Citronella Candlelit Picnic in the Sticks - A Country Romance

Welcome to the 
Creatin' in the Sticks 
Perfect Picnic .

Made in Kansas Ad Astra Ale and Lost Trail Root Beer.
The quilt was made in Kansas, too.  :)

We loaded up the quilt, food, and portable croquet set in the
 4 wheeler
and  headed over to the creek for a little fun.
 Just hubby and I.
 We even left the dogs behind.

We found our spot by the creek in a large grove of trees.

Let the picnic begin!

3 yards of laminated cotton fabric from Riley Blake designs arrived and I used it for the back of the quilt.
Red with white dots paired with denim.
Now THAT is country Love.

It is sooooo me.
No worries about laying this quilt on wet ground
and
the heavy duty denim can handle any other picnic mishaps...

Our picnic quilt carries everything from plates and napkins to bottle opener and hand wipes and folds up nicely for travel.

This is how the quilt unfolds revealing the plates, napkins, and flatware.

It's perfect for tabletop or remove the gear and lay on the ground.

I made a large square mat to place in the middle for drinks or dips.  The laminate makes it easy to wipe off.

Now, let's eat.

The Menu

Roast Beef Salad on (light) Rye Bread

Cucumber Salsa with chips

Mixed berry pound cake (sugar free)

and

Cold Beverages!

I'm afraid my picnic basket is on an around the world in 30 days tour, so food and beverages arrived in galvanized buckets and hand made bowls.

Cucumber Salsa

(aka 3,2,1)

3 Cucumbers chopped fine

2 10 oz cans of Rotel tomatoes (I use one mild and one regular)

1 pouch dry ranch dressing mix

Mix and chill for a few hours.

Serve with tortilla chips

The bowls were made from fabric strips and clothes line. I viewed the instructions on Quilting Arts TV.   I just lined the big bowl with a clean shower cap and filled it with chips.  The smaller ones were perfect to hold bowls of dip and fruit.

Mixed Berry Pound Cake

This makes 2 loaves

1 Box Yellow Cake Mix (I used Pillsbury Sugar Free)

Ingredients to mix the cake (mine called for water, oil, and 3 eggs)

1 small box instant pudding mix(I used sugar free cheesecake flavor) yummy.

1 cup chopped strawberries

1 cup blueberries

Preheat oven as directed on cake mix box.  Mix cake mix as directed and add the dry pudding mix.  Fold in the strawberries and blueberries.  Prepare 2 loaf pans by lining the bottom with waxed paper and spraying the pans with cooking spray.  Pour the mixture into the pans.  Bake as directed on the cake mix box.

Cool 10 minutes after baking and take out of pans.  Let cool completely before slicing.
 If you can. (wink)

We ate half of one loaf while we laid around on the blanket just talking and listening to coyotes.
Maybe the coyotes smelled our food.
Soon the turkeys started gobbling and the mosquitoes started eating us alive.
Citronella candles can only do so much.

Here is the quilt with no picnic equipment.  I love that it looks like a patchwork quilt (well it is)  but functions to store all the essentials for a picnic.

This picture shows the quilt with the insert in the middle.  This is the denim side with the laminate side down.

That is the biggest coaster I have ever made.

After laying around for a couple of hours listening to coyotes and turkeys and just catching up with one another, we decided to skip croquet. But hubby went and put our initials on a tree.
Romance is alive and well here in the sticks.

Why haven't we done this before?

Thank you Madame Samm for a wonderful excuse to have a romantic candlelit picnic in the sticks.



Here are the rest of my fellow picnickers of the day:

Wednesday June 4

Quilt Taffy

Pampered Pettit

Creatin' in the Sticks :>) ME

Miss Priss Quilts

Life in the Scrapatch

That's Sew Julie

Thanks to Mary of I Piece 2-Mary our lovely cheerleader

Mary has the full schedule for the hop HERE.

Thank you to our sponsors: 

Sew We Quilt
Riley Blake Designs 
Peterboro Baskets

Laminated Fabric - 10 Tips

Summer.  That's my excuse.  Two weeks away from my blog has me feeling a bit guilty, but I have enjoyed guests at the cabin and a few peaceful sewing days.

Mom and her bucket

My mom visited and I was able to give her the bucket she had requested when we went fabric shopping last month.  She will be able to use it as a waste basket in her sea side decorated powder room because the inside is laminated cotton fabric and will stay nice and clean.

Working with Laminated fabric was fun and not near as hard as I thought it would be.

 10 tips for sewing with laminated cotton fabric:

 

1.  Don't let the fabric store fold the fabric.  Have them roll it.  (Mine was so creased from the store)

 

2.  Pressing the fabric on the wrong side works just fine.  I used a hot, dry iron to press the WRONG side of the fabric and eventually removed all the creases from tip #1.

 

3.  Use a heavy duty needle.  I used 100/16 Jeans/Denim Needle and never had stitching issues.

 

4.  Use a walking foot.  I didn't put tape or oil on my pressure foot, I just used my walking foot through the complete project and it worked like a dream. 

 

5.  Take longer stitches.  I used a stitch length of 3.0 on my Janome and it seemed to work great.  I even back stitched with no problems.

 

6.  Do not use pins on the project unless they are in the allowance that won't be seen.  Those holes from the pins will stay...

 

7.  Fabric glue works great to hold pieces temporarily until they are sewn.  I used a drop of glue to hold the handles in place until they were stitched. 

 

8.  Clips instead of pins.  I used double pronged hair clips to hold seams together instead of pins.  (As a hairstylist, I have lots of uses for hair clips.  They work great for holding binding in place, also.)

9.  After reading other tutorials about interfacing and laminated fabric, I opted to use "sew in" interfacing instead of fusible on the laminate.  Moisture could affect the fabric and make it wrinkle and I didn't want to take a chance of ruining the fabric.

10.  This was very scary for me...   For the binding on this bucket, I needed to use the laminated fabric.  I turned my iron to a cool to warm setting (not hot..lol) and folded my 2 1/2" strip of fabric in half (wrong sides together) and pressed the outside of the fabric.  wwhhew.  It's all good.  It wasn't crisp, but it worked better than finger pressing and no melted vinyl on the iron.


Other useful sites and tutorials to help conquer laminated fabric: 
http://www.rileyblakedesigns.com/laminate-tips/

http://www.amybutlerdesign.com/pdfs/Laminated_Tips.pdf

http://www.justlaminates.com/p/sewing-tips-for-laminated-fabric.html

http://www.craftsy.com/article/tips-for-sewing-with-oil-cloth-vinyl-laminated-cotton

I loved mom's bucket enough to make one for myself for a Friday finish that I am linking up with Amanda Jean over at Crazy Mom Quilts , Sarah over at Confessions of a Fabric Addict. and Karen over at Sew Many Ways.

Fabric Buckets Lined with Laminated Cotton Fabric

The pattern is Bucket Brigade by Atkinson Designs.  These are in the Large 12" x 11" size.   Fabric in the blue bucket: laminate-Andover Fabrics, High Tide by Jane Dixon, main fabric-Moda, Cuzco by Kate Spain.  Fabric in the pink bucket: (Hobby Lobby purchase) laminate-by Brother Sister Design Studio, main fabric- Northcott, Earth Series1 by Diana Leone.


This is where my nuttiness comes from....

Mom showing one of the many uses for fabric buckets

HAPPY FRIDAY!