Hands2Help - A Special Mother's Day Post from Guest Blogger Karen!

Hi, all!  

It's Sunday again and we've got a treat in store for us today!  Our guest blogger today is Karen from The Recipe Bunny and her post is just perfect for Mother's Day - because it's all about how she and her mom are working together on the Hands2Help Challenge!!  Be sure to read all the way through, too - there's a fabulous looking recipe at the end.  I foresee some baking this week!!

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Hello everyone and happy Mother's Day to you all! My name is Karen and I blog over at The Recipe Bunny. Thank you to Sarah for allowing me to be a guest blogger for the Hands 2 Help Charity Quilt Challenge! This has been a very fun adventure for me and I wanted to share a little bit of my experience.

When I signed up to be a guest blogger I didn't realize that my post would be put up on Mother's Day, but in a way that is actually perfect. You see, my mother and I are participating in the quilt challenge together, so I can share my mother-daughter quilt stories with you on the best day. :)

My mother is the reason I started quilting. I took my first class at summer camp and never looked back. We've made a few quilts together over the years and have shared several patterns back and forth. She bought me my first sewing machine, which now lives with my sister who also sews! Here's a picture of all three of us a few weeks ago. We made aprons together. It was a very long night of sewing and talking and then an early morning to finish up, so please forgive our bed heads and tired eyes! :)

Last Mother's Day we we went on our first quilt retreat together. We shared a table together and it was a blast! We learned how to do several free motion quilting patterns and several walking foot quilting patterns. It was a fun way to see my mom and I grow together in quilting since we had both been taught very traditional ways to quilt. It was an eye opening experience for us both.

Anyway, I saw this quilt challenge pop up on Sarah's blog and thought it was the perfect thing for us to do together. My mother has a large stash of fabric and lots of it is fun kid prints. She immediately jumped at the chance to help with the quilts. So, we struck up a deal. She was going to give me a bunch of fabric to look through for my tops or for the backs and would give me the batting I needed if I would do all the top quilting for the quilts. She also generously offered to do the binding and shipping once they were all finished. I definitely agreed as that is a very easy deal to agree to!! (Don't I have a great mom!?)

Over the next couple of days I received several excited emails from my mom with pictures of fabric and then very soon pictures of completed tops. She was chomping at the bit to get these quilts put together. Here's what she's put together for the charities:

 A lady bug and frog quilt top 45" square for the Happy Chemo charity

A rainbow butterfly VW Bug top 45" square for the Happy Chemo charity

And a "You Go Girl" top for the Quilts Beyond Borders charity

She had all of those fun fabrics just in her stash! I was quite impressed to see these pictures start showing up in my email inbox mere days after I told her about the challenge. She has always been a generous woman and I know she's been a tremendous influence in my life in giving back to others. I'm blessed to have such a wonderful mom!

For my tops, I decided that I would make 2 for the Quilts Beyond Borders charity. I used left over fabric from a quilt my mom and I planned when I was in 8th grade. Here are the two tops I've created:

Rainbow Fish!

Each one of these tops will get a 5 inch border in white around the edge. Then I'm going to pebble quilt them to make it look like bubbles. Each fish unfinished is 6.5" tall by 10.5" long. I'll have a very easy tutorial post on my blog in the next week for those of you who might want to make a school or two yourselves. 

To leave you on Mother's Day, I thought I would share with you our recipe for banana bread. It is delicious and apparently came from my great, great grandmother to my great Aunt Ann down to me as the 5th generation of bakers. As my mom would say - that's a lot of bananas! Enjoy!

Banana Bread

Ingredients:

• 1 cup sugar
• 1/2 cup butter (1 stick - softened)
• 2 eggs
• 1 tsp cinnamon
• 1/2 tsp nutmeg
• 1 tsp vanilla
• 3 bananas - mashed with a fork
• 1 tsp baking soda
• 2 cups flour
• 1/2 cup chopped walnut (optional - I usually substitute in chocolate chips for these!)

Directions:

• Preheat over to 350 degrees (put it to 325 if you are using a glass pan). Grease a large loaf pan.
• In a mixer, cream the butter, sugar, eggs, vanilla and spices. Add in bananas, flour, baking soda and nuts/chocolate chips. Mix well.
• Pour batter into your greased, large loaf pan.
• Bake for 1 hour or until the center is done. Cover the top in tin foil if it starts to get too brown while it continues to bake and solidify. 

This bread travels well and we've used it on car trips, family camping trips, stay-at-home breakfasts and have sold many loaves at church and school bake sales. It's also the BEST thing to eat when you need a quilting break. I hope it makes you as happy as it makes us! :) Happy quilting everyone!

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Awesome post, Karen!! Thanks for sharing you and your mom's story, and especially that banana bread recipe!!  I can't wait to try it!!

I hope everyone is working hard on their quilts - next week we have another linky party to show off progress, and June 2nd is the final linky party to show off your finished quilts.  There will be prizes, so be sure to take pictures of your quilts and be ready to link up!

By the way, if you are ready to send your quilts off, please email me (salliesue@clearwire.net) and I will send you the addresses.  (I don't want to post them on the blog for privacy issues.)

Hugs!!

Sarah