Quality Time - Apple Pies

It's that time of year again!  Mom and I set aside last Sunday for cutting up some of Bob's apples (he's mom's neighbor) and putting together pies.  In the past we've made it an all day sort of adventure, and that's extremely tiring even with 5 people working on it, so decided that since it was going to be the two of us, we'd aim for 4 hours.  Here's how it went:

 

 

Isn't it amazing how one half of an apple can equal one quarter of another?

I was working on quartering apples while mom peeled and cored.

So I'm 5'8" and my hand width is about six inches, this is a big apple!  And most of them were this size.

Look at how tight the meat is to the seeds!  I always feel like the center is more cavernous than these ones were, very healthy harvest this year.

Here's mom and myself hard at work!  I got dad to step away from football action to take some action shots of us.  I probably should make him something nice to eat soon... :)

Oh yeah, look at that sugar flow!  And mom is more than ready to take on that pie crust.

And a shot from the other side, isn't mom's sugar tin the best?  She's had that tin my whole life and it works so well.

Stages of apple: quartered & peeled, chopped into bite-sized pieces, then sugared & spiced.

This is becoming mom's annual pie picture, I have at least two other years worth of this picture.

Mom decided to make Happleberry pies this year!  We had such a good huckleberry harvest that she put some in all the pies.

And here they are waiting for tops.  I didn't get any pictures of them done, silly me, but we end up sticking them in the freezer for future use.  We made 15 this year I believe, and mom is going to make applesauce with the rest of the apples.

Ah, here's pictures of pies I made a few days later.  Mom ended up cutting some extra apples up for me so I made a pie for John to take to work and some small pies for the ladies I work with.

Top crust on and crimped.  Thank you mom for teaching me a nice crimp!

 

 

And some finish photos.  Mmmmm, it sure did smell good for a while in our house!

 

 

And here's an artistic photo to round out your apple pie experience:

 

I love how the crust is glowing, although it does make me hungry.

 

One thing I thoroughly appreciate is the time I got to spend with my mom, just chatting about nothing and everything, spending quality time together.  I'm reminded all too often how fortunate I am to have the opportunities I do to spend this kind of time with my parents and I try to take advantage of it as much as I can.  No regrets from this child!  By the way, one of mom and my next projects is to make her a new apron, the one she has is quite literally falling apart at the seams.  We should be picking out fabric for it soon from her stash, yay!

 

Thank you for visiting!

 

~Brandy

 

 

September Activities

Welcome back!  Oh man, this last month has been busy busy busy at work.  I am the National Rodeo Secretary for the National Intercollegiate Rodeo Association, (aka college rodeo across the USA) and the beginning of the school year has a lot going on for our office.  I kept thinking I wasn't getting anything done because of how very fast the month went by, but I actually accomplished some sewing!  One thing I practiced was getting into the habit of going to my mom's house every Wednesday to work on the quilt my Grandma Linda asked me to finish, and I'm so happy to report I've nearly half the blocks together already!  Here's an idea of what I started with:

 



And sadly I don't have a progress picture, but I will remember next Wednesday to have my mom take one of me working on it.

 

We had the Walla Walla Valley Quilt Festival mid-September and I volunteered for a few hours Saturday at the front door.  I had a blast hanging out with Lianne (our guild president) and one of the other girls who I just can't remember her name to save me.  John and I walked around Sunday for about 2 hours examining all the amazing works.  Here's my quilt hanging up, and my block challenge on the wall with the others, there were some really creative blocks:

 

I'm on the bottom row with the black background

 



I also participated in the APQ Pillowcase Challenge Sew-a-thon and using some fabric from Grandma Linda's stash made this awesome pillowcase:

 

This is made using the "burrito method" that is a free pattern on APQ's website (link above)

 

My amazing piecer: the 1954 White

 

Ta-da!

The most exciting thing was you could enter at some of the sponsors websites and win fabric to make more pillowcases, and I won!  I received an email from Shannon Fabrics a few days ago, and I plan on donating all the cases to children in Walla Walla, hopefully the children's ward at the hospital.

 

I have been so fortunate, won 4 drawings in 2 months now!  Can't wait to pay it forward in the upcoming blog hops.  By the way, I'm participating in not only the Black Cat Crossing, but also the T'was the Night, yay!

 

Here are photos of the items I won from Carol's drawing at Just Let Me Quilt:

Two yards (!) worth of solid and two fall panels

 

 

 

And then I received the package from Sew Lux Fabrics who I had won a $50 gift card from:

 

Ooo!  What an unexpected surprise!  I love presents within presents.

