Red Velvet

Hi everyone, 

It seems that my blog posts seem to go in phases, its either all about the baking, or I'm so busy sewing that I bake nothing at all! Now that the quilt is finished it seemed like a good time to get the recipe books out again. Im still working my way through the Hummingbird Bakery book and this time I tried the red velvet cupcakes. Once again the recipe was brilliant and the cakes turned out just as the book described, light but velvety. And they look very cute when they are decorated. Another bonus of this recipe is that you don't need to buy anything extra to decorate, you simply crumble one of the cupcakes into fine crumbs and sprinkle this on the iced cupcake for a simple but stunning finish! 

I am on holiday (YAY!!) for the next week and a half so I'm hoping to get lots of sewing done and I know the blog post have been few and far between recently so it will be nice to have a chance to catch up and share some of the other things I've been working on. Hope everyone has a good weekend. xx

Hi, 

I come bearing good news... The quilt is finished! done, complete, finito! I absolutely loved hand sewing the binding, which I thought I was going to hate, so that was a nice surprise! I actually found it really therapeutic, and it was nice to do some slow sewing rather than my usual whizz it through the machine approach! Putting it on the bed was a great feeling!! I can still see the little wobbles in the lines and where I've had to tweak the quilting because the squares were all very slightly different sizes. I know this is because I cut them out with scissors, but now that I have my trusty rotary cutter this shouldn't happen in the future. Thats right, I said it... The future... I thought when I finished this quilt I would never want to quilt again, but I cant wait to start a new one. I'v got lots of ideas and don't really know where to start, definitely a more complicated patchwork pattern next time now that I have had a practice with the basics!  but for now here are some photos of the finished quilt... 

Have a good weekend! xxx

Making the binding for my quilt!

I'm sorry for the lack of posts recently, I've been sewing! This week I have made the binding for my quilt. As this is my first quilt I have never made binding before, so I am quite happy with this as a first attempt! I took some advice from various books and other blogs, and made a few bits up as I went along! Typical Amy style! I made a little practice square first and found that the recommended binding width was a bit too narrow so I made mine a little wider.

The good news is I have finally purchased a rotary cutter and board!! I am very excited about it and I cannot believe how much easier it is!! I also can't believe I cut out all of the squares for my quilt by hand!! 

Anyway, I have decided that I'm not going to do a tutorial as this was my first attempt and therefore there are many more experienced quilters out there with brilliant binding tutorials on their blogs! I will post my step by step photos though so you can see what I did. 

I cut out strips of fabric 2 3/4 inches wide. I needed nearly 9 meters of binding so I had a lot of strips to cut! 

I pinned the strips right-side together at right angles to each other to attach the strips and make one long piece of fabric! 

Using a straight stitch I sewed along the line I had marked out. I reduced the stitch length on my machine for this stage to make the seam stronger. 

I Opened the fabric and pressed each seam using my iron. I Repeated this with each of the strips until I had enough binding length to go around the outside of my quilt + about 10 inches to allow you to overlap the  binding to make the final seam, which in my case was about 9 meters!!






 I then needed to prepare my quilt, which until now had been left with extra backing fabric and wadding. Using the rotary cutter and board I trimmed the edges of my quilt to make clean straight edges to which I will attach my binding. (look at those lovely clean, straight edges all thanks to my lovely new rotary cutter!)

I used a technique called mitered corners on my quilt. When I reached the first corner I stopped exactly the length of the seam allowance from the end, 8mm. Taking the quilt out of the machine and I folded the fabric back on itself at a right angle.

I then folded the fabric back on itself in line with the corner and pinned.












I started sewing the next seam 8mm from the end, again using the pin to mark the starting point. I continued to sew along the length of each end and using the sam technique at each corner. When I reached my starting point I joined the start and finish of the binding together with a separate seam.

Finished!! Well, almost! I dont have any pictures for this part but the next stage was to fold the binding over the rough edge of the quilt and hand stitch it to the backing fabric. I did this using a whip stitch which is practically invisible and very strong. I really though I would hate hand-stitching because I am such a huge fan of machine sewing and I'm also incredibly impatient!! I even read up on machine stitching methods for attaching the binding but the finished results just didn't look as professional. So I took a deep breath and threaded my needle....AND, I loved it! It was so satisfying seeing the quilt come together and the invisible stitches give the quilt such a lovely finish. I have been on night shifts so I have been cramming in a few minutes of sewing per night before work, but its nearly finished. I will post some photos of the finished quilt later in the week. xxx

Yarn bombing is coming to a town near you...

Yarn bombing, guerilla knitting, graffiti knitting...

Ever heard of these terms? I have to admit I hadn't until I started seeing knitting cropping up in random areas around bristol! I was in St Andrews park recently, enjoying an afternoon in the sunshine, when I saw a tree covered in colourful knitting, like a tree wooly jumper! This was the second time I had spotted what looked like graffiti knitting in bristol. The first time I thought it was cute and quirky but a one off. But after seeing the tree I had a look online and it seems to be a huge new craze; already popular in london and other big cities. The internet research I did suggests it started as early as 2004 in Europe and became popular in America around 2009 and has slowly been spreading ever since! There is even an international Yarn Bombing day, june 11th! The knitting often crops up over night, much like a knitted Banksy, surprising locals who wake up to a colourful new knitted object! I LOVE the idea of a city covered in knitting!! What a great way to cheer people up, it definitely made me smile! 

