Cinnamon Bread

Thanks for all your comments on the previous post regarding the antique sampler and my own house and garden sampler. I really appreciate your kind words!

I have managed to do a big of work on Paula Vaughan's Wedding Ring Bouquet in the last week. It is coming along rather nicely, and I will post a photo soon of it. I started it years ago, so perhaps it will be finished in the next few years!

In the meantime, I have been doing some baking and cooking for different family events. I baked up a cinnamon quick bread for our Easter celebration, and all seemed to enjoy it.

Cinnamon Quick Bread

2 cups flour (I use Gold Medal's "Best for Bread" flour)
1 cup white sugar
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
1 tsp salt
1 cup buttermilk
1/4 cup vegetable oil
2 eggs
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
1 tablespoon white sugar
2 tablespoons brown sugar
3/4 teaspoon cinnamon
3 teaspoons butter

Preheat oven to 350 degrees, and grease a 9 X 5 inch loaf pan.
Measure flour, 1 cup sugar, baking powder, baking soda,  1 1/2 teaspoons cinnamon, and salt into a bowl. Mix together. Fold into the dry mixture the buttermilk, oil, eggs, and vanilla. Stir until the dry ingredients are wet and just combined, being careful not to over mix the batter. Pour into prepared pan.

Topping: Combine 1 tablespoon white sugar, 2 tablespoons brown sugar, 3/4 tsp cinnamon, 2 tablespoons brown sugar, and 3 teaspoons butter, mixing until crumbly. Sprinkle topping over smoothed batter. Use a knife and cut in a swirling motion very lightly to give a marbled effect.

Bake for about 50 minutes, and remove from oven when a toothpicks comes out clean. Remove bread from pan to rack to cool.

Thanks for stopping by today.

Antique Sampler --1849 and a Stitching Coincidence

Be still, my heart!

I recently stumbled upon a sampler that was stitched by my dad's great grandma Mary (or my great- great grandma) back around 1849, when she was ten years old. This little treasure was tucked away in an antique dresser drawer in my parents' house for years. I didn't know it existed until 2012.  My Great Aunt Ruth (the one who stitched the tablecloth)  wrote about the sampler in 1980, and said it was stitched between 1849 and 1853 when her grandma was between ten and fourteen years old.  Great Aunt Ruth gave it to my mother when she was near the end of her life and in her eighties, which was also in 1980.  Great Aunt Ruth's grandma Mary gave it to her when Ruth was just a young girl.

Mary lived in Switzerland when she stitched it, and it was brought over to the United States when her family moved here in the 1800's.

Here it is:

It has a bit of wear, stains, and moth holes. But I love it, and treasure it. I will have it framed soon at a specialty framing store.  I love the bright colors, and motifs.

Here's a few more photos of it:

Fast forward about 150 years, to around 2009.  In that spring I finished a sampler that I started a few years earlier. I threw together a bunch of patterns for this sampler, used a bit of graph paper, and came out with what I call my 'House and Garden Sampler'.  My old blog where I wrote about this sampler got hacked, but if you click here and scroll down to May 2, 2009 under the Summer Queen post, you will see more about the sampler.

Here's a photo of it here:

When I was studying the 1849 antique sampler this morning, I noticed that the lower right corner had a rose in red tones. I then realized that one of the last motifs I added to my own sampler in 2009 was a red colored rose, in the lower right corner. It's the only big bold flower on the sampler.  The design was from a pattern book of German 'Berlinwork' designs. I know it may not seem amazing to all, but I find it intriguing that 150 years earlier my great great grandma's sampler contained a similar motif in the same spot, and color. I had not seen the 1849 sampler until three years after I completed my own sampler. 

A comparison photo:

Thanks for stopping by today and looking at what I think is a very interesting coincidence.  I am so happy to be a needleworker, as was my Great Great Grandma Mary back in Switzerland in 1849.  I'm also happy that my daughter also shares this love and will pass it on to future generations in our family.

Heirloom Tablecloth

Today was a special holiday for many of us. It was Easter, and it was a great time of celebration and joy!

It is so wonderful to gather with family and friends on holidays, and at other special times.

I want to share a special tablecloth that I received from my great aunt's hope chest. My great aunt never married, and she passed away when I was a very young newlywed-- back in the early eighties. She was a wonderful lady who loved to read, learn, and visit with her family and friends.  She also really loved to cook, and do handiwork. She could cook up the best meals one could ever imagine, and yet her kitchen was so small one could barely fit more than one person in it. It was tiny, and yet she had the house built to her design specifications. I guess she wanted to do the work alone! I can't even imagine what she would have thought of today's modern women and men demanding large kitchens. Come to think of it, her previous home before the one she built had a rather large kitchen, and yet she chose to build a home with a tiny one. Interesting! 

