SewThankful Blog – Page 2 – There's sew much to be thankful for…

Everything Pumpkin!

Where do I begin? That’s right.

In the beginning…

To this day I have a vivid memory from when I was about 8 or 9 years old. Our neighbor lady up the country road told my mother she had made her own pumpkin puree and it was just HORRIBLE! She told my mother not to ever bother wasting her time growing or making her own pumpkin puree for pies, etc.

Oh dear.

I have no idea what method or what kind of pumpkin that lady used in her attempt. I suspect it was not a baking type. Who knew there were different types?

I was just a kid back then. So yes, I’m sorry to say that cooking tidbit stuck with me for nearly 50 years! And even as a pumpkin lover, I never questioned it. That’s right, every year (until this one) I have purchased the canned stuff (which is fine if that’s all you have access to–I’m not judging anyone). But seriously, HOW silly of me not to push a little harder and try things for myself?!

Fast forward 47 years +/- and here I am growing my own heirloom baking pumpkins. And YES! I use them to make my own puree for pies, pancakes, cakes, breads, scones, soups/stews and so much more! I can’t even believe how easy it is to do. Or how delicious it is compared to the store-bought stuff in a metal can.

After I did it the first time, I had a face-palm moment. HOW on earth could I not allow myself to try this sooner? Sheesh!

Well…I absolutely adore growing these pumpkins because we use the ENTIRE thing. Nothing is wasted. At all. The skins get chopped up, simmered and fed to the chickens; the stringy guts also get fed to the chickens. Did I mention that my chickens LOVE pumpkins?

Even the seeds are used. The seeds get cleaned. Some of them get saved for planting next year. The rest get brined, roasted and seasoned for a delicious, nutritious snack OR saved roasted and unseasoned in an airtight container to be used in making granola, etc. Be sure to check out next week’s post on roasting pumpkin seeds and making pumpkin granola (it uses puree and seeds)!

Even the hard stem goes into the compost.

Part 1: Choose, Clean, Cut, Roast, Puree–>Then Use or Freeze!

You’ll want to choose a nice baking style pumpkin which is usually going to be about the size of a volleyball OR SMALLER. Giant pumpkins are tempting, but they are not ideal for the flavor profile you want in a baking/cooking pumpkin. Look for heirloom “sugar pie” or “baking” types. If you have a local farm store or farmers’ market, that’s often a great source. Plus, supporting your local growers helps keep your food producer in business and a strong food supply chain close to you. That’s especially important these days, right?

Once you’ve chosen your pumpkin and you’re ready to make some puree, give it a good rinse, clean and pat it dry. Place it on your cutting board. Poke your knife into the top at one side of the stem and carefully cut down the outside curve until you reach the center bottom. Pull the knife out. Turn the pumpkin and repeat on the opposite side of the stem, cutting until you reach the bottom center and the pumpkin split is complete, except for the stem. Please don’t try to cut the stem, it will ruin your knife. Set your knife aside, insert a finger or two inside the split at the bottom. Use both hand to grasp each side of the pumpkin bottom and pull it apart. The stem should snap right off from one side or the other at the top.

Place one half in a colander and scrape out the seeds and guts. Repeat with the other side. SAVE your seeds!

While your pumpkin is roasting, you can clean the seeds to roast separately. If you have chickens, they will love the stringy guts. If not, the guts are great to compost along with the stem (and skins after roasting).

Now let’s get roasting. Preheat your oven to 325 degrees. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper. Sprinkle the inside flesh lightly with salt. NOTE: The salt is optional, so if you don’t want it, can’t have it or don’t like it, don’t use it! Place flesh side down on your parchment lined baking sheet. Depending on the size of your pumpkin(s) and your oven, you’ll roast them anywhere from approximately 30 minutes to 1 hour +/-. You’ll know the pumpkin is done when the skin is golden, wrinkly and you can easily pierce the pumpkin all the way through in several places with your knife.

The pumpkins below are done and cooling.

Once the pumpkin is cool and able to be touched, flip over and scoop the soft flesh into your food processor. Process/puree until pumpkin is smooth.

You can use the puree now, save it in a sealed container in your refrigerator for up to about a week OR freeze it. It lasts in the freezer for 3 – 6 months (or more)!

