Shabby Chic Heart Garland - Tutorial

These hanging hearts make the perfect 'shabby chic' decoration, I have several around my flat, adorning book shelves and picture rails.  They make great presents, my favourite so far are the red and cream set I gave my mum for christmas (http://amz-afewofmyfavouritethings.blogspot.co.uk/2012/03/decorating-new-house.html). I have seen similar decorations in shops for £15-£20. I will show you here how to make this garland in a few hours for just a couple of £'s!!

You will need: 

• Two pieces of different material of your choice (To keep costs down look for off cuts in your local haberdashery or secondhand fabric in charity shops) 
• Plain fabric for backing (I used a piece of white cotton from an old pillowcase)
• Twine (about £1 in local craft shop or garden shop) 
• Toy stuffing (£3.50 for big bag, of which you will only use about 1/10th for this project, so lots of projects for your money!) 
• Needle and thread
• Sewing machine

Making your Garland: 

Steps 1- 4

Steps 5 - 8

1. Cut out 4x hearts from each piece of fabric. I always use a stencil so that the hearts are uniform in size and shape. 
2. Cut 8x 20cm lengths of twine. Again measure each piece to make this accurate, otherwise your hearts will not hang at the same height. 
3. Double the twine over to make a loop, this is how you will hang your hearts from the garland. Hold the open ends of the twine together and attach to the right side of the fabric (see picture 3 above).  The reason for doing so is to prevent the loop moving whilst you are sewing the hearts. You can attach it either by hand stitching or machine stitching. You only need a few stitches to hold it in place, but it is very important that the twine is central to the heart and you attach it as close to the top of the heart as possible so that the stitches don't show when the heart is turned right way out. 
4. Secure the twine in the centre of the heart using a single pin (see picture 4 above). This is to prevent the twine getting caught in the seams when you are sewing the heart. The last thing you want is to excitedly turn your heart right way out, only to find yourself having to snip bits of twine from the seams...believe me, I've done it! And it means the heart has no hanger, fail!
5. Pin the heart right side down on the backing fabric (so that the pattern is facing the backing fabric). I like to use as few pins as possible because I find pausing in the sewing process to remove pins prevents the stitches flowing. 
6. Stitch around the heart leaving a 5mm-1cm seam allowance. I always line the edge of the fabric up against the edge of  the machine foot (about 7mm) because this ensures you follow the shape of the heart. Remembering to leave a 3cm gap along one of the straight edges of the heart to allow you to turn it inside out.
7. Turn the hearts inside out and using your finger or a blunt pointed object push out the point of the heart. using the toy stuffing fill the hearts evenly so that they are plump but not so much so that the seams are stretched! 
8. Using a needle and thread hand sew the 3cm gap closed to complete the heart. 
9. Cut a 155cm length of twine. Loop over 5 cm at each end and tie a knot to make loops to hang the garland. Pass the twine through loops of the first heart and situate it 15cm from the end of the twine. When in the desired position make a knot to hold the heart in place. Place a heart every 15cm along the twine, there should be 15cm at each end. 
10. Hang your garland and admire your hard work!! 

I got away from the oven and back to the sewing machine yesterday, as promised! I hope you enjoy the tutorial. I would love to see any pictures if you make these hanging hearts xxx

Custard and Cinnamon Tart

I seem to be on a bit of a baking mission at the moment, and I know I have blogged a lot of cake posts recently... so for those of you who pop over from folksy, I promise I will get back to the sewing machine soon! But for now I am loving the baking bonanza. For my birthday recently my sister gave me the hummingbird bakery book and it is AMAZING! All of the recipes I have tried so far have turned out brilliantly. The photographs in the book are beautiful and really well staged with pretty china, flowers and ribbons; very inspiring! I think I need to work on making the photographs on my blog a little more staged and 'arty', but it is difficult to find a clear, white surface in our tiny flat!

My most recent 'bake' was this custard and cinnamon tart from the hummingbird bakery "Cake Days". I won't include the recipe because I'm sure it will break copyright but I have taken some photos, although they are not as arty as I would like! I have made pastry before but not for a long time so this was a nice refresher. The process of making your own pastry is a little lengthy (mostly because it needs to rest in the fridge several times during the process) but well worth it. And as always custard is SO much better when made from scratch, but again is a little time consuming!! See what you think of the pictures but I think the wait was well worth it!

