Unexpected Baking & Crafting

One of the great things about where we live is that there's quite a lot of free (or very cheap) places to take the children in the holidays. With Orla coming down with chickenpox it means we've had to abandon our holiday 'bucket list' for a while. We've been doing a bit of crafting at home. The kids made some tissue paper pictures from some kits I bought them a while ago from Wilkinsons.

To be honest given the cheap price (I think I paid about £1 or £1.50 ish) I wasn't expecting much but they were fantastic. The kits contained some precut card shapes and the front peels off in sections to reveal a sticky side. There's then a few packs of precut tissue paper that the kids can crumple up and press on.

Erin's set contained a fish and a car:

Orla's set contained a flower and a butterfly:

As you can probably tell, despite the chickenpox she's her normal happy little self and was very happy sticking. All 4 pictures are now decorating out patio doors! I love displaying the pictures the children make but I have to admit the school go a bit overboard on sending home any bit of paper your child has so much as touched with a pen, so I tend to keep the best bits and the rest is carefully disposed of when they're in bed.

Last week we ordered our food shopping online. We used to do this regularly but now only do it if we've got a busy weekend or we've been away and it's more convenient. When ordering I added in some gooseberries since they was in a 2 for £x type promotion with something I was buying anyway and I thought I could make a gooseberry pie. Unfortunately when Alan took the delivery in they'd been substituted. Now admittedly I got more expensive gooseberries for the original price BUT it was a smaller pack size. Not enough to make my pie. A bit of a google search for gooseberry recipes and I stumbled on Nigel Slater's Gooseberry Crumble Cake. What could be better than crumble AND cake in one?!?!?!

It was fairly simple to make but did take much longer in the oven than the recipe suggested, perhaps mostly because I was using a slightly smaller tin (and therefore making the mixture a bit deeper). I often find my oven takes a little longer than suggested. Still, 1 hours and 55 minutes later, I had this:

Gooseberry Crumble Cake

I must admit that at this point the smell was amazing and I was quite tempted to just start eating!

Luckily for Alan, because I think I might have eaten it all, I managed to wait until after he got home from work.

The gooseberries were lovely

It tasted great.

It's basically made by making a spongey base with ground almonds in, flattening that in a tin, covering that layer with goosberries, then pouring crumble over the top before sticking it in the oven. When making it again I'd probably make the crumble topping by hand and do it before mixing the cake. I followed the recipe, making the cake mix first and then I wasn't sure if it was a good idea to leave it while I made the crumble by hand, so I quickly whizzed it in the processor but I don't think it made it as nice as doing by hand.

More Robot Quilt News

It was the August quilting class on Saturday, a week earlier than normal due to the Festival Of Quilts. Unfortunately I won't be able to go this year but I'm hoping to get along to the Great Northern Quilt Show in Harrogate at the end of the month. I've not had much time in the last month to work on the quilt but Friday evening I felt I should make some progress before the class. The plan was to cut my scraps and sew sections for the next round of the border. Of course it didn't seem much more work to join the sections and sew them to the quilt, because I needed to know I'd made enough! Then it wasn't much more work to add the final border round so just after midnight I had this:

Robot sampler quilt top finished

I used random sizes and placement of the leftover scraps for the border. I didn't particularly enjoy making that bit. I realised once the 4 big strips were made that I should have thought more about what they would be next to on the quilt and had to turn one around.

At the quilting class I practiced some more free motion quilting as my plan is to do a lot of quilting on this one and I really need the practice!!! 

Yesterday I got some time to continue working on the quilt as the youngest child has chicken pox so we're stuck in the house. I didn't have enough of the sashing/border fabric for the back so I decided to use a blue fabric with dots on that I thought went well with the robot theme. Of course being a standard width fabric it was going to have to be pieced for the backing as it wasn't quite wide enough. Now I must confess that I have a slight hatred for piecing the backs of quilts if it's being done in one fabric. So I picked up my remaining scraps and cut some strips. I then cut those up into various lengths, I didn't even measure some. I sewed together enough to put 2 lines in the back.

At this point I had to stop working on it because I needed to buy some wadding. After much pondering over the different options and doing some sums to see what size offers the best value* I have ordered a cotton & bamboo blend. My first quilt was made with 100% bamboo wadding (the particular brand I bought has now been discontinued) and I loved it, so I'm interested to see how this blend compares.

 *A little note about the value aspect. The price is often given as a price per metre for a particular width OR as a price for a particular pack size. When trying to work out which is better value I always consider how much I need for the quilt I'm buying it for AND what size the leftover pieces will be. For example it may be that buying a larger width allows me to get a second quilt out of it but the smaller width would only give me small craft-sized pieces. Sometimes a pack has a width that is perfect for my needs where as the stuff sold by the metre would have a small width of wastage.

Crafting update

I've not had a lot of time for crafting lately. I've realised I haven't updated my quilting class progress for a while and tbh it's partly because there hasn't been a lot of progress to show. I have now finished all the blocks and have added the sashing. This morning I have managed to finish the first border section (which is the same as the sashing fabric). There will be another round of border done in a mixture of the block fabrics to use up the leftover scraps and then a larger round in the sashing fabric. I have some extra bits left from one of the blocks ao I may use those in the corners. I shall try it out once I've done the scrappy border round.

Sampler Quilt (still in progress)

 I know it seems that I haven't done much but this month's class was all about getting to grips with free motion quilting. I was quite relieved to be doing that because it was SOOOOOO hot that weekend so working on small sample pieces wasn't too much effort. I was able to try out various threads and patterns and will be doing more of this next month too. My plan is to really go for it with this quilt and do very dense FMQ.  I have to admit being very inspired by the Green Fairy Quilts blog and the Quilting Is My Therapy blog.

I have also started sewing a few hexagon flowers together to break up the monotony of making them and also to feel I had made a bit of progress.

Long Time, No Blog...

Wow, it has been a while since I posted. All I can say is that the last couple of months have been hectic. I've been really busy studying as I had an assignment due and have another due next month which I need to get done a week before the deadline (as we're busy the week it's due). I have had time for some fun stuff though.

I took Alan and the kids to a quilt show in Bawtry. The show itself is held in two churches, we went to the one just outside Bawtry first. There were lots of quilts to look at and a gorgeous patchwork rocking horse. We could each vote for our favourites and Orla chose the rocking horse. I was very tempted too but couldn't resist the quilt with more mathematical shapes on it (cubes, etc.). Sorry I haven't any pictures because I my phone needed charging. If that wasn't enough the other church was even bigger and also full of quilts. There was a gorgeous bargello quilt in purples but my favourite had to be a set of 4 little wall hangings for each of the seasons. I think I was won over by the pumpkins in the Autumn picture and Santa in his sleigh in the Winter one. We then went to the church hall and had tea and cake and some fabric may have been added to my stash!

We've also had a weekend away in the tent. Just a one night trip to Withernsea but we couldn't resist going to the seaside given the hot weather. We pitched up near the play area

You can see the guy ropes of our tent

The kids had fun in the second park too

and we all had fun on the beach

We've also had both sets of parents to visit and entertained a few friends. Erin has been to watch her first rugby match

and I've done the last ever nursery drop off/pick up as Orla will be starting Reception in September! Doesn't the time just fly?!