Here you can see the load of frozen pumpkin I made from our early harvest in September (because it SNOWED the Wednesday after Labor Day 2020). I’ve made a bunch more since then and I still have over 50 pumpkins to process. Thankfully, they are very good keepers and I can work on them a few at a time.

How about you? Have you ever made your own pumpkin puree before? I’d love to hear about it. Tell me about your pumpkin puree making experiences in the comments below.

Note: In order to protect our readers from nasty spam, I have to approve all comments. Sometimes it takes me a while to get to that. I promise I will read and approve all legitimate, constructive comments.

SewThankful Triple Chocolate Zucchini Bread

Moist, dense and DEEEEElicious! It’s got nutrition too.

Tis the season for zucchini. LOTS and LOTS of zucchini. This year, after several bountiful harvests, I was inspired to create a Triple Chocolate Zucchini Bread to help use up some of the “bounty”. Needless to say, it has been one of the most popular things I’ve ever made with Zucchini. Jeff asked me to make at least 10 more loaves to put in the freezer–yes, it freezes fabulously.

Recipe yields 2 loaves

INGREDIENTS:

2 sticks (1 cup) unsalted butter (or coconut oil)
1.5 cups brown sugar, packed
4 eggs
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
3.25 cups all-purpose flour
2/3 cup cocoa powder
1.5 teaspoons salt
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
OPTIONAL INGREDIENT: 1 teaspoon espresso powder OR instant coffee. NOTE: Espresso powder OR instant coffee is OPTIONAL – but this ingredient adds another level of subtle, uniquely rich deliciousness. You can purchase espresso powder or make your own if you wish. There are lots of instructions online for how to make your own espresso powder. Choose your favorite browser and search away.
4 cups shredded zucchini, packed (a little extra is OK)
1 cup semi-sweet chocolate chips (or dark chocolate chips or milk chocolate chips, your preference)
1 cup white chocolate chips

INSTRUCTIONS:

Prepare 2 loaf pans using your preferred method. (I use non-stick spray or butter depending on what I have on hand.)

Preheat oven to 350.

Melt butter until just barely melted (microwave or stovetop methods are both fine). Pour melted butter into a large bowl. Use a whisk, fork or wooden spoon to add brown sugar and stir well until the mixture is smooth. Stir in eggs, adding one at a time until each one is well incorporated. NOTE: Do NOT add eggs before combining butter and brown sugar. Once you have combined the butter and brown sugar, make sure your butter/sugar mixture has cooled enough so that it does NOT cook the eggs. Stir in vanilla. Is everything evenly combined and smooth? If not, stir gently until it is.

In a medium size bowl, add all dry ingredients: flour, cocoa powder, salt, baking powder, baking soda and espresso powder/ instant coffee. Use a fork or whisk to evenly combine all dry ingredients.

Pour dry ingredients into the large bowl of wet ingredients. Stir with wooden spoon or spatula until all ingredients are evenly combined but do not “over” stir. This mixture will be quite thick. Add zucchini, chocolate chips and white chips. Stir with wooden spoon or spatula just until evenly mixed.

Divide batter into the prepared loaf pans. Bake for 55 – 65 minutes or until a toothpick inserted into the middle of the loaf comes out clean and batter-free. Note: melted chocolate chips can/will stick to the toothpick even if the loaf is done so pay close attention if your toothpick does not appear to be clean.

Allow loaves to cool for 10 – 15 minutes before turning them onto a cooling rack.

The bread tastes delicious when warm; but be advised that slicing it before it has completely cooled may result in lots of crumbling!

These LOAVES FREEZE very well and are good for up to 3 months or so. If you want to freeze your loaf/loaves, allow to cool completely then wrap snugly in plastic wrap then either place in a freezer bag and press out air or wrap foil securely over the plastic wrap.

Want to print print this recipe? Click here for the PDF

FINISHED: Twister Sofa Back Pillows Re-Cover Project

With all that’s going on in the world right now, I must admit that I found it very difficult to focus and force myself to finish this Twister Pillows sofa back pillows re-cover project. That said, I am so very glad I did.