 

It really struck me how much more special this nice wrapping made my prize seem.  I am going to start prettying up my giveaways, because I can!

 

 

For the most part I ordered things I would not normally buy for myself, such as fabric with no plan or a bag pattern...

 

For some reason I was really drawn to purchasing this pattern after seeing all the amazing ones people have made and hearing how tough it can be.  Sometimes I like a challenge.  I'll probably take this on in a couple years.  I hear you also need ~$100 worth of materials to make it, so I'll start saving up too.

I also bought a spool of white Aurifil thread, because I go through it!  I really enjoy how smoothly it works in all 3 of my machines, I must say.

 

Ok, here's one last thing we did in September, we hosted a rock crawling event for remote control vehicles.  Some are very lifelike, some look like bugs, but everyone has a good time.

Getting in some stitching while at the track.

Our youngest competitor (pretty sure he's only 3 years old) driving a scaled truck through the course and doing really well.

John giving Terry some direction over a tough log section.

One of the competition (aka bug like) crawlers crossing the bridge John built.  I helped paint it.

 

See, John's working hard and I'm supervising.

 The event went really well, and we're hoping to keep building awareness over the next couple months for a good turn-out in Spring.

Thank you for visiting, see you again soon!

~Brandy

 

An August Finish, I'm a Winner, and Fair Entries

Well!  One can tell we started working full time again, as I only have one finish this month.  Turns out I'm not so great at organizing my free time, weird.  (That's completely sarcastic, in case you couldn't tell lol).  However, I do have a finish, and I am so happy with it!

 

Using the Clover Clips for the first time.  And as everyone else says, they are awesome.

 

Showing off the backing and length of the table runner, it's 56 inches long, 18 inches wide.

 

 

And complete!  It maybe took me 2 hours to sew down the binding, and mostly it took that long because we were watching the Seahawks play the Raiders last Thursday.

 

I'm making this one extra big so you can see my quilting!  It turned out good enough, I have to keep telling myself I'm still learning, but I will say, my dad could tell it was footballs, and that is what matters.

 

 And the table runner is staying at our house, to complement our banner:

 

 

 

 

 So then, this has been a really "winning" month for me, and I fell so blessed.  It happens when it needs to most, the last few months have been a little tight.  The first item I won (and of course don't have a picture of) was the door prize at Guild!  I received six fat 1/8ths of baby-themed flannel and a package of crib-sized batting.  The second item was from Carol at Just Let Me Quilt who had participated in the Pets on Quilts Show at LilyPad Quilting and had a giveaway which I won :)

I was not expecting the amount of fabric she sent me, what a pleasant surprise!

And the third blessing was from my entry in the Sew Lux Christmas in July sew along.  I won a $50 gift card to their shop!  I placed my order and it will be showing up this week, and I'm very excited.  I was able to order items I normally wouldn't get for myself (a pattern and a layer cake), and some Aurifil thread which is always useful.  So a big thank you to the ladies who had these giveaways, and thank you to the fabric gods for my good fortune!

 

And last, but not least, we had the Walla Walla County Fair and Rodeo this weekend.  All three of the quilts I entered won blue ribbons, which surprised me.  John says it's because I know all my little errors in my pieces so I expect others to see them as well.

There's my BOO quilt to greet everyone as they come up the stairs in the Pavilion.

My star quilt is in the center on the bottom, and the blue hearts are on the right.  The judge left me love notes on the labels of my quilts, which I appreciate.

We received tickets to the rodeo via my dad (Thanks dad!) on Friday night, which was super fun to attend, especially since I work for the National Intercollegiate Rodeo Association or NIRA, which in laymen's terms means college rodeo, and there were kids who's names I recognized!  And the fact that it is a PRCA event (aka professional rodeo...) makes it even more impressive that college level students participate and win.  Sweet.  Here are a couple of the more clear photos I got that night.  The lighting is hard to work with unless you have a REALLY nice camera.  But I got some fun pictures!

 

 

 

Now I have to finish up the block I'm entering in the Block Challenge for the Walla Walla Quilt Festival that is coming up in a couple weeks, I have most of it done but here's a sneak peak:

The colorful one is the challenge fabric.  I chose to make it a two color block because I felt it shows off the challenge fabric the best.

And here it is in process, the blanks are filled with quarter-square triangle blocks, it is very good looking I think.  I'm excited to see what everyone else's interpretations are of this challenge fabric.

Thanks for visiting, I'll be sure to share the photos from John and me visiting Kalispell, MT a couple weeks ago, it was fabulous!  See you soon!

~Brandy