I must, I must, I must increase my.....skill

Free motion quilting - I need practice. Lots of practice. My first attempt was just hideous. Lots of knots, bunching and pulling, the other side was just awful. I'm lucky I didn't break anything. So rather than waste the effort, I'm going to make something useful while I practice.

Placemats for our dinner table. I'm going to try stipling first then as I get better I'll try some free motion designs to quilt them.

Emma's Quilt...al...most...there!

It's so close to being done - it's staring at me, quilted and full of pins. Course it's been like that for a week lounging over the back of my couch. I'll get there, it's just that.....well.....do you ever get that feeling once you've finished something like "Oh, it's done then. What no more? Oh, OK. Shame, I was quite enjoying it." That's how this quilt makes me feel. I've really enjoyed putting it together, I love looking at the bright colours. So here's the quilt top. I tried something different with the binding but you won't get to see it until it finishes staring at me.

Nicola's Baby Quilt - finished and delivered

Lots of crafting going on at the moment. I finished Nicola's quilt a month ago and was finally able to give it to her 2 weeks ago.

With wider, shorter sleeves for the rope and bound again - just waiting for the rope.

Finished front...

...finished back...

...and tassles. They're attached by wrapping in and around the rope and looped over a colour matched button so they can come off when the quilt needs to be thrown into the washing machine.

I've also been working on Emma's baby quilt. Just need to finish binding it and then I have an idea for a matching change mat. Remaking Lincoln's quilt and the baby playmat for a venture I'm hoping to get off the ground with my sister. Knitting little slippers for Little Lady who is just chewing through them right now (my carpet is ridiculously hard on socks and slippers). Finally sewed the velcro on Little Sir's long sleeved bib which is a little short for what I had mind so more of these to come. Lots to do. Aahhh it feels good to be useful.

Nicola's Baby Quilt - almost there...

This has been picked up, put down, sewn and unpicked more times that I can count and the baby it's intended for is now 5 months old. The design started out as a crazy block quilt similar to Lincoln's baby quilt then became a reversible quilt that converts into a bag, 2 elements I've never tried before. As usual I'm not following any sort of pattern so lots of improvising along the way. Enough blabbing - pic time.

The blue and pink pieces are for Nicola's quilt, the orange and green for another baby quilt next on my list of quilts to make.

This was the original layout for a rectangular quilt before I realised I had boo-boo-ed, got creative and changed things around. For some bizzare reason the blue homespun I used on these blocks wasn't the one I had originally picked out. This blue was too dark and not aqua enough to go with the backing I had chosen so at this point I put the quilt down not happy to continue with it as is. Had a chat to hubby (fabulous sounding board and my greatest supporter - I'm always amazed at how I can chat to him about a topic he has absolutely no interest in, ie quilting, and he answers and provides suggestions as though it's his passion too). So as tedious as it was the blue had to go - unpick, unpick, unpick... 31 blocks. Sigh. Cut replacement pieces and resew 31 blocks with the right blue. By this time I wasn't happy with the layout and since the baby's birth had come and gone and this gift was now going to be late I figured, what the hey, lets do something different.

A screen shot of my plan of the hexagonal quilt front. I actually used powerpoint to create the image as until recently I didn't have any drawing programs.

Piecing the blocks and sashing together. I really like the woven effect of the sashing when it's done this way and the challenge to remember what needs to be sewn to what first to achieve it. If you're not sure what I mean, have a look at the sashing on the design image above.  

 

The back design. I had planned to use a pink and blue ballerina print as the backing but when I changed the design the quilt became wider than I was planning and I wasn't going to have enough ballerina print so the plain backing became a reversible quilt side with plain pink and blue homepsun added in. I thought of quilting this by stippling or some other free motion design but I haven't learnt how to do that yet and wanting to finish this gift, good old faithful 'in the ditch' it was. That meant fiddling around lining up the blocks on the back (which were slightly wider to account for the sashing between blocks on the front) with the blocks on the front. Here's a shot of how the back stitching came out:

I then wanted to add sleeves along each of the edges to thread a rope through so it could be gathered into a bag. Sewed them in when attaching the binding and then hand finished the binding. Threaded the rope through to find that it wouldn't gather because the sleeves were too narrow and way too long. More sighing. Unpick, unpick, unpick. And this is where I'm at now:

Lotsa pins, gotta iron and resew the much shorter sleeves, ie loops, and then reattach the binding and add the rope. BUT it is almost finished!!! Yay!!

