Lavender Cookies

Last Friday I had the opportunity to go to my local Farmer's Market, from which I bought a bunch of lavender. I put it in a vase at home and it looks so lovely on my little dining room table:

However, I wanted to do something else with the lavender. A few years ago, a good friend of mine made COOKIES with lavender in them and I remember them being good so I decided to venture out and make my own. It was also a good excuse to get out my pretty cake stand =)

I found this recipe from the blog Forgiving Martha via Pinterest and decided to try it out. It's a wonderful recipe that turned out super yummy the second time =)- I found the original had a few hiccups for me, so I revised a couple of things below. The recipe is pretty much the same except, as I said before, a few very minor changes. The first time I made these, I burned them because 20-25 minutes is way too much for these cookies.

In the end, they turned out very light and just the right amount of sweet with a minty, flowery taste to them...

Anyway, whip up a bunch of these and grab a nice cup of lemon mint tea and a copy of Anne of Green Gables and you'll have a very nice afternoon!

 

Lavender Shortbread Cookies

adapted from Barefoot Contessa  and a guest post from Leah from Forgiving Martha
3 sticks (3/4 lb.) salted or unsalted butter at room temp
1 cup granulated sugar, plus extra for sprinkling
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
1 heaping Tablespoon fresh or dried culinary lavender*
3 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1/4 teaspoon salt
7 ounces semisweet chocolate, chopped (I just used chocolate chips)

1. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. 
2. Mix together the butter and 1 cup of sugar until just combined. Do not cream butter and sugar, as you don’t want to add air to this dough. Add the vanilla extract and mix. In a medium bowl, sift together the flour and salt, then add them to the butter-and-sugar mixture. Mix until the dough just comes together. Dump onto a surface dusted with flour, divide in half and shape into two flat disks. Wrap each disk separately in plastic and chill for 30 minutes. 
3. Lightly flour your work surface and rolling pin and roll out the dough 1/4-3/8-inch thick (I did them a little more than 1/4"). Choose your favorite cookie cutter and cut out cookies placing them on an ungreased baking sheet lined with either parchment or a silicone mat (I did neither but they still turned out fine). Sprinkle cookies with sugar and bake for 10 to 12 minutes, until the edges are just golden. Cool to room temperature. 
4. When the cookies are cool, place them on a baking sheet lined with parchment paper. 
5. Place 3 ounces of the finely chopped chocolate in a heatproof bowl and place it over a saucepan of simmering water. Once the chocolate has melted, remove it from the heat. Add the remaining chocolate and stir with a wooden spoon until it has completely melted and is smooth and glossy. Taking one cookie at a time, dip one end of each cookie in the melted chocolate and place it on a parchment lined baking sheet. Once all the cookies have been dipped, place the baking sheets in the refrigerator for about 10 minutes, or until the chocolate has hardened. 
6. Shortbread cookies keep in an airtight container for about a week but are best served same day! 

*I used fresh and they turned out great, but you can use dried purchased from Amazon or Williams Sonoma.



Fitted Boppy Cover Pattern

If you have a baby, a Boppy, although not the most important thing to buy (or put on your gift registry), in my opinion it comes right behind diapers and Onesies. A good friend of mine that I roomed with when I was on my internship in Seattle was so kind as to purchase one for me. I wanted one without a slipcover because I'm pretty adamant that if I can make something (especially a baby something) I would rather make it than have a purchased version. Hence the homemade Boppy cover =).

I was just going to do a basic post about the Boppy cover I made, but then after thinking about it and curious if I could do it I decided to make a pattern as a gift from me to you. When I made the cover originally, I used this pattern and this tutorial, but I found that the end product didn't fit my friend-purchased Boppy as well as I liked (my aforementioned pet peeve with stuff moving around in fabric has been mentioned previously). It took me a lot of trying the cover on, pinning, taking the pillow out, and sewing again and again until it fit to my liking.

Instead of having you go through the same trauma, you can get my modified pattern at the bottom of this post. Although it doesn't take a full yard of fabric, I would strongly recommend purchasing one because a lot of times the fabric on the bolt is skewed, and this doesn't manifest itself until after you pre-wash the fabric. Plus, if you have extra, you can make a few more fun things for your little one like a hat or shoes. Hopefully I'll do some more posts to show you both of these.

For the fabric choice, you can really use almost anything you want. I used a flannel from the Nursery Prints and Panels selection from Joann's because I really liked how the flannel was thicker than their Snuggle Flannel collection and I liked their patterns quite a bit more too. I love how the dinosaur fabric I used turned out!

The tutorial above shows how to make the zipper so it's exposed in the back. You can also put the zipper in the seam, which eliminates a "front" side and a "back" side on the boppy. I prefer putting a lapped zipper in the back, which to do you would need to add 1/2" of fabric on each of the fabric pieces you add the zipper to. A lapped zipper tutorial is here.

