Sophie's Quilt

I have been making quilts for my 4 grand children and I have just completed no.3.  Sophie wanted a red quilt and rather than just produce something that was red I decided to add a mix of different colours ensuring that there was some red in it.  I cut out 3" squares and sewed them together in this pattern.  It was a little confusing at first but I soon picked it up.

Again keeping the red in I added mint greens ans whites

Blues this time with pink and white stripes

Here I added pink.  I needed to  make 4 squares and would join them together with pink material.

All the squares added.  I just need to add a border, wadding and backing

The finished article.  I added a home made butterfly to the center, borders around the square and then jelly roll to lengthen the top and bottom.  I am sure she will love her new quilt

End of Season Sale..

 My son introduced me to a new garden center last week where I managed to purchase a lovely healthy apple tree for £10 reduced from £34.99.  The tree is a James Grieve variety, but the fruit is no longer sold in the shops.  It is a dwarf variety of apple tree which now stands quite happily in the corner of my back garden.

 

 On Tuesday I made a return journey to see if they had any fruit bushes for sale, particularly blackcurrant and gooseberry.  I have one of each of these in my back garden but I had read that to ensure a bigger and better crop it was best to have more than one bush.  I came across this lovely blackcurrant bush which has a good few years of growth on it and it was a snip at £4.99 reduced from £9.99.  It is twice the size of the one bush I already had.

I haven't had much luck with gooseberry bushes.  I bought 2 earlier in the year but they lost all their foliage and are now brown sticks.  I have them in pots but I am going to plant them in the garden to see if they take off next year.  I bought a third bush 3 months ago which is rather tiny and although it has it's foliage it produced no fruit.  So I decided to buy another bush.  This one has plenty of growth on it and with any luck I should get fruit from it next year.  It is about 4 times bigger than my others so fingers crossed.  Again another great bargain at £4.99 reduced from £9.99.  In fact it is cheaper that all the 3 others I bought.

Quilted Table Mats....

I aquired a new table and chair set and needed some new table mats to protect it.  Rather than buy mats I decided to make my own.

To start off I sewed pieces of material edge to edge, about an inch wide and then wove them together.  Here I have secured them using pins. 

 

I tacked all the pieces together then added wadding and backing.  I stitched the pieces together going across, therefore ensuring that all the pieces were stitched together.

Finally I hand sewed the borders.  The pattern is very effective and will be thick enough to protect my table from hot plates.

I now have coasters to make to match

Lemon Curd Cake

My friend made me some lemon curd and as we hadn't eaten it all I decided to make a lemon curd cake.  I found the recipe on the internet

6ozs marge/butter
4ozs sugar
4 eggs
3 tablespoons of Lemon Curd
8ozs Gluten Free Self Raising Flour

Gas Mark 3 for 75 minutes
Grease and flour a cake or 2lb loaf tin.  I used mini loaf tins




Cream the marge/butter and sugar together until creamy.  Add the lemon curd and beat well.  Add the eggs, one at a time with some flour and beat in well.  Fold in the remaining flour and place in the tin.

When the cake is ready, allow to cool in the tin and place on a wire rack.  The cake can be iced if you require.

I used gluten free flour as I have gluten sensitivity but you can use any self raising flour

enjoy.......