Pushing through the daily madness and finding my rhythm in sewing and quilting the new pillow covers was actually quite healing. I guess because I was doing something that I “COULD DO” instead of worrying and being caught up in the insanity. And at the end of the day, I had something to show for it.

Quick recap. Here’s the BEFORE sofa look:

Here is the AFTER:

As mentioned previously, I needed to make my pillow covers larger than the pattern so I simply enlarged the borders. I also decided to apply a scrappy binding instead of the prescribed “turning” method which would have been OK, but I love the look of the scrappy binding.

The Twister Pillows pattern offered directions for two methods of closure on the back: Envelope Style and Zipper Closure. I opted for the zipper closure and I really like the professional feel and finish. Here are a few shots of that:

Twister Pillow Back Side – Zipper Closure Finish

There you have it!

I loved the process of making my Twister Pillows! In fact, after I finish a couple other small projects, I would really like to design and make a coordinating Twister Table Runner to put on our coffee table that sits in front of the sofa.

What do you think?

Do the new pillow covers improve the look of our living room?

Have you ever made Twister Pillows or any projects using the Lil Twister Tool?

I’d love to hear your constructive comments and sharing below!

I Broke the (Quilting) RULES! And I like It.

Quilting on my domestic sewing machine using standard only the standard foot. No freemotion quilting. No walking foot.

Using my domestic sewing machine (it’s an older Juki TL98E straight stitch only machine) and it’s regular foot, I quilted my Twister Pillows with an orange slice design in each blade of the pinwheel.

Why did I choose to use my regular foot instead of freemotion quilting or walking foot?

Because I could and I wanted to see how they would turn out.

Be sure to scroll all the way down to view all pictures as the 4th pic shows the quilting from the back side. Surprisingly, it turned out pretty great. At least I think think it is and since it’s my quilt (pillows), my opinion is the only one that matters on this project!

ALSO…while I was doing quilting, I started thinking all this might be good to share publicly. Especially for new quilters, very young quilters or those who can’t afford or don’t want to spend big bucks on fancy machines or even purchasing a walking foot or an old machine. You see, I remember having absolutely NO budget for these things when I first started machine quilting and had little babies at home. That didn’t mean I couldn’t make nice things. It just meant I needed to be a little more aware and take my time if I wanted things to turn out right. For example, I needed to have the quilt sandwich basted really well (another blog article will be coming shortly on that). I decreased the pressure of my presser foot so there was less drag. I realize not all machines offer that option and you can still do this even if your machine doesn’t have that feature, but if yours does you may want to play with that a bit.

This design was very easy to stitch continuously. By that I mean I had no need to stop, cut threads and tie off anywhere unless a thread broke or the bobbin ran out. Simple stop/pivots were the only slowdowns.

Sew…how did I actually DO it? By the numbers, of course.

Using the picture above, imagine sewing toward the next ascending number, as follows: #1. Start at center of the pillow’s center most pinwheel secure a few stitches. From there stitch a gentle arc up the long edge of one blade of the pinwheel. #2. Stop. Needle down, lift presser foot, turn quilt, lower presser foot, stitch a deeper arc returning back to the center stopping at #3. Needle down. Lift presser foot, turn quilt, lower presser foot, stitch a gentle arc to #4. Stop. Needle down, lift presser foot, turn quilt, lower presser foot, stitch a deeper arc returning back to the center at #5. Repeat this on the remaining two blades of the pinwheel (i.e., follow the quilting lines to #6, #7, #8 and return to very center for the last time #9).

Once each blade of the pinwheel has been stitched, put needle down in the very center again. Lift presser foot, turn quilt to aim for the next pinwheel block and #10 carefully stitch in the ditch to the center of the next pinwheel. If you do this correctly, you will be able to travel to the next pinwheel without needing to remove the quilt from your machine.

After I finished quilting each of the pinwheels, I simply did a wonky echo spiraling around the outside of the pinwheel design until the entire quilt was quilted (relatively) evenly.

Are you wondering how the back turned out?

The back side of quilted Twister Pillow #4

I was pleasantly shocked at how nice the back of the quilt top looks! In the end it doesn’t matter at all for this project because this is a pillow top and this back will be inside of the pillow and completely unseen.