You can also use this pattern to make an actual pillow, although I LOVE how the original Boppy has a gusset so it can fit around wider, ahem, areas. Plus (this may sound weird) there's a nice understated quality to it. BUT if you want to make one for yourself, just sew the pattern together without a zipper and add polyester fiberfil. Easy peasy!

Without further ado, here are the pattern pieces:
Piece 1
Piece 2
Piece 3
Piece 4
Piece 5

Anyway, I welcome any and all questions and comments- I like the challenge and the opportunity to do better. Thanks for reading!

Jackie

Just because...

Saw this on Facebook yesterday, and had to share it with y'all-

Sewing geeks unite! Hope you guys have a great day =)

-Jackie

The Awesomest Diaper Bag Ever

As a preface to this most awesome of projects, a little bit of a background on my little son. He was born 3 months premature and because of this still needs oxygen, even though he's been home for almost 2 months. He's doing very well otherwise, which I am soooo grateful for, but for now it is a PAIN to take him from place to place because of the need to haul around an oxygen tank and oximeter everywhere he goes.

Due to this, I really really wanted a diaper bag that would be easy to carry with all of this other stuff my baby needs. I also wanted one that would hold everything I need without looking like I was going on a weekend trip out of town. It took me a while to figure out, as nothing I found in stores and online could quite fit the bill.

Enter the Favorite Purse Pattern from Blank Slate Patterns. I fell in love with this pattern as soon as I saw it! I was hesitant to pay the $7.95 for it, as I don't usually pay for patterns unless they're on sale at Joann's, but I don't regret it AT ALL. The instructions were easy to follow for the most part, and being an experienced sewer I filled in the gaps. BEHOLD!

 

I LOVE how it turned out! I wear it over my shoulders so it's COMPLETELY hands-free. Plus, I love the two HUGE open pockets on the outside and the white zipper pocket that holds all of my normal purse necessities (my wallet, cell phone, keys, gum).

 

Fabric Selection: I loved the look of the purse in grey so I opted for grey bottomweight (on sale, of course) from Joann's. I found the teal cotton at an Eastern Idaho local fabric store (Porter's, for those in the area) on their cheap flat fold table, which made me excited. I also found the two smaller white zippers and the 1 1/2" D rings there. I couldn't find a white metal zipper for the top, so I got beige. I still like the way it turned out- especially since I found it at Walmart.

 

I made a couple of minor changes to the pattern to get it just how I wanted. First, I scaled the size of all of the pattern pieces to 105% of the original size. I wanted it a bit bigger to make sure I could fit everything I wanted into the finished product. This didn't affect the product much, the original zipper sizes and fabric amounts worked and everything. In addition, when I cut the pieces out I gave an extra 1/8" to the seam allowances because 1/4" seams on functional pieces kind of freak me out- this gave me 3/8" to work with. Because I got a ridiculously long metal zipper for the main opening, I cut it to size and sewed a tab on the end to prevent it from fraying. I also lined the main purse body and gusset with medium weight interfacing to give it a little bit more stiffness.

 

I hadn't used the continuous bias method of making bias tape in a while, but I am SO GLAD that I did! It made the process much easier. I used this tutorial to re-learn continuous bias. Another cool tool I really liked was a bias tape folder- it worked even better than the metal one I bought forever ago. I made too much bias to use it all, but this turned out okay because I ended up using a decent amount on the strap.

 

The straps took a bit to figure out for me- I didn't have a "slider", like the pattern says, but the D-rings I bought came with 4 of them so I just used the 2 left over for a belt-like adjustment. And, I found a 1-1/4" webbed belt that I was just going to use by itself, but I didn't like the look of that as much as I wanted to. Instead, I used the extra grey fabric and bias tape to make a tube that I put the webbing in. I really don't like the look of stuff moving around inside of fabric, so I ran a couple of "quilting" stripes down the center. The result is a nice, thick strap that matches the bag perfectly:

 

Anyway, I think that's the gist of it. Thanks for reading, and let me know if you have any questions!

 

-Jackie

 

 

Welcome

Welcome to my brand spankin' new blog! Yay! I have been really lazy with my family blog in the past, so hopefully that habit won't carry over here and that maybe I'll be able to update my family one a bit more often.

Basically, the goal of this blog will be to document my creative pursuits, whether it's sewing (which most of these probably will be), baking, crochet, or anything else. More than anything, I want to be able to record the things I learn from various projects and hopefully apply them to later projects. You are more than welcome to use my ideas, too! And if you see something that isn't properly documented, PLEASE let me know! I want to be sure to give credit where it is due. I might also come up with a tutorial or two, but we'll see. I know enough bloggers to know that tutorials take a lot of time. In the meantime, feel free to browse and enjoy!

-Jackie