedic mattress. My guest bed mattress hurts my hips.

Work at my job has picked up, so I have had to work mandatory overtime a lot over the last few weeks.

Needless to say, my quilting time has been limited to a few minutes during the week and a few hours on the weekends. I have completed a few projects and keep up with my sew-alongs. I am only behind on my A Quilting Life BOM, but I should be able to catch up on that soon.

Here are some May Finishes. I completed the Sweet Dreams Sew A Long And some patriotic dining room decor along with my Toes in the Sand BOM. I hand-quilted the panel and added a frame to make it look like a picture. I made a pinwheel on point table runner using a Charm Pack called Praire Days by Moda.

Here are my July projects. I participated in Boo Crew by Fat Quater shop. I reversed the color of the Cauldron and Cat colors in the kit because I have never seen an orange Cauldron, and I wanted to pay homage to my evil devil kitty, Mr. Smee, who is an orange tabby you have seen in my pics. I made my sister a birthday quilt. She picked out the layer cake I used called Horsing Around by Bentertex. The pattern is Night Sky by Missouri Star Quilt Company. I love the secondary pattern made by the chevrons. I love the pantograph quilting I chose with horseshoes and stars. The quilter chose the purple thread which I think is perfect.

I am also participating in the Quilted Summer Sew Along by Caliope Quilts. Last year the patterns where baby Elizabeth Hartman and I did the Koala Quilt. I am doing Kidding Around (Goats in Pajamas) this year by ArtEast Quilting. The blocks are very intricate but adorable.

I have two more gift quilts I plan on starting and a Christmas Quilt for me. I also have a Halloween panel and table placemats I plan to get together soon.

Now onto some good eats.

May in my part of Georgia is strawberry season. For the past few years the kids and I go to a local u-pick farm and load up of these delicious gems. I freeze some and make jam. I also make delicious strawberry desserts like this strawberry rhubarb crumble.

Here is a simple recipe for preserving your strawberries for the entire year. I love to pull out a bag from my freezer in the dead of winter and top a big ole slice of angel food cake.

Frozen Strawberries:

As many pints of strawberries you have

Sugar

Slice strawberries into a large bowl. Add the desired amount of sugar. I usually do 1 cup of sugar to 3-4 heaping cups of berries. Stir and let sit for 30-60 minutes until sugar is dissolved. Place in Ziploc freezer bags and freeze. Use within a year. I love how the sugar makes the strawberries have their own sauce.

I love rhubarb and was stoked the local strawberry farm had some this year. So I made this recipe with some of my berries and fresh rhubarb.

https://barefootcontessa.com/recipes/strawberry-rhubarb-crisp

And to celebrate the strawberry season, I also made this strawberry quilt. I call it Strawberry Patch.

I had planned on writing about my delicious banana muffins but can’t find my pictures of them now. But fear not, I have 4 bananas overripening on my counter for a delicious back-to-school breakfast recipe to come later this week. Have a great week yall!

Spring and Easter Designs and Easter Dinner

Hi Yall! It has been a hot minute since I have had the time to sit down and work on the blog. Kids have been busy with their extracurricular activities. We spend 2-3 evenings at the soccer fields. We have been trying to get our garden going and clean up the front yard which gets strangled by weeds this time of year. I know it is past Easter, but I come to you today with some Easter and Spring Decor I have made over the past two years. I also have some recipes from our Easter dinner.

Here are two of my Easter/Spring quilted items. I made the Bunny table runner last year for Easter. I actually made two of these. I gave one to my mom for Easter. I used the Cottontail pattern by Lella Boutique for the blocks. The original pattern was for a quilt but I modified it for a table runner. The quilt on the wall is a Log Cabin Cross wall hanging made from a pattern by Quiltfox that I found on Etsy. I used all Moda Grunge fabrics. I quilted this on my machine using gold thread. I gave this wall hanging to a family member as a gift last weekend.

I also made three Bunny pillowcases. Above two are pillows that I gave my children. They specifically wanted bunnies that sort of matched their own rabbits, Pickles and Gary. My daughter slept with hers for a solid year.

Gary and Pickles best Christmas gifts ever!

This Easter we had a whole roasted leg of lamb. It was crazy delicious.

Here is the marinade recipe I used:

Marinade

10 cloves of garlic chopped

1 spring of rosemary chopped

1 handful of parsley chopped

1/4 cup olive oil

Salt

Black pepper

Directions: Season lamb all over with salt and pepper. Rub oil, herbs and garlic all over the lamb. Cover and refrigerate overnight. Place lamb in roasting pan on rack and roast at 325 degrees for 5-6 hours until tender and falling off the bone.

We had a very springy dessert for Easter as well. I made a Greek ruffled milk pie. I normally make baklava for Easter but having just got back from vacation I thought I might give my gallbladderless body a reprieve from the buttery deliciousness that is Baklava. Greek ruffled milk pie does have some phyllo dough and butter but not as much. I added lemon and blueberries for a springy touch.

There is a link to a recipe I used to make it here. I would also make this for brunch as it is more eggy than custardy to me but it is awesome to eat anytime. My sous chef is becoming an expert with the phyllo.