Right, I'm off to the sewing machine now! promise!! xx

Homemade Chelsea Buns

Upon my boyfriend's request I set about to make some chelsea buns for the first time this week! A very english bun, very fitting for the jubilee!! I love making cakes, but I haven't made any buns before so I wasn't sure how they would turn out. The process of making the dough was very similar to making bread, i.e. quite lengthy but well worth the wait!

The recipe I used came from the BBC food website; I find I always had good outcomes using their recipes and the instructions are very easy to follow. The only thing I changed was the glaze, the recipe recommended a milk and sugar glaze, but I found that this curdles and didn't look very pleasant! So I substituted a water and sugar glaze that is more commonly used as a bun glaze. This makes a lovely, sticky, toffee type glaze giving the buns a professional finish.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/food/recipes/chelsea_buns_95015

Ingredients: 

500g strong white flour

1tsp salt

7g sachet of fast-action dried yeast

300mls milk

40g unsalted butter

1 large egg

vegetable oil for greasing

For the filling:

25g unsalted butter melted

75g soft brown sugar

2tsp ground cinnamon

150g dried mixed fruit

For the Glaze:

2 tbsp water

2tbsp caster sugar

Recipe:

• Sift the flour and salt into a large bowl. Make a well in the middle and add the yeast.
• Meanwhile, warm the milk and butter in a saucepan until the butter melts and the mixture is lukewarm.
• Add the milk mixture and egg to the flour mixture and stir until the contents of the bowl come together as a soft dough. (You may need to add a little extra flour.
• Tip the dough onto a generously floured work surface. Knead for five minutes, adding more flour if necessary, until the dough is smooth and elastic and no longer feels sticky.
• Lightly oil a bowl with a little of the vegetable oil. Place the dough into the bowl and turn until it is covered in the oil. Cover the bowl with cling film and set aside in a warm place for one hour, or until the dough has doubled in size.
• knock the dough back to its original size and turn out onto a lightly floured work surface. Roll the dough out into a rectangle 0.5cm/¼in thick.

• Brush all over with the melted butter, then sprinkle over the brown sugar, cinnamon and dried fruit. Roll the dough up into a tight cylinder , cut ten 4cm/1½in slice and place them onto a lightly greased baking sheet, leaving a little space between each slice. Cover with a tea towel and set aside to rise for 30 minutes










• Bake the buns in the oven at 190 degrees/gas mark 5 for 20-25 minutes, or until risen and golden-brown.
• Meanwhile, for the glaze, heat the water and sugar in a saucepan until boiling. Reduce the heat and simmer for 2-3 minutes.
• Remove the buns from the oven and brush with the glaze, then set aside to cool on a wire rack.















Finally enjoy whilst warm with a cup of tea! a perfect english afternoon xxx

Patchwork

I have previously shared here my square patchwork quilt, which I have yet to finish! It is bigger than a double duvet so it is a bit of an ongoing mission. I have to admit I'm a bit of an instant gratification kinda girl and I like to sit down of an afternoon and by the evening be able to hold something up and say "I made that, and its finished". That is not what you get with a full size patchwork quilt! So I do get the quilt out about once a week and work on it, and it is coming along nicely, but to keep me interested (and sane) I do other little projects in-between. Yesterday I sat down to try my hand at patchwork patterns. This is the first time I have attempted any kind of patchwork that doesn't involve just sewing squares together... and I really enjoyed it! Because it was my first attempt I wasn't too concerned with matching the fabrics or colours, I just used some spare fabric I had lying around, so excuse the mix-match! 

I have learnt two valuable new things: 1. I really, really need a rotary cutter and board... I said this repeatedly when making my patchwork as cutting out perfect squares is difficult with scissors and has a huge impact on the final piece... if it's out by even a few millimeters you can tell (why did I not buy one sooner!) And 2. Do NOT use stretchy material!! The stripy fabric is a little bit stretchy which makes it a nightmare to sew! It also melts when you iron it, which makes it very difficult to work with and resulted in me scraping bits of melted fabric from the bottom of my poor iron!

You can see where the stripy fabric patches are a little lopsided... the result of stretchy material and inaccurate cutting! I'm a bad workman, I'm going to blame my tools (need that rotary cutter) but I think my impatience may also be a little to blame! must work on that! 

I like that with patchwork if you turn a few little squares around you can start with the same piece but a end up with a completely different pattern! so many possibilities... 

Now, I know I said this was a little tester piece... and it was, but I'd hate to see it go to waste. So I had to turn it into something useful, and a girl can never have too many cushions...Right??

The cushion has a new home in the peaceful, sunny little corner of my room. 

Iv just realised its a kind of strawberries and cream colour scheme... I'm not so opposed to it now, the little cushion is growing on me. xxx

Who said city living can't be beautiful...

