Sew Inspirational Summer 2008 |


Chocolate! “Friends come and go but chocolate lasts till its use by date” Quote found on the chocolate wrapper eaten while writing this story. Chocolate is a subject dear to every women’s heart, it has been described as the sensual food for the heart, brain and sole. It is also known as a mood enhancer, nothing better than a bit of chocolate to brighten up any situation or calm the nerves when you are a little stressed or just fun to share with a friend. There is something for everyone no matter what the desire, taste or preference, it just depends on the situation, time of day or sometimes how desperate you are to have it. Everyone has their favourites, I known people who raid the cupboards looking for anything that might have been hidden and forgotten about and in desperation have subjected themselves to eating the cooking chocolate when nothing else was at hand. Why do women and chocolate work so well together? The answer is hard to define but let’s be honest girls, who can resist that melting river of smooth chocolate bursting with flavour as it cruises over your taste buds! It melts just above body temperature and gives a combined sugar and caffeine ‘hit’ to lift the spirits even further. A study reported by the BBC indicated that melting chocolate in one's mouth produced an increase in brain activity and heart rate that was more intense than that associated with passionate kissing, and also lasted four times as long after the activity had ended. Marketing executives have long realised that a woman’s attraction to chocolate needs to be attended to. Besides the fact we love it we are also the decision makers on whether to buy it or not and for chocolate to be on hand we need to be reminded of just how wonderful it is on a regular basis. Fantasy advertisements which highlight the sensual side of chocolate take us away from the everyday chores and transports us to a wonderland of indulgence. While daydreaming about private jets to tropical islands and being pampered in a soapy spa bath with our favourite chocolate delight is probably not practical - who cares? Take me there anytime!! You should allow yourself an indulgence of chocolate (preferably dark) and savor it. This can definitely be part of a healthy diet. Your heart will thank you! When traveling abroad, I always find myself standing in front of a new selection of tantalizing delights that are just calling out to be taste tested and given a rating so they can be talked about at the next friends gathering. While in New Zealand one year, I was taken to one of the most amazing chocolate shops ever, ‘Schoc’. As soon as you set foot in the door you are spellbound, not just by the amazing smell, but the incredible selection of chocolates available. You can even taste test the chocolates to see which one tickles your taste buds best. Believe you me; it was hard to stop at one. While deliberating over which chocolates to buy, I found a book written by the shop owner Murray Langham and illustrated by Roger Simpson: ‘Chocolate Therapy’. This book is about you and your relationship with chocolate- its shapes, its centres and how to explore just what chocolate tells you about yourself. It also offers a guide so you can enjoy your life through chocolate. Sounds like heaven to me!!! Have you ever thought about what you do with your wrapper once you’ve eaten the chocolate? This book has all the answers and would have to be a great book to try out at your next get together; be it quilt, sewing or embroiderers guild or just a girls night out. I found a great quote in one of Murrays books - “If you don’t like chocolate, you’re in denial and perhaps need to see a chocolate therapist. There’s no substitute for chocolate, so stop trying to find one. Start living.” I think that says it all! For more information about ‘Schoc’ please click on their link - http://www.chocolatetherapy.com Chocolate (Schokolade, chocolat, cioccolata) is a way of life in Switzerland. The Swiss eat a world record ten and a half kilos of the stuff per person per annum – roughly one ordinary-sized bar for every single person, every day of the year. Swiss chocolate is held by many aficionados to be the best in the world, rich with scrupulously high levels of expensive cocoa butter, super-smooth, and above all creamy – the industry imports most ingredients except milk, which comes in fresh from the clover-munching Alpine herds. Production of Chocolate: Chocolate has become one of the most popular foods all over the world but was first drunk rather than eaten. For hundreds of years, the chocolate making process remained unchanged. When the Industrial Revolution arrived, many changes occurred that brought the hard, sweet candy we love today to life. In the 1700s, mechanical mills were created that squeezed out cocoa butter, which in turn helped to create hard, durable chocolate. Chocolate is created from the cocoa bean and roughly two-thirds of the entire world's cocoa is produced in Western Africa. Cacao trees are small, understory trees that need rich, well-drained soils. They naturally grow within 20 degrees of either side of the equator because they need about 2000 millimeters of rainfall a year, and temperatures in the range of 21 to 32 degrees. Cacao trees cannot tolerate a temperature lower than 15 degrees. Harvesting cacao beans is a delicate process. First, the pods containing cacao beans, are harvested by cutting the pods from the tree using a machete, or by knocking them off the tree using a stick. The beans with their