I'm this big!

For Penny's first birthday I wanted to make something she could use for years, and found a rather lovely height chart panel: alphabet, girly colours and pretty pictures.

Hopefully she'll be tall enough for this soon :)

Fairies and flowers

A friend at work's granddaughter asked for a fairy birthday cake for her third birthday...

She loved it!!

Wedding cupcakes

A friend is having a wedding celebration here in the UK after getting married in the USA and I'm making cupcakes.

My instructions were 'chocolate' so first I've experimented with different chocolate cake recipes to find a soft, moist, rich cake. The winner uses blackcurrant jam in the recipe instead of the vegetable oil used in most of the recipes I trialled, and it is delicious!

I have decided chocolate frosting on chocolate cake is not the prettiest as there is no contrast, so I've been practising with dual-coloured piping, and it's not perfect yet but I think it's the way to go - chocolate and vanilla swirled together, yum.

For decoration, they are having rainbow colours at the wedding so I'm going to just go crazy with flowers and butterflies and birds. 

I can't wait!

Cricketers

A friend wanted to make a cricket themed cake for an 80th birthday, and asked for some sugarpaste cricketers to go on top...

She sent me a photo for inspiration, and I did what I could!

I'm rather pleased with how they turned out!

Free-motion stitching

My mother in law bought me a free-motion foot for my sewing machine this Christmas.  

I have been intending to have a play for ages, and had made a sewing machine cover that needed quilting, so figured today was the day to see what it/I could do!

The results:

The verdict: 
It's a lot trickier than I expected.  I have no idea how fast/slow to stitch or how fast/slow to move my fabric, and I kept trying to keep just moving the fabric through front to back and then remembering I could move it any direction!  I would need a LOT more practice before using this on a precious quilt, but I had fun today and my machine cover looks rather snazzy!

Animal tag blankets

A few friends are having babies soon (like in the next few weeks soon), which whilst being very exciting and joyous in itself is also an excellent excuse for some baby-related craft fun!  

I decided to make tag blankets thinking they would be straightforward and pretty, and then got a little bit carried away scrolling through all the gorgeous designs out there...out came my pencil and paper and I started sketching some patterns!

I found a cute elephant blanket on etsy.com and loved the idea of flapping ears that would crinkle for added sensory enjoyment.  I sketched a template, had a false start cutting out two of the same sides instead of one reversed (oops) and three hours later this little fellow was all done!

Lots of bright colours and different textures, plus he's rather adorable.


As I made a teddy themed quilt for my niece last year, I wanted to make a teddy tag blanket to match for her first birthday.  A bit more of a challenge as I wanted the face on the front and the tail on the back so I had to appliqué each side separately before stitching and stuffing, but he's turned out just lovely.

And my niece absolutely loves her bear tag blanket! She spent all day poking her finger through the ribbons, sucking the ears and shaking the bear around with squeals of joy! 

Quilting for Penny

My mother-in-law is a quilter, and when I said I wanted to make something special for my almost-arrived niece, she suggested we make a baby quilt as a summer project.  I had never made a quilt before, and my sewing experience was rather limited, so I jumped at the chance to work with Jenny and make something beautiful in the process.

My brother and sister-in-law tend to choose rustic, shabby-chic colours and patterns, so we decided on a teddy bear theme in browns and creams.  I sketched the original teddy bear block pattern and it evolved from there step-by-step.

The bears are appliquéd using fusible paper and machined blanket stitch, all using different combinations of fabrics for a rag-tag, patchwork feel.

We used the appliqué stitch to quilt the blocks so the bear outline is repeated on the reverse of the quilt.

The border was made using scraps and then quilted over with hearts 

Jenny was very patient and an excellent tutor, and my brother and sister-in-law loved the quilt - hurrah!

To bake or not to bake...

I love to bake, and my husband is always going on at me about starting a business or opening a cake shop (I'm a teacher and absolutely love my job so it's not going to happen any time soon!) so to appease him somewhat, a selection of baking delights are being published here for 'the world' to see!

Cupcakes
I did a cupcake decorating course at www.chittyscakecompany.co.uk and I am most definitely a piping convert - beautiful and easy to decorate.

Christmas Cake
Soaked in brandy from October...

Jon's birthday cake

Four chocolate and caramel layers, 1000 calories per slice!

Lemon drizzle cake 
My hands-down favourite.

Rainbow Cake 
This was a personal challenge as a friend has been making these for years - it was fiddly but turned out great.

Sugarpaste 
A bit like play-dough except you can eat it afterwards...

Enjoy!