Putting The Cat Amongst The Flowers

Choosing a theme for my little girl's card was almost as difficult as choosing a cake theme. There are so many options. I wanted something simple as I was working on her gift at the same time. I keep a memory box full of things she has been sent and liked the idea of her cards off us documenting the trends she goes through. It was because of this that I decided to go with a 'Timmy Time' character. She loves all of the characters and we spend a lot of time talking about what has happened in the latest episode. I imagine she picks up on our enthusiasm for Aardman as well.

I chose Mittens as she loves cats at the moment and is very excited as a friend of ours is fostering one. I found a nice picture of Mittens in the flower garden and it allowed me to use a lot of colour. I taped the design and the fabric to a window and traced the design on using a soft pencil. I am sure at some point I will invest in washable fabric markers but it is a technique I have used for a while now. I went with a simple backstitch outline with French knots for the middle of the flowers. I liked the basic flower design as it allowed it to look almost as if a child had drawn it. I used some dark grey single thread to pick out some of the facial features (The threads I used were DMC 721,727,739, 742, 777,  906, 963 3799 and 3837). I was pleased with the result. It is always difficult using thread to depict something that is usually made out of clay.

The main thing is that my daughter could tell who it was.

A Despicable Cake

For our daughters Birthday we decided to make a Minion cake. It was hard to chose as there is so many things that she likes at the moment. The minion won over as it is colourful, fun and recognisable. I cannot take all of the credit for this as it was a joint effort between myself and my husband. We used a 18cm by 25cm cake tin. My husband drew a template to match the dimensions and cut out the features from greeceproof paper. I made two cakes using a very basic sponge recipe, 4oz self raising flour, 4oz stork and 4oz caster sugar and 2 eggs in each cake. I used the usual method of creaming the butter and sugar, adding the eggs gradually and then folding in flour.

I made the coloured icing using ready made royal icing kneaded with a paste made from icing sugar and food colouring. It is time consuming and I dyed my hands blue but it allowed me to get the colour I wanted without having to buy a huge quantity or a mixed pack. When the cakes were out and cool we sandwiched them with jam and covered in a thin marzipan layer. I then rolled all of the icing out and cut out the pieces using the templates. My husband then positioned all of the pieces on the cake, sticking them with water and adding finishing touches including the arms and legs. The mouth took a while to get right but the beauty of using a minion is that we could take advantage of there being so many that all look a little different that we were bound to match one. Our daughter loved it and instantly recognised it, we also got some compliments from some hard to impress friends and family. It tasted quite good too.

Matching Millie

My little girl has just turned two so there has been lots preparation in our house for this. For Christmas I made her a patchwork quilt out of the "Melly and Me: Snug as a Bug" book, it was great fun and I was pleased with how it turned out.



Sung as a Bug quilt

It was far from perfect but I learned a lot including some very handy tips on how to piece squares and how to bind. The video below is full of really helpful tips to get consistent blocks.

I decided to bind my quilt using the backing fabric as I felt it gave a nice edge and saved me trying to get the front and back straight. For Christmas my daughter also got a BHS Millie doll which has outfits to match hers. Matching pyjamas were a huge hit so I therefore decided to make Millie a little quilt to match. I did not have a lot of leftover fabric as I had planned how much I would need and cut really carefully. I made it 35 squares of 8cm by 8cm (before seam) and laid out what I had. I tend to plan patchwork as if I am doing a sudoku - no matching bits touching each other etc. I used the same backing as it is nice and soft and stitched in the ditch to quilt it. It was small simple and still not perfect but she realised what it was straight away and Millie has been nice and warm since.

Nobody Wants to Make Superman Wear Lipstick

As it was my husband's birthday recently so I have been sneaking about trying to plan a card and cake without him knowing. This is quite a difficult task as I often ask his advice and run ideas past him, I also get him to do the whisking for cakes.

I chose to use a superman pixelpower pattern that I had bought last year. I love pixelpower designs, they are stylised yet still recognisable. I stitched mythbusters and R2D2 last year for cards and they went down really well. There are a lot of things I love about the designs, they are very specialist and quite geeky. There are a lot of designs that are good for boys/men which are generally harder to find. You order online and the patterns are sent to you by e-mail. I found the service quick and friendly as well as being convenient as you do not have to wait for posts. He has special offers from time to time and some amazing free patterns on his facebook page. I really want to do the futurama one as it is amazing. The patterns in the most part are all whole stitches with very little backstitch and just a few fractional stitches for eyes. Although there are multiple characters in each series, they stand alone well and would be a great starting stitch for a child. The patterns are well laid out, easy to follow and in colour. My one criticism would be that I sometimes feel that there should be more contrast between similar colours. I had this issue with Superman as the colour for the mouth was too close to the colour of the face and as a result he looked like he had no mouth.

Original mouth - not showing up as much as I would have liked.

I ended up unpicking and putting in another colour. This was all trial and error as too red and it looks like superman is wearing lipstick, and nobody wants to make superman wear lipstick. I also found a colour that I thought was dark enough but it still got lost. I think that colour combinations for stitching can be quite personal and some people like close colours with little variation. As the colour difference in the pixelpower designs often picks out features however, due to limited use of backstitch, I feel the gradient could be stronger without spoiling the design.

Finished card with altered mouth.

I was pleased with the finished card though I cannot help but feel this card by my little girl beat it...

My little girls hand print on a card for her Daddy.