No excuses....

I have photos, I have finished projects (well one at least) and loads of UFO's, yet I don't have time to drink a cup of tea while it is still hot let alone post. Poor excuse, I know.

I have finished the booster cushion custom made to fit my dining chairs. I wanted to move Little Lady out of the high chair before Little Sir needed it so she didn't feel like she was getting booted out of her chair because of him - it became a necessity so it got done. The covers I had planned to make to slip over it are still sitting near my machine waiting to be sewn. Quick pics:

I bought some upholstery sponge from Clark Rubber and used my trusty scalpel blade from my Uni dissecting kit to cut it to shape. Like my stencil? Empty nappy boxes are used for all sorts of things in my house.

I made it from some rubber backed curtain lining I had left over from making all my drapes. I added a strap with a Velcro end and a ring for attaching to the chair to limit movement when Little Lady squirms around - the cushion that is, not Little Miss Wriggle Pants.

And fitted to the chair. Anal I know but I wanted a snug fit against the back of the chair so Little Lady could scoot right back into it and have cushion under her toosh the whole way.

I'm still quilting Nicola's quilt tho at the rate I'm going she'll get it at her 21st! Gorgeous little thing is 5 months old now and I've changed the layout and design so many times that I could have made it 3 times over by now. It's now destined to be a hexagonal double-sided quilt that gathers to form a bag.

Emma's quilt hasn't progressed past having the crazy blocks sewn. She's around 3 months old now. Slack Mary-Anne, slack!

And I've been obsessively devouring Kellie Wulfsohn's blog Don't Look Now which has inspired me to rethink my whole attitude towards quilting my quilts. She produces such delicious pieces in wonderfully vibrant colours and uses free motion quilting the way I believe it should be used - to enhance a quilt and not detract from the blocks its designed to show off. So many beautiful patchwork quilts get lost in the obsession with quilting the eyeballs out of it. Not so with Kellie's work - simply stunning! Go check it out, you won't be disappointed.

Elmo Birthday Cake

My baby girl had a birthday recently and knowing that I've got lots more birthday cake making opportunities to come, I decided to do it right and find a buttercake recipe that tasted great with a wonderful soft texture yet was firm enough to hold together when I cut it to bits molding it to make car cakes or princess castles.

I found a bunch of basic buttercake recipes online and after looking through them all settled on 2 recipes which were very different and started baking.

Recipe #1
2 eggs
125g butter, softened
1 cup sugar
2 cups self-raising flour
2/3 cup milk
1 tsp vanilla essence

Recipe #2
1/2 cup custard powder
2 cups self-raising flour
2 cups caster sugar
2 tsp vanilla essence
1 cup milk
250g butter, softened
4 eggs

Since I was just testing at this stage I halved all recipe ingredients and baked them in loaf tins so they would both fit in the oven at the same time on the same shelf. Experiment #1 produced 2 cakes, both very dark on the outside. Recipe #1 gave a pale yellow inside which was firm - great for cutting, slicing and dicing, in fact perfect for molding pieces into a specified shape however....tasted very bland and dry. Recipe #2 gave a beautifully moist delicious cake which was so tender and light the slice broke in half as I was cutting it - not at all ideal for shaping a cake but boy did it taste good! This cake also took 10 mins longer to bake which produced a thicker crust so not only did the recipe need tweeking but also the baking conditions. Onto experiment #2.

First adjusting the recipe. Flour and sugar were fine, custard powder made #2 taste great to it would stay, and something in the middle for the butter. Also I switched to vanilla extract for a richer flavour and reduced the oven temp to try and bake the cake without over cooking the crust so much.

Experiment #2 produced just what I was after, a moist light yummy scrummy cake that was firm enough to cut and mold in to shape. The outside was still dark and the middle of the top of the cake had a big crack in it but I knew I could fix this by adjusting the baking conditions slightly again.

