Sharpening Your Rotary Blade

I just found this tutorial on Pinterst and thought wow....I need to share this with all of you. Now if you are a sewer and use a rotary cutter you know how frustrating it can be when your blade is dull. I love a new blade, but if you are like me you don't want to keep spending a fortune on new blades so you want to be able to sharpen them. 

I even invested in one of those electric sharpeners that didn't work that well and then I went with a hand one that works pretty darn good, but if this method works how handy would this be. 

So follow Kari over to ucreatecrafts and see how to do this. Let us know if it works for you. I am going to try it also and see how it goes. :)

Happy Sewing! :)

QUILTING/SEWING TIPS

I am always keeping a list of tips on sewing that maybe some day I will get to use. I decided that I would start to share them with all of you. Maybe some of you already do these, but maybe there are a few that might learn a new tip. So here is the first of the tips. 

•  Use a toilet brush (dry and clean) to pick up loose threads around sewing area on the carpet. (I don't have a toilet brush....I am a sponge user so I just added this picture for you)

• To clean leftover fusibles on your iron, use fabric softener sheets. Heat your iron-no steam and iron the fabric softener until the fusible is removed. It may take a few sheets.

• If your thimble is a little too large for your finger, remove it, lick your finger and put the thimble back on. Now the thimble won’t fly off your finger!

I will have to try the first one since I haven’t tried it yet and if your room is like mine the thread is about to strangle me!

I actually do use the fabric softener sheets to clean my iron and it works absolutely wonderful!! It is a great idea!

Now the last one………………….I don’t know about that one……………if you are like me my hands are dirty from handling the scissors, needles, etc so why in heaven’s name would I want to lick my finger!! I will let you all try this one and let me know if it works! :)

So, these are a few tips I have for you. I will put together a few more again for later. 

Enjoy your day!!

HOW TO MAKE WILD CRANBERRY JELLY

In an earlier blog I was telling you that we had gone up to the mountains and picked our high-bush cranberries for making jelly. Well today we are going to make the jelly. :) Now, this is just the way I make jelly. I have experimented and trial and error to get my process down. I am sure there are many other ways of doing this, but this is how we do it. 

Supplies you will need will be:

Berries
Cook pan
Bowl
Sugar
Lemon juice
Liquid fruit pectin
Jelly jars and lids
Small plate to test jelly. Put this in the freezer so it is cold when you test.

 

First you need to pick your berries. We have so many berries up here it is hard to get them all picked. These are the high-bush cranberries we picked. A lot of the jelly process is the same for all of the berries you might pick. A big part of the process is how much natural pectin the berries have and the ripeness of the berries which varies from year to year. Pectin is what makes the jelly jell. You will just have to test and see what works that year.

 

 

First step is to sterilize your jelly jars. I do this by putting them in a large pan of boiling water for 10 minutes or until I have all my other supplies set up and ready to go.

 

 

Then measure 4 cups of berries to 2 cups of water. Put on the stove and bring to a boil.

 

  

 

 

Cook for approximately 7 minutes or until the berries burst. This whole jelly making process is a two man job so you may need some help. Notice hubby is the "stirrer". :)

 

After you cook the berries you will need to put the cooked berries in a cheesecloth bag like this one. This is a stock picture since I forgot to take a picture of this step. :(  Once the berries are in the bag you will need to squeeze the berries to get the juice from the berries as that is what you need for the jelly. Now be careful with this step the berries are very hot! I usually hold the bag and hubby uses my "pinchers" as I call them. Don't know the official name, but the ones you can grab hot things with. :)  

 

After you squeeze the berries you will have just berry juice left. Next you will need to measure the juice and put it in the cook pan again. I do 1-1 ratio. I use 2 cups of juice to 2 cups of sugar. You will be able to experiment what works best for you. Bring the juice to a boil and add the sugar until it is dissolved.