So keep your eyes peeled for yarn bombing near you!


I certainly will, and note to self... must keep my camera on me at all times... only had my rubbish camera phone in the park so I appologise for the rubbish photos! Enjoy the sunshine everyone xxx

The quilt is out of the cupboard again!!

I finally bought some backing fabric for my quilt yesterday. I had been struggling to decide on the backing and had even been to the fabric shop a few times and left empty handed. The front is such an eclectic mix of bright and patterned fabrics that I wanted to go for something quite mellow but not completely plain.

Hhhhmmmmm, this photo makes my lines look quite wonky, don't look too closely! haha

Yesterday I managed to find some very cute cream cotton with tiny tiny white flowers on it. So I got the never-ending quilt back out today and made good progress. I have ummed and ahhhed for a week or so as to which quilting technique I should use. With it being my first quilt, and the fact that it is the size of a queen size duvet (in retrospect a bit ambitious for a 1st attempt!) I was worried that the quilt would be too big to fit through my machine. After speaking to my friends at folksy I decided to quilt in straight lines but avoid stitching "in the ditch" as my seams were a tiny (teeny, tiny) bit wonky! So I went for the double lines, sewing one line a presser foot width away from the seam on each side. This worked well, and although my lines are a tad squiffy (a knock on effect of following my slight wonky seams!!) I love it... it looks like a quilt now!

I did have a bit of trouble trying to haul the sheer weight of the quilt around, and I found that it was so heavy it would pull to the side, making sewing in a straight line very tricky! I experimented with propping the material on chairs, and pinning the rolled up fabric so it wouldn't slip. However the thing I found worked the best was having the rolled up quilt over my shoulder... however this technique should come with a WARNING.... I nearly re-pierced my ear with a stray pin!! I also spent most of the day buried beneath reams of quilt, sadly I was home alone so I dont have any action shots, but I did take some mid seam shots to demonstrate my set-up.

Pins sticking in my head and wonky lines aside I managed to complete the quilting stage today, which I'm really pleased about! Although now that I'm finished I'm almost tempted to freestyle quilt a flower on every other square. There are two things putting me off: 1. If I freestyle applique them using the machine I wont be able to regulate the size, shape so they will all be slightly different and I'm worried it might look messy. and 2. If I do one I will have to do them all and I'm not sure I'm prepared to applique  50 flowers!! haha. What do you think??

Now just to learn how to bind the edges... better get the books out!! Any one know any good websites with easy to follow tutorials? xxx

Summer Holidays

I have just returned from a brilliant weeks holiday in Sardinia, an amazing birthday present from my lovely boyfriend! Aren't I a lucky girl!! We stayed in the south east of the island (the less touristy part) in the stunning in Ulassai in the Sardinian mountains and only 20km from the coast. The area is renowned for its free-climbing and hiking. We went on two hikes during the week, which were tough in the 36 degree heat but amazing and afforded wonderful panoramic views of the mountains and the villages nested between the peaks! 

We went to one of the local beaches most days. The coast is stunning, beautiful beaches with crystal clear water and mountains in the background. We did lots of snorkeling and swimming and generally chilled out on the beaches... I managed to read 4 books whilst lounging on those beaches!! I've just realised I don't have any photos of the beautiful sandy beaches... only the rocky ones! I promise they do exist, but actually they were more touristy so we preferred the stoney beaches as we often had them to ourselves! 

We stayed in a very cute little hotel (http://www.hotelsumarmuri.com/hotel-su-marmuri.html) which displayed lots of beautiful local textile work made by local women known as the "Su Marmuri Cooperativa tessile Artigiana" http://www.sumarmuri.it/cooptessile/prodotti.asp

The website is in italian but does have some good pictures of their work. The hotel also displayed lots of inspiring antiques, art and textiles. 

We are back to reality now, but I do have another two days off before I go back to work so I'm aiming to buy the backing fabric for my patchwork quilt and start the quilting process, eak!! I'l let you know how I get on. 

I hope everyone has had a good week. Amz xxx

A recipe a day keeps the bikini (hidden) away!!

This baking fad I have launched upon is great for the taste-buds, and for the soul... but not so great for the diet! BUT right now I don't care. I will happily do an extra 20 minute "shred" a day with Jillian Michael's shouting at me through the TV if it means I can eat more cookies!! I am happily working my way through my newest cook book, The Hummingbird Bakery "cake Days". I know I have mentioned this book a few times but honestly, everything I have made from it has turned out brilliantly! Here are the two recipes I have made this weekend...

Apple and Currant flapjacks: These were lovely cold, but so much like apple crumble that they taste great warmed up with ice cream too!!

White Chocolate Cookies and Milk Chocolate Cookies.

This is actually a recipe I adapted from the Hummingbird Bakery book, The Original was white chocolate and cranberries. I did make a variation of this with currants as I'm not a huge fan of cranberries; and they were a lovely mixture of gooey chocolate, chewy currants and warm spices. However tonight I have made cookies for the team at work tomorrow and I know lots of people wont like cinnamon, or currants etc so Iv kept it simple and stuck to a batch of white choc cookies, and a batch of milk choc!

Balls of cookie dough! 

Fresh from the oven

I hope the folks at work enjoy these tomorrow! Happy baking people!! xxx