Teacher/leader gifts

Tomorrow is Big E's last ever day at nursery (pre-school) so some teacher gifts were in order! It is a big nursery so I needed 5 female pressies and 1 male.

I decided fabric flower brooches were the way to go for the ladies:

I made them all different and attached them to a piece of card with the slogan 'Thanks for helping me Bloom'  printed on. I am going to get Big E to sign them all in the morning.

The dahlia is for his group leader, I made it to 'match' the plant we also got her

The other ladies got flowers made with fabric scraps and beads and buttons from my stash.

and one for me because it was too nice to give away!

bad photo I know, I took it while wearing the flower, why didn't I just take it off???!

I had no bright ideas for the man so he is getting a bag of M&M's!

At least next year there will only be one teacher to make for!

p.s. let me know if you want to know how I made any of them. I didn't include any instructions since there are millions of flower tutorials floating around and figure everyone has seen them all before!

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Low fat sponge cake - Yum!

Low fat and cake in the same sentence, really?! Yes, and it tasted fab!

My little sister is 27 today (eek that makes me feel old!) but is on a diet so wanted a low fat cake. I have never made a traditional 'fatless' whisked sponge before but it was easy and turned out great.

This is the recipe I used (from my free BeRo cook book)

3 eggs

4.5oz self raising flour

4.5oz sugar

First whisk the eggs and the sugar until they have doubled in size and a trace is left when you lift the whisk. I will look like thick cream.

Then sift the flour in (from as far as possible above the bowl) and fold in to egg/sugar mix with as few folds as possible.

That is as high as my junior assistant could reach!

Tip in to 8inch, greased , cake tin and bake for about 30 mins . 

My cake is slightly over done (forgot about it...). I was in the garden taking some photos as the sun was shining today for the first time in weeks!

Slice the cake in half and fill as desired, I filled this one with strawberries (would be divine with soem whipped cream as well....). Dust top with icing sugar.

Enjoy!

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Don't you just hate it when...

a pattern you were excited to make turns out horribly?

I am making Big E's school trousers and used a simplicity pattern (which I grew to dislike intensely!).

I made them and it looks like the waist band is missing...

They are also massive (even though I measured Big E's waist and made the correct size) so I think a little alteration is in order...

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Heavenly but not handmade!

Heavenly:

I love the garden at this time of year. Unfortunately it hasn't stopped raining here for the last few days and now the ground is like a swamp and the poppy's look like this

and it is still raining. I think summer in Scotland has been cancelled this year.

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Pretty Girls Skirt

Big E is going to a little girls birthday party tomorrow so it was a perfect excuse to visit Mary's Patch our local fabric/ quilting shop! The little girl who's party it is is a grown up five year old so we chose this some pretty blue fabric with multi coloured watercolour effect flowers on it.

I decided I wanted a really 'finished' looking skirt but had to stick with an elasticated waist since I am not sure what size of clothes the little girl takes.

I measured my Big E's waist and used that measurement for the elastic (22 inches) and doubled it for the width of the fabric so I got a fuller skirt. I wanted the skirt to be about 35cm when finished so cut the fabric 42cm long.I ended up with a rectangle 44 inches x 42cm  (sorry for the mix and match units, my physics lecturers at uni would have had serious words about that!!)

I love French seams, strange I know, but they look so nice so I wanted to use them on the skirt! If you have never done one before they are simple, if you have you can skip this part!

First fold the fabric in half to join the side seams. Fabric should be wrong sides together. Sew a 0.5cm. 

Press seam open

I then turned it inside out and sewed the seam again with a 1cm seam allowance then pressed.

You end up with a totally enclosed seam, so cool!

I then folded down 1 cm on the top and pressed. Then, folded 2.5cm, pressed, sewed all the way round really close to the top of the waistband.

then sewed round the bottom of the waistband leaving a 5cm gap at the side (beside the side seam) for the elastic to go in.

Once the elastic was in i jointed it using zig zag stitches then sewed up the gap .

I like to anchor the elastic in place to avoid twisting and also to let you adjust the elastic if necessary so I sewed the elastic in place at each side.

Since my seam was on the side I wanted a wee label to show where the back was. I used t-shirt transfer paper to transfer on to a piece of ribbon stuff (what is it called??!!) then sewed it on the back.

I finished the hem in a similar way to the waistband, folded 1cm then pressed, folded 1.5cm then pressed then sewed all the way round. I put another row of stitching about 0.5cm from the first just for decoration.

I then decided to make a fabric flower to put on a hair clip. I am not really very happy with it but don't have time to make another so it will have to do. I clipped it to the waist band for the photo but it actually looks really good there!

The inside is pretty too, no raw edges to be seen!!

Sorry for the poor photos, it is pouring (again) and the light is rubbish!

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