 

Next add in 3 teaspoons of lemon juice to the pan and appx 1/2 package of liquid pectin to start with. Cook this appx 5 minutes. Now as the jelly cooks it will form a head on it so be careful that it doesn't over boil. If the color changes stop cooking immediately. You will need to test the jelly on the small plate to see how it is jelling. Take a little spoonful of the jelly and put it on the plate and turn the plate at an angle to have it run down the plate. If it seems like it is jelling ok and is slowly running down the plate it is good to go. If not, then add a little more pectin and another teaspoon of lemon juice.

 

Once jelly is jelling and ready to go pour into the sterilized jars. Let the jelly cool for awhile before you put the lids on. That way you can see if it is jelling also.

  



 

The hardest thing to gauge working with wild berries is the natural pectin and ripeness. Each year is different and each years growing conditions are different. One year they will be great and the next won't be. Over the years we have just worked with whatever the berries are for that year, but there is nothing better that having your own jelly in the middle of the winter. You can also make syrup from these berries which is another tutorial one of these days. Very good on pancakes!

 

Well I hope that wasn't too complicated. It is really pretty easy once you get your procedure down and know what you are doing...and yes....hubby and I say every year....."now how did we do this and that"! :)

 

 

Thanks for joining me and have a great week!

  

HOW TO ADD A PIN IT "HOVER BUTTON" TO YOUR IMAGE

I follow this wonderful blog Sew Many Ways and Karen over there is such a wonderful wealth of knowledge. She always has such great tutorials, repurposing and crafting ideas. I love to follow her blog. Anyway......she posted this tutorial on her blog and I thought it was so great that I thought you might like it also. I am certainly not very "techy", but this was actually very easy!! Since she is so great with screen shots I thought I would just use hers. Here is how you do it. :)

First go to your Pinterest dashboard page. Then click on the drop down button in the left hand side and go to Business on the bottom of the screen.








Next, click on the Tools button.





Then on the left hand side click on the Widget builder.







Then click on the Pin It Button.





Now click on the button type.....I chose Image Hover.








Click on Built It and then on Advanced








Highlight the code and right click and COPY it. Now....make sure you get the entire code and don't do like I did. I missed the first < and when I put it to my blog layout it wouldn't work. Of course it wouldn't work for me I thought!! Well after checking back and forth with what I did I realized what happened. Always happens to me. :) :) :)








 Now off to your blog layout. Pick Add a Gadget







 Then the HTML/Java Script





Now copy and paste the code you copied into the box. Now make sure after you preview it to Save Arrangement.  






And whalla........you have a Pin It button on your images!! And it works on the older photos too!! Now everyone can pin those great pictures you all have on your blogs.

So, that is how you can add a hover Pin It button to your blog. Thanks again to Karen at Sew Many Ways. Check out her blog....you won't be disappointed. Have a new recipe for you under Recipe Exchange. Just in time for the cantaloupe season!

Hope everyone has a great week!

 

:)

GOOD BYE GOOGLE READER

Well as usual in the techy world they always seem to want to change things that are working just fine!! I get so frustrated at this!!!! So with Google Reader going away in just a week I wanted to remind all of you that follow me on your Google list this will be going away on July 1st. I have read a lot about this and I am not very techy so it gets a little confusing to me, but I think Bloglovin is a good way to go. A few months ago when I first learned about this happening I added a "Follow Me On Bloglovin" (on my left side bar) button for all of you to be able to continue to follow me. I appreciate all of you that have done this so far. I really don't want to loose any of you faithful followers so I am posting a little tutorial here to help you move all of your blog list to Bloglovin.

You can import the blogs that you follow on Google Friends/Google Reader by going to this page now. Click on Here.

From here you can create an account. You can use Facebook to sign up with, but I am an email person so I use that.




After you put all your information this screen will come up. Just click on the "Import from Google Reader" button.



 

On this screen click on the "ACCEPT" button.






Then depending on how many blogs you follow it will only take a moment for this step.





Then whalla.........you are finished! Easy peasy!! If I can do it all of you can also!! It was very easy so I hope you will continue to follow me and all of your other blogs with Bloglovin. Once you have an account set up you can have your list sent daily to your email, which is what I do, so you can keep up on the great post from all of your blogs. I am sure there are several other sites that you can use to do this I just use Bloglovin as that was recommended to me and it seems very easy to use and I am all about "user friendly"!  :)