Petticoat Skirt

Someone made a petticoat skirt on their page, I found it one on Stumbleupon. Here's my own take on it.

1. You need a bunch of fabric. I had a set of gently used 100% cotton sheets that were in the "I hate these and want to get rid of them" pile. There's my free fabric.



2. Create a base skirt. Mine is semi-based off of a pre-existing bias cut number I had in my closet. Since the ruffles will be adding a tiny bit of length, the pattern was cut down a bit. Also, I didn't make my base skirt on the bias, so I figured some extra room for that.



3. Measure where you want the ruffle to be attached. Start at the bottom of the skirt, it'll be much easier to attach them.



4. Time for some math. Measure around your skirt and get the circumstance. I wanted my ruffles to be a little poof, but not too much. The ruffles are two times the width of the skirt.



5a. Make your ruffle fabric.



5b. Remember that the little black kitty will try to "help".



5c. Mark your fabric at the 1/4, 1/2, 3/4 way mark around the ruffle. This will make it easier to gather and attach evenly. Use lots of pins.



6. Depending on how many ruffles you want, do this three or four more times.

7. Create a waistband. Mine is a simple fold over casing, it worked pretty well.



I'm thinking of adding one more ruffle, but not really sure. It looked pretty cool as a petticoat or as a regular skirt.

Sometimes I cook too much!

Another cooking post! For dinner tonight there were "salad sandwiches" (chicken salad for my grandma, leafy green salad style for me) and vegan stuffed mushrooms. YUM!



The original recipe is from my Vegan Planet cookbook, but as always it was tweaked to use things I could find in South Jersey.

Ingredients:
8oz white mushrooms
1 garlic clove, chopped
2 Red popper peppers, chopped
2 jalapenos (this was my own addition because they were in the fridge), chopped
1/2 cup raisins (I used 1/4 brown raisins, 1/4 yellow raisins and threw some dried cranberries in to the mix too)
olive oil
3/4 cup bread crumbs (I used some gluten free corn flakes, because I had them and they were stale)
1/8 cup green onions, chopped
1 tbsp sugar, or something similar to sugar

How to cook it:
1. preheat oven to 400 degrees
2. remove stems from the mushrooms. Set mushroom caps aside.
3. chop mushroom stems, green onions, peppers. put together in a bowl. add crumbs, sugar and raisins.
4. heat 2 tbsp olive oil in a skillet, put mushroom caps in to soften them up. remove caps and set aside.
5. put skillet back in heat, put in chopped garlic. Cook until fragrant.
6. Add pepper & bread crumb mixture. heat and stir until it starts to clump together. Remove from heat.
7. Stuff mushroom caps with the crumb mixture. pPlace on a baking sheet. Bake for 10 minutes.

Tada!

The verdict: My grandma, Mike, Ashley and Amanda all liked them. Grandpa refused to try them. Coakley thought he wanted one, but really wasn't interested when he was given some.

Next step in my cooking adventure: update the kitchen to having some new fancy modern things! I really need a silicon basting brush. I also really need an old school can opener, The electric one is a pain in the neck.