My aunt also did a bit of handiwork, as she called it, which meant embroidery. I recall she subscribed to a magazine called "Workbasket".   In the mid 1950's, she started a tablecloth tradition in her home. When you would visit for a meal, one would sign the tablecloth, and my aunt would later embroider your name so it would be there for future guests to see and enjoy.  Most guests also added the date after their signature, and some added their address or at least their city.  I wanted to share a tiny bit of the tablecloth with you today.

Here's a few peeks at the tablecloth: 

This one makes me chuckle, as it appears Richard's nickname is "Gravedigger".  I know my uncle (her brother) was employed at a cemetery, so perhaps he truly was a person who dug graves.

This next part was written in 1963, and it includes my late brother's name.  He was in about first grade when he wrote it. My name is to the right, but I am sure my mom wrote it for me as this is her writing. I would have only been pre-school age so I am sure it wasn't from my own hand.

This lady's printing is so nice and clear, and it's fun seeing the year so plainly, too.

Last of all, you can see my aunt's name at the bottom, and the year she started it. I love that the tablecloth is trimmed with rows of rick rack. I so loved rick rack when I was a little girl!

I think I need to go buy another tablecloth of my own, and start this tradition again in our family. Wouldn't it be fun to see the signatures grow over the years. 

As best I can figure, she kept this tablecloth going for just about ten years. What a fun idea!  

Spring Flowers

There is something just so, so relaxing about time away from our jobs. I feel so lucky to have had a few days off. I haven't yet stitched, but perhaps today will be the day!

I should pick up my Summer Queen. All I have left is a bit of beading, but for me beading is a tad laborious. So I have put it off.

I have been working in the yard a very little bit, and I was so surprised and pleased to see that our fuschia survived the winter cold. This lovely blossom peered down at me as I walked onto the patio:

 

So many of my friends and family members are still battling piles and piles of snow. We don't have much seasonal change here, but I sure appreciate our mild climate.

Our front yard roses have begun to bloom, too. I so love seeing them when I arrive home from a long day's work.

Is it spring where  you live? What do you like about spring?

Thanks for stopping by today!

Beautiful Views

I have a few days away from my job so I hope to get some stitching time into my schedule. I'll be busy with many other things besides my job, so we will see how it works out timewise. Years ago, it seemed I had a lot of free time for my hobby. Now it just isn't so easy to find the time.

I recently received this pattern as a gift.

It's Carriage House Samplings "Houses of Hawk Run Hollow". Isn't it lovely?

I need to buy some fabric and threads for it so I can get to work on it.  I haven't decided whether to use silks or regular DMC threads. Which would you choose? Has anyone seen it worked up in silk, in person? How about in DMC? What did you think of the pieces and the chosen fibers? Please do share your thoughts.

In the absence of any current stitching updates, I wanted to share some photos that we recently took of the local scenery. I love this one as it's a view of the far off big city, some twenty miles away. I can't believe how clear it was that day!

The next one is taken from the same spot, but facing in a different direction. I love the snow-capped mountains in the distance.

Thanks for stopping by today, and do let me know what you think of the sampler and whether silks or DMC would be better.

Thinking of A Loved Vacation

Park Guell, a photo by Loves2Stitch2 on Flickr.

Just sitting here thinking about how much fun it was to visit Spain. I loved going to all the cities we visited, but a visit to Parc Guell in Barcelona was a treasured highlight.

I hope to dig out my stitching in the next few days as I have a few days off.

Thanks for stopping by today!

Perfect Moment Rose

Perfect Moment Rose, a photo by Loves2Stitch2 on Flickr.

It's beginning to look like spring. One of these beautiful roses is blooming now in our yard, and it really brightened my day to see it in all its glory. We took this photo last year when there was a huge bloom of them. My late brother loved roses, and this was his favorite rose. He planted this bush himself over twenty years ago.

Are you glad to see spring on the horizon? I know I am.

Thanks for stopping by today!

Granny's Attic Afghan

I can't even quite remember when I started this next project that I'll share here. Do you have any like that? I used to keep track of my stitching projects in a red spiral notebook, and I rotated them every 10 hours. That was a long while ago. I guess it was helpful in that it was easier to track time spent on a project, and also it helped me see when they were started.  It also helped in making sure that all projects got a bit of work done on them throughout the  year.

