Your Quackers!

Well its that time of year again...no not christmas but Maries birthday, so I had to make a cake! She has an odd passion for ducks. And the duck pond was born! (click the pictures for bigger Images)

I wasn't sure what to make first of all so I started with making a basic sponge and shaping it up, filled with buttercream icing and respberry jam! (mmmMMm)

Before smoothing over

Piping work!

 One of my bakes didn't work to well and sunk in the middle and so I decided to cut out a smaller round and make it into an extra tier on top! Then I just piped some yellow buttercream icing around the outside.

One little duck!

Lovely pond!

  Using some yellow icing I made a little duck to go in the pond. The pond was made using blue icing with some white marbled in it and then green icing around the edge and a bit of tweezer work to make it look like grass a bit more!

I thought the duck looked a bit lonely on its own so I made a second duck. I then used the different coloured icing to make big dots and spelt her name out using white icing.

I finished the cake off by making lots of smaller yellow and green dots and stuck them all around the cake! all that was left now was for the candles and for it to be eaten and demolished!

Sashing Disaster!

With 1 block to go I laid them all out on the bed to get an idea of how it was going to look and I quite liked the idea of dark pink background.....

Unfortunately I had already chosen the sashing fabric - a green / pink / blue splodgy pattern. So I laid all this out....

.....and HATED it! The green did nothing for the beautiful background fabric in the blocks, it was far too busy and totally lacking in contrast. What was worse was that it was Saturday night and Busy Bees is closed on Sundays and Mondays - so I had 48 hours to stress over it!
So first chance I got I whizzed over and got Sue and Sandra working hard pulling bolt after bolt of fabric from the shelves to find the PERFECT sashing fabric. We tried everything, green, pink, red, blue but finally decided on black with streaks of blue which looks navy from a distance - PERFECT! I raced home like a woman possessed and sewed until my fingers looked like pincushions.

And heres a glimpse of how it will look when the borders are added (they aren't actually added yet, its just laid out on the bed). I don't want to bang my own drum but I think it looks superb for a first attempt at hand patchworking.

Loads-a-Blocks!

Well I've now completed all 12 blocks so heres a look at them. I'm really pleased with how well the colours work together. The final block is one I designed myself because I wasn't very keen on the pinwheel block we were supposed to do.
I think my fav blocks are the Tumbling blocks, the Applique flowers and Dresden plate..... mmm I think I love them all!!

Churndash

Double 9

Windmill

Dresden plate

Bow Ties

Flying Geese

Frienship Star

Big T

Applique

Tumbling Blocks

8 pointed star

Jo's Block!

The only good dummy is a dead one!

We I haven't had much time to do any shooting recently as we only seem to get 1 in 10 days free of rain in cardiff! but Tuesday was a nice day in the end so managed to shoot a few arrows and test my new target dummy that I have made!

I filled cardboard boxes with this foam for the main body and head

I put a wooden pole in the head so it can be taken out of the body

 The target dummy took the arrows quite well even in the head as well which I'm pleased with. I also managed to break another arrow when I missed and hit the wall behind grr I really must get an archery net as this will cost me a fortune. I will be making some more arrows soon anyway as winter months give me less chance to shoot, i'm looking to get some turkey feathers to make some bigger fletchings.

Leather arm bracer

Leather Quiver (back quiver)

Unstrung Longbow

Grip with a horn passing plate

Strung bow shown near door for size

Quiver of arrows (getting smaller as i keep breaking them)

Archery Range!

One dead dummy!

Update On Patchwork
Sorry for the delay in posting but I've got so into my patchwork I haven't had a chance! Anyway here are some pics of when I started, I've got much further than this but haven't taken the pics yet!

 

Birthday Bakes!

Although the Great British Bake off has just finished, this cake has nothing to do with it :P I enjoy making Birthday cakes (ok ok I lie, I enjoy making any cake and eating it!) So I decided to make one for our friend Jo.

It didn't go quite to plan as I had hoped, I was using old baking powder and I think it stopped the mixture rising properly, so instead of a two tier cake we have a three tier chocolate cake. It worked out in my favour really because the height of the cake came to the correct height of a chocolate finger! (see pics below) and on top of that it meant double the amount of jam and cream, mmmm.

The filling in this cake is raspberry jam and whipped fresh cream. I am a huge fan of chocolate and love to eat it but I seem to be the only person who feels chocolate cakes are ruined because there is too much.. well, chocolate! Why does the filling, the cream, the topping, the decoration, the SAUCE! always have to be chocolate? (grr /rant off!) anyway the cake was lovely and Jo enjoyed eating it!

Three tiers of goodness!

Fingers crossed the filling stays in :)

Partly decorated

The end effect! (the firework in the middle was a great addition)

Patchwork Krazy

I've had a busy crafty couple of days, with my patchwork course due to start in 6 days I thought I best get a move on with my cushions otherwise I'll never finish them. Heres a few pics of my log cabin cushions in progress, one of them is a bit wonky so I'll probably have to make another.

I also made a trip to Busy Bees to buy fabric for my course, I've decided to go for brights - cerise and teal!

 

And just for luck heres a pic of Rosie camping!