Moments that Mattered in 2013

When I read that Lloyds Bank were sponsoring a competition to find out moments that mattered my initial instinct was that I wouldn’t be able to enter as 2013 had just been pretty awful and I would rather just move on to 2014 . Obviously that was the most ridiculous response as a mere couple of seconds thought put a much more positive spin on things.

To me moments that matter could be either something that leaves a deep impact on you so you remember them for the rest of your life or something that seems pretty insignificant at the time but changes your life completely.

Back in March my husband was hospitalised and came very close to being no more. The moment that really mattered in this case was not the hospital experience but my darling hubby putting two fingers up to St Peter, yelling yahoo sucks and treating it as a fresh start. 

The next moment that mattered to me in 2013 was my little boy starting at big school! The feeling of cutting the apron strings is a bit bizarre but he settled in so quickly that it was hard to feel sad for too long. I have to stop feeling sad about each landmark event in the children’s lives but I am sure I just have to blink and they will be all grown up. Hubby has pointed out that they are unlikely to be able to afford to move out at 18 though, maybe now is the time to start saving up for their deposits!

My personal moment that mattered was I got my sewing mojo back! To some it might not be a big thing but for me sewing is a combination between a creative outlet and meditation. I really missed the urge to stitch and now I am ready to start creating again.

Happy (very late) New Year

Ok, I am exactly a month late to make that statement but I have been run off my feet and only just had two minutes to blog. We went up to visit hubby's family last week to deliver Christmas pressies (my father-in-law likes to do Christmas a month late, a remnant of the pub days) and I madly decided to finish the quilt that I had started two years ago.

As someone who has been sewing since she was tiny I have tried my hand at most forms. I’ve tried toy making to dressmaking to upholstery but I had never seen the point of cutting up perfectly good bits of fabric into tiny little bits only to sew them back up again. However, my Mother-in-law had been feeling quite down and missing my husband (she lives over four hours away) so I thought a quilt would be something lovely to make her as it could give her a hug any time she wanted it.

I spent quite a while reading what I could about the art of patchwork, had some fun fabric shopping and eventually chose a range by Moda called Park Avenue. It had a lovely vintage feel and was in a colour range that suited my MIL down to a tee. From what I read it is best to select a table runner or baby quilt as your first project so not to overwhelm yourself but being me I decided starting on a king size quilt was the way to go.

I chose a week that the children were staying down with their grandparents and sat down to make the quilt. The most surprising thing was just how long it took to cut all the pieces out! I didn’t even manage to get to the sewing machine as it took a whole day just to prepare the fabric. 

The rest of the week was spent taking these 

to this.

Then I put it away. I told myself I didn’t have the time and no cash to buy the wadding, binding and backing but to be honest I was a bit overwhelmed (for that read scared) at the thought of quilting the thing.

Fast forward a few years and I realised it was a now or never thing and gave myself a fortnight to finish piecing the top and finishing the whole quilt off. I will skip the basting of the quilt sandwich part as this is too traumatic to think about and skip straight to the bit I was dreading – the actual quilting!

I think the time pressure forced me to just going for it and to my surprise I loved it. I started off by using my walking foot to quilt straight lines on the window part of the quilt but I made the rooky mistake of making the gap between the lines far too narrow and it was taking me forever. After literally days of straight line stitching I had my fill of it so I dropped the feed dogs, changed my foot and began to meander. I was surprised at how quick it was and managed to fill all the blank space in a matter of hours. I think the free motion quilting I produced was far too dense (I got through over a km of thread) but I loved it. I managed to bind and label the quilt without too much of an ordeal and had the quilt ready with an hour’s worth of sewing time to spare!

 The Quilt in it's new home

My MIL loved the quilt and I am hooked. Quilt number two is in the planning already, maybe there is something in this fabric hacking!

Let the Battle Begin!

I have competed in quite a few cookery competitions, the last one cooking in the middle of a marquee surrounded by a large crowd at the Royal Welsh Show so I should be quite prepared for the next week. Sadly I was 14 at the time and so I think *ahem* years later I don't think I can count this as an experience that will help.

A few months ago I came across this competition on Simply Beef and Lamb’s website looking for recipes for the Battle of the Burgers. 

I put my thinking hat on, thought of some of my favourite flavours that would compliment the meat and filled in the entry form. Fast forward to the middle of August and I received a fabulous email saying that I had been short listed and I needed to produce a full working recipe. I did feel slightly panicked by this as I am a 'add a dab of this and a splash of that' type of cook but for once I was very disciplined and noted down quantities and times. 

The recipe was typed out and emailed for the Simply Beef and Lamb's home economist to try out and I just had to wait until the 28th of August to find out if I had made it through to the finals. 

The day rolled round and I was checking my emails every four minutes. By mid afternoon I had resigned myself to not making the grade so when the email arrived at quarter to six saying I was through to the final cook off I was ecstatic - for about two seconds flat and then the butterflies kicked in! There was only one thing for it, grabbing my apron and cooking my way through the nerves. This pretty much brings me up to today, the kids think they are in heaven having burgers to eat every day and any person coming remotely near the house becomes a taste tester. I am really happy with my recipe and will try and find a few minutes tomorrow to type the recipe out. No burger making tomorrow though as my little boy is moving up to year 7 and a new school *gulp* 

Cooking competition nerves have nothing on Mummy nerves!