I do recall buying the Granny's Attic by Sue Hillis book while on vacation in the midwest, and I am quite sure that I started it about...brace yourself as it seems unreal...twenty years ago! Can that be? I think so.

So the book I bought in that quaint midwestern town was Granny's Attic by Sue Hillis. I added a few Sam Hawkins patterns to the project, as the finished afghan contains twenty squares. I opted to use these additional patterns instead of repeating Sue Hillis' ten patterns. I changed colors in the Sam Hawkins patterns to make them all in the same color family. The colors are now appearing very much like an homage to the 90's. I'm not happy about it, but that's how it is with style when you spend almost half your life on a project.  Wow, that sounds hopeless. You'd think I were building or creating something stupendous to have it take that much time. (Let's forget the years it has spent in a craft chest of drawers!)

Here are the Sue Hillis patterns I've placed on the project:

Here are the patterns I've added from the book called Sam Hawkins 501 Favorite Crosstitch Designs:

So I've got 12 squares down, 8 to go. I guess it's time I really get going on this one!

Do you have any old projects? How do you motivate yourself to finish them? Please send me some hints.

Thanks for stopping by today!

An Old Piece ...again

I stitched this piece many years ago. I so love the words, and the colors of the various flowers and leaves. I know it's now looking 'dated', but I still enjoy seeing it on our bedroom wall.  It's from an old Counted Crosstitch and Country Crafts magazine, and it's called Gathering Honey Sampler.  It was a pleasure to stitch, so long ago.

Thanks for stopping by today!

Very Old Stitches

I was recently cleaning a closet in our home, and I came across a very old piece I stitched up so long ago. In fact, I gave the framed piece to my parents back in 1983. Thirty years ago! I recall quite well that when I bought the patterns in that particular pattern book (Alexa Designs-- Butterfly Fantasy) I was absolutely overwhelmed by the patterns' sheer size. This piece was one of the first 'big' pieces I'd attempted to complete. I also recall that as the mother of a young baby I had to use the colors I had at home, and most certainly did not run to the store to buy the exact, suggested colors for the butterfly.

Here are some photos of this old piece:

When I recently found this piece, I wasn't quite sure what to do with it.  It had been hidden in a closet for years, which seemed a bit sad to me. I decided to display it on top of an old antique dresser in the guest room.

Have you ever come across an old piece of needlework, or some other craft that's tucked away in a closet, or some such place? What did you do with it, once you found it?

Thanks for stopping by today.

Embroidered Bed Cover

I recently received a beautiful gift from a dear family member. It's a lovely embroidered vintage European bed cover. I layed it on the antique bed that's in our guest room, and I love the colors of the cover and how they cheer the room.

I love how the corners' colors are different from one another. It makes it so much more unique, and whimsical to me.

Also, it's fun to see areas where color creativity really took hold:

I wonder who embroidered this piece,  where they lived, and when it was done. All I know is that originally it was purchased somewhere in Europe and then brought to the U.S.A.  to be sold at a huge vintage market held each year back in the Cape Cod area. Wherever it's from, and whatever its story might be--it's fun enjoying and appreciating it today! 

Thanks for stopping by today! 

Wedding Ring Bouquet- WIP

        I actually have stitched.  It's the first time in months and months. I decided to pull out yet another one of my very old WIPs. I started this piece called "Wedding Ring Bouquet" by Paula Vaughan back in 2003. Oh my, that's almost ten years ago.

        I dare say though it's not my oldest WIP. At the time I started stitching it I was frequenting a cross stitch message board on a semi-regular basis. One of the frequent posters was a lady by the name of Diane. She'd stitched up so many Paula Vaughan patterns, and they were mostly stitched on  22 count hardanger fabric, over one thread. I loved looking at these completed designs with their muted, sweet colors.  One evening I just decided to start this one up, on a complete whim. I'd had the pattern for years, and thought, "Why not?"  So here we are, ten years later and a lifetime of change apart...still stitching away. 

       The photo above was taken two years ago. 

        Here are photos of the project taken today. I've worked a bit more on the quilt, and done some highly dreaded backstitching on the piece, too. There's a lot of white on this piece, and that also awaits me. 

        
        Because the piece is stitched on hardanger, it is quite small. I think that ten years later I can say that my eyes are not getting better with the passing of time, and I doubt I will attempt any more large patterns on 22 count hardanger fabric.  

        Thanks for stopping by today.