Don’t worry most of the berries made it into the pie.

I am still working on my blocks of the month and the Sweet Dreams sew along. I should have the sew along quilt finished by the weekend. My next post is going to have some more delicious recipe ideas including my famous banana muffins and an easy and delicious way to preserve strawberries. See yall later!

Spring Finishes

I finally got these three completed. The Koala quilt is a family favorite. I love the spring chickens. The patriotic one is for my husband. I couldn’t find any army or West Point fabric so I used American Gatherings by Moda. His is the largest I have done to date. It is made for a queen-sized bed. I am working on two pillow shams to go with it.

My husband is moving to Maryland for work. The kids and I are staying here because if we moved with him my son would change high schools up to three times before he graduated. This would not be ideal. Plus we are so close to both sets of grandparents. It is going to be a challenge but we know it is the right thing for our family at this time.

The Koala quilt was a sew-along I did last summer. The challenge was to complete an Elizabeth Hartman pattern of your choice. I already had this pattern at the time so the sew-along prompted me to go ahead and start it. I completed a block (Koala) per week. It was a challenge and there were some mistakes. I left one mistake in the quilt. If you notice some koalas have verticle noses and some have horizontal noses. They were all supposed to have vertical noses. But I mistakenly made one horizontal at the beginning so I decided to leave it as it was and make all the second koalas of the colorway with horizontal noses. No Koala is alike anyway right?

Elizabeth Hartman’s patterns are so cute. I have a Llama one and Penguins in Sweaters patterns too. The patterns have lots of pieces but are not overly difficult. The one takeaway I have from this quilting experience is organization. I literally just cut up all the pieces and put them in a project box for this quilt. I spend longer searching for the correct pieces than actual sewing.

When I started piecing the spring chicken I forced myself to be more organized. I used my best friend Ziploc to help me keep pieces together. It really helped me and things went smoother. I plan on making another chicken quilt later this year because I still have a ton of Spring Chicken fabrics left. I will probably do a block a week to make it seem manageable like the Koala quilt.

I enjoyed making all three of these quilts. I am always happy when I finish one completely but also a little sad when it’s finally over…until I begin the next project.

Catching Up And a New Sewing Machine

Hi yall! I am back with some big news.

I have bit the bullet and invested in a top-of-the-line sewing machine that should really help me to grow as a quilter. It is a Juki Kokochi DX-4000QVP. It has a very wide (almost 13-inch) sewing space. It has a built-in walking foot. It has a dual pedal that has a reverse function. I love that I can backstitch by just shifting my foot. I might actually backstitch more like I should. It has a thread cutting mechanism so fewer threads all over my house, shirt, pets, etc. It has a big tablet screen with the instruction manual and videos built in for help. You can even watch youtube videos on it. It has so many more fun features I can’t possibly list them all. It’s like going from driving a Chevy Cavalier to a Cadillac Deville.

Meet Judy the Juki, the newest member of my sewing team.

Not to hate on my Brother SQ2785. I love that machine and still have it. It’s great for piecing and small projects but I nearly broke “Bubba” making my quilted coat. He just wasn’t made for that kind of work. I still plan on using Bubba for going to quilt classes since Judy the Juki weighs almost 50 lbs and doesn’t fit in a standard case. My daughter has claimed Bubba because he has speed control and a needle threader that her machine does not.

Judy the Juki is going to help me learn to machine quilt so I can send fewer quilts out to be long-armed. I also want to learn to do some machine quilting so I can really customize some of my projects. With the larger throat space, I will be able to get a larger quilt under the needle with ease.

I have been single parenting most of the month due to my husband having to attend work training so my quilting time has been almost nonexistent during the week. I am committed to binding while watching tv in the morning and waiting for the buses to arrive. I also try to come in on my fifteen-minute breaks from work and get some piecing or pressing of blocks done. I also try to get at least 15 minutes of sewing in on the night that we are not at the soccer field or boy scouts.

I have finished binding the Chicken Quilt. I took some photos but it has been cloudy and nasty here the past week so photographing outdoors has been postponed. Plus its the “pollening” here in Georgia so I am hesitant to take my quilts outdoors and get them full of the yellow stuff as my allergies are already raging.

I had the long arm quilter do a floral quilting pattern. I just love these chickens.

I also completed a wall hanging. Its the first project I completed on my new machine. It’s a log cabin cross. I also quilted it on my machine but I will have to post pictures later as I am still tearing the quilting paper off of it. I used the quilt paper so I could try out a quilt design with a pencil and erase if needed. I also used it because having worked with grunge fabric in the past my disappearing fabric markers do not disappear quite so easily on them.

Log Cabin Cross made with grunge fabrics.

I also got caught up on Pat Sloan’s Sweet Dreams sew-along. I was two weeks behind. I am loving this retro Halloween vibe of this quilt.

A couple more borders and we are done. Candy Corn and Cats tow of my favs.

I do have my quilted coat done and am working on that post as well. I am also working on some recipe posts if I can ever remember to actually photograph the food before I eat it. I guarantee its coming. We have a great day yall and stay tuned!