Five little Ducks.......

My youngest daughter is a massive fan of novelty cakes and spends a lot of her allocated computer time watching youtube videos on how to ice cupcakes. We to make something special for each school bake sale and practising is one of her favourite activities.

One of the most inspirational sites one the web is Hello Cupcake and today we have had a go at their duck cupcakes.

We couldn't get hold of doughnut holes for the head and so made some cupcake pops for the head by crumbling up cake and mixing it in with some frosting, then rolling into little head shapes. The beaks and feet were made from starbursts (still want to call them Opal Fruits all these years on) and overall I think they turned out well. Evie's favourite bit was dipping them into the melted frosting - messiest bit of baking for a while!

Here's one of the little guys!

Is there a Doctor in the House?

I have to let it out there early on, we are a household of Doctor Who addicts. When I was little there were very few television stations and so it was the norm to sit down as a family to watch a program. Today we live in a multimedia age and it is a rarity to have more than a couple of us watch a show so it is a sheer pleasure to have found something that we not only watch together but also forms the basis of a family hobby.

The first thing that had the Who wand waved over it (or should that read so sonic screwdriver?) was my son’s bedroom door. The poor thing had been ill for some time with Glandular Fever and had spent the best part of a term off school so to cheer him up we transformed his door into the TARDIS. The door was a wooden panelled door so was quite easy to transform with a tin of blue paint, a bit of MDF attached to the top for the roof and lantern and various police box signs printed onto photo paper. Bit bizarre having the Doctor’s ship parked on my landing but worth the look on his face!

Quite hard to photograph as the paint is so shiny! 

We have a couple of ongoing projects at the moment. A while ago I came across a Doctor Who quilt along on a blog called Whims and Fancies. Soma and Caroline from Trillium Design are designing a Doctor Who block every two weeks (you can read about it here Doctor Who QAL). The quilt blocks are put together by paper piecing, something I have never tried, and they did make it clear on the blog that although they were not the hardest of projects to do they were not beginners pieces. Was this going to stop me, I think not! It was my eldest daughter’s birthday coming up and I wanted something special to give her.

I finished the first block whilst watching Andy Murray win Wimbledon so the air was filled with a combination of some rude words of frustration intertwined with whoops of excitement but once I had finished I was quite impressed with myself. For me to like something I have produced is an uncommon occurrence so I am now hooked. 

The background was chosen as it reminded me of the Van Gogh exploding Tardis picture.

I will write about future blocks in a later posting, I have started a few but I am waiting on fabric to really get going.

The last ongoing project we have on the go at the moment is a collaboration between my eldest daughter and myself. We have been really lucky to have snagged tickets for the 50^th anniversary convention where we will be lucky enough to see Matt Smith and a variety of previous Doctors. What is the collective noun for a group of Timelords by the way? A convention of Doctors or maybe a lodge of medics?

Millie decided she wants to dress up as the 10^th Doctor and so has designed the following. 

It is now my job to translate her design in to reality. I've found the perfect fabric and I have drafted the pattern so hopefully it will work out. Evie, my youngest daughter, is now saying she wants a 11th doctor outfit and Meggie wants a Tardis dress! I guess I may be a little busy with the sewing machine between now and November!

How I learnt to Sew

I was always fascinated by my mum's sewing machines and from the earliest age I wanted to use them. My mother owned two machines, the first I was allowed to use as it was an old hand crank Singer and the second I was 'not to touch under any circumstances' as it was an electric machine.

The first time I used the electric ended in disaster but started my love affair with sewing! My mother was frantically trying to get my sister and I ready for nursery whilst getting herself prepared for work and the lure of the machine grew too great for me. I cannot remember now if it was the desire to make something that drew me to it or just a three year old's love of moving parts but I can remember how tantilising the and thought of driving this appliance was. I know I waited until my Mum was totally immersed in preparing breakfast and then I snuck into the room and plugged the machine in. What I didn't expect when I sat down and pressed the foot pedal was the sheer speed of the machine and quite how fast it was compared to the hand crank. I think the penny dropped when my fingers were dragged under the needle and when the needle passed though my nail into my finger. I can't remember screaming but I can recall being worried in part about getting in trouble with my Mother for disobeying the rule but most of all about getting blood on the little dress I was making for my Sindy doll!

So what has this got to do with learning to sew? Simple really, sewing is all about having a passion about something but never, ever sticking your finger under the needle.

Joining the World of Blogs

Quick intro post, I'm Lucy and I'm a busy Mum of four who keeps her sanity by her many hobbies! Sewing, genealogy, cooking, you name it I have tried it. I'm a frustrated writer, full of ideas but sadly a bit lacking on the skills to get the story down and would have won a Turner Prize if it wasn't for my sad lack of drawing skills.

However I do have four very talented and creative children who share some of my hobbies and in many cases far exceed my abilities. I aim to share some of the things that the kids and I produce in this blog and maybe share a few hints and tips that I have picked up over the years.

To start off a gratuitous cake picture to make the blog look pretty - from a few months ago when I went through my cupcake phase, triple salted caramel!