surrounding pulp are removed from the pod and placed in piles or bins to ferment. The fermentation process is what gives the beans their familiar chocolate taste. It is important to harvest the pods when they are fully ripe because if the pod is unripe, the beans will have low cocoa butter content, or there will be insufficient sugars in the white pulp for fermentation resulting in a weak flavor. After fermentation, the beans must be quickly dried to prevent mold growth. Climate and weather permitting, this is done by spreading the beans out in the sun from 5 to 7 days. Chocolate liquor is blended with the cocoa butter in varying quantities to make different types of chocolate or couvertures. The basic blends of ingredients for the various types of chocolate (in order of highest quantity of cocoa liquor first), are as follows: Dark chocolate: sugar, cocoa butter, cocoa liquor, and (sometimes) vanilla Milk chocolate: sugar, cocoa butter, cocoa liquor, milk or milk powder, and vanilla White chocolate: sugar, cocoa butter, milk or milk powder, and vanilla Chocolate is very sensitive to temperature and humidity. Ideal storage temperatures are between 15 and 17 C (59 to 63�F), with a relative humidity of less than 50%. Chocolate should be stored away from other foods as it can absorb different aromas. Ideally, chocolates are packed or wrapped, and placed in proper storage with the correct humidity and temperature. Additionally chocolate should be stored in a dark place or protected from light by wrapping paper. Various types of ‘blooming’ effects can occur if chocolate is stored or served improperly. If refrigerated or frozen without containment, chocolate can absorb enough moisture to cause a whitish discoloration, the result of fat or sugar crystals rising to the surface. While chocolate is regularly eaten for pleasure, there are potential beneficial health effects of eating chocolate. Cocoa or dark chocolate benefits the circulatory system. Other beneficial effects suggested include anticancer, brain stimulator and even cough prevention. So why is there no such organization as Chocoholics Anonymous? Because no one wants to quit!

Quilted One Block Marvels by Carolyn Sullivan Like many people, I enjoy looking at the world around me. I see many stimulating things wherever I am, and I like to take photographs wherever I go. Photographing doors in Brussels on a trip to Belgium some years ago was a fascinating source of shapes. A visit to the Royal Botanic Gardens in Sydney yielded beautiful shapes in the lines of the shadehouse. There is a particularly appealing set of decaying garage doors in an area I visit frequently. As the doors have disintegrated, they have created the most beautiful lines that lend themselves to all sorts of design ideas.My photographs are a continuing source of inspiration for lines, shapes and colors. These are the aspects of design that most interest me. I also collect photographs from good quality magazines and beautiful books. From all of these observations, I am able to pick out particular lines and shapes that enable me to design new quilt blocks. But designing the block itself is not enough! I also want to make interesting, exciting quilts out of them. I have played with my own blocks before for my first book, Companion Pieces – Quilts and Embroideries, where I concentrated on rotations of a particular block to give a whole layout for a quilt. Since then I have discovered that this is only the tip of the iceberg! There is so much more that can be done once repetition and reflection are included. And that is what this book is about – designing your own blocks, then manipulating them through repetitions, rotations, reflections and combinations of these to make your own amazing quilts. Fundamental to my approach to quilt design in this book is the concept of plane symmetry groups, which reduce all variants in designs with tiles (or blocks) to just seventeen options. Although only formalised in 1924, the principles have been used and referenced through the ages to create designs for wallpaper and tile patterns. I have used these symmetries in my own way particularly in simplifying the vocabulary. I am very fortunate that I have the opportunity to teach a lot of people. I really enjoy sharing what I know and encouraging people to look at the world around them. To find their own creativity, I like to encourage people to do their own thing and to see them relish their sense of achievement. There are many techniques to assist in visualizing the world around us and to see how our own surroundings can be used to make exciting and different quilts. This book is about encouraging that creativity. However, I know too, that many quiltmakers prefer to browse through all sorts of books and magazines and find something that they can make in their own fabrics or adapt to their own circumstances and interests. It gives me the most enormous pleasure to see quilts that I have designed reinterpreted by other quiltmakers. The projects in this book allow you to make the quilts as I have designed them or to make them with your own special characteristics. You can always change the size of a quilt. You can add more blocks or you can change the size of the block. As well as the projects, there are many layouts of my own blocks for you to choose from. This is a feast of quilts!I hope you enjoy the feast. Available at all good quilt stores or visit www.quiltworks.com.au. Trade enquiries to Ascot Lane (www.ascotlane.com.au) and Craft Book Wholesalers (www.craftbooks.com.au).