Hello,

I don't know if I've mentioned this here before but I'm from North Devon and moved to Bristol originally for university and stayed here when I got offered a job. I love Bristol, but I'm a true country girl at heart and on a sunny day nothing quite compares to the coast of North Devon. So when it is warm it is lovely to be able to get back to nature without leaving the city.  We made the most of the brief spell of sunshine a few days ago and went on one of my favourite walks in Bristol, Snuff Mill. This riverside walk between Fishponds and Frenchay, two quite built up areas, somehow manages to make you feel like you are in the middle of the countryside! Who ever said cities can't be beautiful...

I bought a new camera a few weeks ago and other than many cupcake photos for the blog I haven't had much chance to test it out, so I tried a few close-up shots to test the macro...

I've seen a few really cool photo collages where people have found trees, nature and everyday objects that resemble letters and have used this to spell words. There are lots of companies around who will create professional collages that spell whatever you want them to and even have different choices for each letter. They are beautiful and make lovely presents, but they are also hugely expensive. I Liked the idea of giving it ago purely for my own enjoyment... and it was a lot harder than it looked!!! Could I find any tree, branch or root that looked like the letter A... NO! So I went for the top of a fence... But I do like the overall effect as you can see the river in the background. What do you think? Give it a go for your self; I think it could be personalised to make great homemade cards. 

xxx

Teddy bear's picnic.

It's my birthday this week and due to poor (or brilliant) organisation, all of my friends and family have been in different places at different times... so today I had celebration number 3 out of 5!! At the weekend I had a lovely meal with my dad, and then the following night a great night out with friends from home in one of my favourite local pubs! Sadly (or gladly as I had had a few drinkies) there are no photos from the weekend. I made sure to get a few snaps of todays celebration. Today I was seeing my mum, brother and three year old niece; so in fitting with the company (and due to the unpredictable weather: sunshine and hail!!) we had an indoors teddy bears picnic! I baked Cupcakes and my brother and niece made cookies... add in another ton of party food, a picnic blanket on the floor and a few well loved teddies we had ourselves a picnic! 

I got a whole massive, amazing bag full of Cath Kidston presents from my mum today! Including the new apron I am sporting in the picture below... I am very clumsy so I always end up covered in various ingredients by the end of a baking session! Please forgive my hair, I got caught in the previously mentioned hail storm! Also note my new, beautiful cake stand in the cupcake pictures... a good excuse to bake more cupcakes! 

I made two batches of cupcakes this morning. The first was a banana cupcake with custard butter icing with a dried banana chip to top it off. And the second was a vanilla cupcake with pink strawberry butter icing, and a fresh strawberry to decorate. I will go into more detail about the recipes another time... The custard butter icing was a bit of a "make it up as you go" recipe as I couldn't find one anywhere. It took quite a lot of trial and error but Im glad I stuck at it because nothing goes together as well as bananas and custard! 

Thank you to all my lovely family and friends for your company and beautiful gifts over the last few days... special mention to Sarah's card that winged its way from Australia to wish me happy birthday! xxx

tweet tweet...

Hello birdie,

The inspiration for this cute little creature originally came from the Cath Kidston book, sew. The original was designed to be a child's mobile but I thought they would look super cute hanging around the home, so here is my version of little birdie. Today he happens to have taken up residence in the bunch of flowers in my very cute birthday present jug! Now, I don't have a garden, but how cute would it be if I managed to make the birds out of waterproof oilcloth and they could be hung in a tree in the garden... maybe in a blossom tree... one day!! 

To make a hanging bird:

1. Draw and cut out your bird template
2. Cut the bird pattern from two pieces of identical fabric and place them facing together
3. Sew around the bird's outline using a 1/4 cm seam allowance. Leave a 3cm gap along the birds back to allow you to turn the bird inside out. 
4. Now that your bird is facing the right way fill using toy stuffing until the body is quite firm. Hand sew the seam shut. 
5. To make the wings cut 4 identical pieces of fabric in the shape of the wings. To make each wing place two of the pieces right side facing together and sew around the edge like you did with the birds body, remembering to leave a gap to turn and fill. 
6. Only lightly pad the wings otherwise they will not hang down beside the bird's body. Sew shut the seam and hand sew the wings to the body. 
7. Sew on a bead for each eye. 
8. Use a piece of thick thread or ribbon as your loop and attach just between the top of the wings, this will ensure the bird hangs straight. 
9. Find him a lovely home!! 

tweet tweet xxx