Extermin-cake

I often make birthday cakes with characters and roll on icing, this year I wanted to do something different for my husbands birthday, I wanted it to double up as a pudding, be a little bit classy but also a lot of fun. I decided to go for a chocolate cake with white chocolate ganache and a coco powder stencil. I had a lot of thoughts about what to stencil, although I will not discuss them now as some may well be used in the future. I decided on a dalek as they lend themselves to an outline and are quite iconic. Not to mention that my husband is a Dr Who fan. I used a chocolate cake recipe I had used before, I found a Mary Berry ganache recipe that looked great and halved it as hers was for a two tier cake. The stencil was a picture I found and put on card - cutting all of the bits out. The circles were hard so I made a series of small slits an pushed them through which was effective. The cake was easy to make but took a lot of whisking so I invested in a hand held electric whisk. The ganache was yummy and easy but you need to leave yourself adequate time between processes to let things cool and set. It is very rich but I found that serving it with fresh raspberries cut through nicely.

Double chocolate Dalek cake.

Various Pets Alive and Dead - Marina Lewycka

This is a great book. It is a story told from three perspectives, a Mother and two of her children. On the surface it is a story about their lives over the same time period with a lot of reflections and reminiscing about their past living in a commune. There is also an underlying mystery that the characters still think about and touch upon.

It is a wonderful mix of characters and everyday circumstances with them coming together in very amusing situations. Lewycka always finds a way to bring slightly extravagant characters into slightly surreal situations in the most believable way. The characters are recognisable but not stereotypes, there is a fantastic range of perspectives. The chapters are short and change between characters which again keeps the book and plot moving at pace in the same way that McCall-Smith does with his Scotland Street series.

When you actually stop and think about it the book is about far more than just the lives of a group of people though. It is a look at socialism, society, politics, education and economics. Love is a key theme in the novel and it is explored in so many ways from family, monogomy, lust and even unrequited fascination. I giggled at the philosophy that cheesecake is better then men. It is not a love story, however romance or even a lack thereof, plays a part in the story of each character. One of the characters has Down's syndrome and her story is handled really well. One of the things that I liked was that as a character she was presented as being as flawed as the others. I have read books in the past where the author has seemed afraid to say anything that could be construed as negative in anyway which can feel unrealistic and two dimensional. I think the beauty of having a few different threads is that you find not only characters you can relate to, but also characteristics that you associate with.

Lewycka describes the financial crisis in a simple and effortless way without patronising or talking down to anybody. The use of the Fibonacci number is fascinating and so nicely incorporated. It is used in a similar way to the talk of adhesives in "We are made of glue". The end of this book is perfect and the final chapter is a lovely little twist and while it sums up so may threads beautifully it leaves a few questions open a little, which is a great touch as it leaves the reader thinking.

Stitching for Babies

I love stitching for babies. It is just so exciting and you can use lovely colour combinations. My first real project on my sewing machine was backing a cross stitched Afghan blanket. I do admit I love stitching full stop but you can find such lovely ideas and patterns for babies and I loved it when I had hand made gifts for my little girl. They all got tucked away in a memory box after use. For her birthday this year my daughter got the most beautifully quilted height chart and I am just in awe of it.

The neighbours of my Mum and Sister have just had a little boy and I was asked to make a couple of designs that I have made before for the new arrival. I would love to say this was a "commission" but in reality because it was for family it was more of a request with a charity donation as payment. My little sister loves owls so I wanted to pass that on to the recipient and they have cats. I chose two lovely embroidery designs of owls and pussycats (but sadly no pea-green boat!). I used sublime stitching designs. They are iron on transfer designs which saves the hastle of tracing and gives clear lines to follow. I love the designs as they tend to be different, modern and simple. The outlines allow you to do a simple backstitch to just use the shape or fill it in if you decide to.

As good as some complex iron on patterns look all of the detail prevents you from just stitching outlines. I decided to do a simple outline of the two owls but using variegated thread. I find the variegated thread give a simple and effective result. The owl design makes me smile because the parent owl is looking half awake checking on the owl chick. I did however come across another interpretation from a friend who thought it looked like the parent owl was winking in a sinister way as if thinking about pushing the chick off! As disturbed as I was by this theory it was a kind reminder that everybody looks at things differently. I will let readers make up their own mind and keep my fingers crossed that my sister's friends see it my way!

I think one of the great things about this design is that I have stitched it three times and each one is different. The first was raising money for charity so was bright and unisex to appeal to as may people as possible, the second was for a friend so was bright and bold and used her favourite colours. The last one has a more subtle colour palate, as that is what was requested, but it is still colourful with the orange and blue. I adore the cat design with the kitten following, again it was very easy to personalise as you can just alter the ribbon colour. I felt that adding a fur effect would have been overkill. One of the things to keep in mind is that the back of the bib is on display so you need to make sure you have a really neat back with no lose threads, loops or anything that little fingers can get into! I am normally very neat with my backs anyway but if in any doubt with a bib I just put some whip stitches round.

The other item I made was a "taggy owl". I noticed when shopping for toys that there lots of comfort blanket type toys about. I then found a couple of examples online that I really liked so I decided to make my own. I made my pattern from scratch using greaseproof paper. With things like this I tend to design on a folded piece of paper and cut my fabric on the fold so it is closer to being symmetrical. I made one for a friend's little boy at Christmas but used different fabric so they are different and  unique. It was great fun choosing fabric and ribbon mixing lots of textures and extra bursts of colour. I made sure my ribbon was folded so that you can rub the sides together and added details to the tummy. The tummy ribbon has textured squares to make it soft and give the effect of feathers.

I added all of the detail to the front and then layered it so it was inside out and sewed a seam around making sure the wings and ribbon were in place. I turned it through a small turning gap and sewed the gap after. It is really straight forward but fun to make.

My first taggy owl

The new taggy owl