You know, I never seem to be able to follow a pattern’s instructions 100%. I always end up having to add my own twist. This project is no exception when it came to finishing. I chose the zippered pillow back option. The pattern instructions are well written and the results are really professional looking. So I did follow the instructions on that part, but I decided to take it a step further this time. Instead of turning, I decided to apply a scrappy binding. I pieced random fabrics from the top to make the binding. Yes, it took more time. But I just LOVE the results!

Any why not?! It is MY quilt (my quilted Twister Pillow), after all!

What do you think? Have you ever quilted using just your regular foot? How did it turn out? I genuinely welcome all related, constructive thoughts, ideas and comments below.

Top 10 Troubleshooting Tips for Skipped Stitches

Incorrect Threading of Machine
Worn or Bent Needle
Incorrect Needle Type
Incorrect Needle Size for thread and/or materials being sewn
Incorrect Top Thread Tension
Incorrect Bobbin Thread Tension
Incorrect Thread Type for the Project
Too much tension or tugging on the project under needle (sewing or quilting)
Sewing machine needs cleaning and/or lubricating
Sewing machine needs servicing (deeper mechanical issues)

Number 1. The first–and easiest–thing you want to check is your thread path. Maybe you don’t think that could possibly be “it”. I get it. You may know how to thread your machine blindfolded in the dark and it might have worked just fine yesterday using the same thread you’re using now. BUT…but…but sometimes things get bumped or knocked out of place. Hey. It happens. So, simply double check your thread path. Better yet. Completely start over. Unthread it and carefully re-thread your machine according your your sewing machine manual. Check it. Has the problem been solved? If not, proceed down the list.

Numbers 2 – 4. The next 3 items on the list involve your needle. So, let’s just cut to the chase. Remove the old needle and replace it with a fresh, new, high quality needle that is the correct type and size for the threads and materials you are using and the type of sewing you are doing. I recommend Superior Needles for domestic machines.

Longarm quilter? Groz Beckert Needles are a good choice if you’re using a longarm, but be sure to choose the right needle for your machine (see machine manual or manufacturer recommendations).

Whether you are on a domestic machine, industrial machine or longarm quilting machine, your machine manual and manufacturer are your go-to sources for the type of needles your machine requires.

OKAY! Once you’ve got your new needle in place, go ahead and stitch another sample. Problem solved? If not, let’s continue down the list.

Number 5 and Number 6. These both involve the tension settings on your machine thread path (top) and bobbin case. PLEASE refer to your sewing machine manual for instructions on how to make these adjustments. If you do not have a manual, you may wish to contact your sewing machine dealer or an authorized repair person for assistance. Additionally–related to thread tension–it’s possible your thread is unwinding too loosely on it’s own before being fed through the machine. To check this, place a test piece of fabric under your needle and observe the thread coming off the spool as you stitch. A Handy Net placed over your thread spool or cone can quickly eliminate this problem.

Number 7. Use a good quality thread that is meant for the materials you are sewing and type of sewing you are doing. For example, a very heavy thread that is made for sewing upholstery is not going to work well on delicate lingerie or quilting fabrics; nor is a very fine thread going to work well on heavy or thick fabrics like denim (though in this case the problem is more likely to be breakage).

Number 8. Are you attempting to pull your project around under the needle? This is often the cause of skipped threads when attempting free-motion quilting at a fast speed. I strongly recommend SLOWING DOWN. Free-motion quilting is kinda like dancing, and your machine is your partner. If you are moving faster than your partner OR you have the pedal to the metal and it is moving faster than you, somebody may get their toes stepped on (or fingers sewn–OUCH!) or stitches may get skipped. Skipped stitches may also occur as a result of sewing a very heavy or large project that places a lot of weight pulling under the needle. Try adding support for your project (perhaps placing support tables or chairs around your machine to hold the weighty bulk of your project).

Number 9. Clean and lubricate your machine from top to bobbin according to your sewing machine manual.

Number 10. If none of the above have worked, the cause may be related to a deeper mechanical or technical issue. Parts wear out from time to time as they age or if they are heavily used. It happens. It doesn’t mean you’re a bad person or you don’t love your sewing machine. It may just be time to make an appointment for professional servicing.