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Soft pretzels

While working on a new doll pattern today, I had a mad, desperate craving for soft pretzels, the kind you buy from street vendors in NYC. I was frantically looking for a recipe, going through my pile of cookbooks, until I finally found one in Beth Hensperger’s The Bread Lover’s Bread Machine Cookbook.

I loaded up my bread machine, forgetting to put the paddle in the pan so that it sounded like it was kneading the dough, when it was really doing nothing. I’ve been a bit spacey lately. Fortunately, I checked on the dough in time to reach in and insert the paddle.

After the dough finished the bread dough cycle in the machine, I shaped it into pretzels, left the pretzels to rise a second time, then boiled each one in a couple quarts of water with two tablespoons of baking soda for about a minute each. This is what makes them chewy.

I brushed them with an egg white beaten with a tablespoon of water, sprinkled them with Kosher salt, and put them in a 400 degree oven for about sixteen minutes until they were golden.

Then…carbohydrate relief. Sigh.

A similar recipe can be found here.

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“The Cow Jumped Over the Moon” One-of-a-kind Art Quilt

Over the weekend I took out a couple of projects that were in need of a small amount of work to be “finished”. I made this nursery quilt back in 2004, when we were having another hot August. It was entirely done by hand. I drew the illustration, traced it onto freezer paper, hand appliquéd the pieces on, and then hand stitched all the blocks and strips together. The one thing I stopped short of doing were the hand-embroidered eyes and nostrils on the cow, and my hand-embroidered signature. This is what I finished over the weekend. It is a glorious thing to behold really, so colorful and cheerful.

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Mini Art Quilts

I made this set of mini art quilts mostly from cotton batiks, with an occasional cotton print thrown in. I started by paper piecing the backgrounds where I could. In a couple of places, like on the background for the sun, I made a pattern piece in a curved shape and cut it out from my paper-pieced section, then sewed it to another section.

I used fusible interfacing to stiffen the moon, star, and sun shapes before I machine appliquéd them onto my backgrounds. I experimented with different machine stitches along the raw edges of the shapes.


I used Pigma pens, which are permanent ink markers, to draw the faces on my moons, sun, and flower.

I added layers of organic cotton batting and cotton duck/canvas underneath my designs, then did some machine quilting on the surfaces.

I had intended to sew bias strips around the edges, but opted to use cotton terrycloth as a backing right up to the edges. I placed the terrycloth and the designs right sides together, sewed a 0.25 inch seam, left an opening, then turned them right sides out. I also added loops of cotton which were folded and top stitched to the tops for hanging. The openings were then slip stitched closed. I used some embroidery floss for ties in several places on the back just for stability.

Original designs, art quilts, and photos copyright Elizabeth Ruffing, all rights reserved.

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Potholder Project

I made this set of potholders by sandwiching one layer of cotton duck/canvas between two layers of organic cotton batting, then sandwiching those between two layers of cotton terrycloth (I used cotton washcloths), all roughly 9.5 inches square. I used my walking foot to quilt the layers together. Then I trimmed them down to 8.5 inches square with my rotary cutter and ruler.

Since I didn’t have enough of my polka dotted cotton to make a true bias, I cut 2.5 inch strips and sewed them on the edges of the potholders without turning the corners. I put the strips right sides against the terrycloth, on one edge at a time, sewed a 0.5 inch seam, turned each strip over to the back, turned under the raw edge to match the front, slipped stitched it down, and then top-stitched it down from the front side. I did all four edges this way, turning under the corners where necessary so no raw edge was left out, but leaving about 5 inches of the strip loose at the final corner.

At the final corner, I took the 5 inches of the strip I left loose, turned under the raw edge, then flipped it over on itself to make a loop for hanging, which I then sewed down by hand on the back of the potholder.

We then tested them out on some homemade cheesecake, and they worked great 🙂