I'd been baking every few days over the week leading up to the birthday party so knew that I could refridgerate the cake but I'd have to let it come to room temp before serving it otherwise it'd have a stale texture. I could also just leave it covered at room temp if baked the day before the party but then I couldn't put cream in it before icing it as the cream would go off. In the end I baked it first thing on the morning of the party and left it to cool completely while organising breakfasts, showers/baths, and food and decorations for the party. I whipped the cream for the inside of the cake and put it in the fridge to chill completely and made a strawberry sauce by chopping a punnet of strawberries and heating it on the stove with a few tablespoons of caster sugar until the strawberries melted down into a delicious thick fruity sauce. I let this cool on the stove. Then about 30 mins before the party I made the butter cream icing and put the cake together. I was still icing the cake as guests started to arrive but it was only family so noone minded. So here's my version of buttercake:

M-A's Buttercake Recipe

Ingredients:
1 egg
3/4 cup caster sugar
100g butter, softened (I took it out of the fridge the night before)
1 cup self-raising flour
1/2 cup milk
1/4 cup custard powder
1 1/2 tsp vanilla extract

Directions:

1. Preheat the oven (fan forced) to 170C. Grease and flour the sides and base of a cake tin then line it with baking paper.
2. Beat the butter and sugar together until light and fluffy.
3. Sift all dry ingredients straight into to the mixing bowl and add remaining ingredients. Beat on low to combine then on high for 6-7 mins (cake batter will lighten in colour and increase in volume) and then pour into the prepared baking tin (I acutally used a springform pan since I wanted really straight sides and it made it so much easier to get the cake out of the tin).
4. Put the cake into the oven and drop the temp to 160C. Bake for 40-45 mins or until a skewer inserted into the middle comes out clean. For a regular oven use temps 10C higher but you might need to adjust the baking time.
5. Allow it to cool completely before cutting or decorating. This cake came out perfectly cooked and with a much lighter golden crust - much more appealing if you wanted to serve the cake undecorated.

Butter Cream Icing

Beat 125g softened butter in a bowl until lighter in colour then add 2 teaspoons of vanilla extract and 2 cups of sifted icing sugar in half a cup portions, combining each half cup before adding the next. Beat on high for about 5 minutes until light and fluffy. Colour as needed with food dye.

To decorate the cake:

I had made a few cupcake sized cakes as well as the big cake to use as eyes and a nose for the Elmo cake. I just cut away at them to make round eyes and a tear drop shaped nose. For the big cake, I sliced the top third of the cake off and carefully put it to the side. Then using a teaspoon and starting 1cm inside the walls of the cake, I scooped out the centre to a depth of about 1.5cm and spread the strawberry sauce over the base of the hole then filled in the hole with chilled whipped cream. I put the top third carefully back on and spread the top and sides with the butter cream icing which I'd made earlier and coloured bright red. I iced the eyes with uncoloured icing and then dusted them with icing sugar to make them really white and added a choc chip for the pupil. I also iced the nose with orange coloured butter cream icing. Using some baking paper with a semi-circle cut out of it as a template I sprinkled chocolate sprinkles in place of Elmo's mouth and then put the prepared eyes and nose in place. To finish it off I used my finger to 'fluff' up the icing to create his fur and vuala!!

Little Lady just LOVED it and on seeing it for the first time when singing Happy Birthday to her, she interrupted the singing to tell everyone "Mo! Mo!". I would have taken more pics of the inside of the cake but both kids and adults alike ate it so quickly I didn't get a chance. And it was delicious! I got loads of complements and apparently I'm now booked for my future nieces and nephews b'day parties...when my sister-in-laws get around to getting married and having kids that is. In the meantime I've got another 6 months or so before I need to start practicing Iggle Piggle for Little Sir's birthday.

Stagnant...

I haven't had much of a chance to do any sort of craft work lately. Having 2 little ones is pretty full on, they rarely nap at the same time and when they do I take the opportunity to have lunch or take a shower rather than break out the sewing machine or paint brushes. Current projects that I'm in the middle of are:

• Nicola's baby quilt
• Emma's baby quilt
• painting Little Lady's table and chairs, and toybox
• make a cushion booster so Little Lady can sit at the dining table

Future projects include making washable, waterproof craft smocks or aprons for the Little Ones, making an Elmo b'day cake for Little Lady and another baby quilt for a good friend due in April.

So much to do still so this is a kick up my butt to find the time and DO something!!