Patchwork weekend

Last weekend was spent at a sewing machine in North Yorkshire.

My lovely husband was in charge of the kids for a three day weekend while I got to spend all that time learning how to do patchwork. I stayed in a lovely bed and breakfast in Burniston (near to Scarbourgh) where I was provided with plenty of lovely food as well as being surrounded by so many beautiful patchwork items that it almost made you dizzy.

The lady who taught us (we were a group of 6 ladies all working on different patchwork projects) is called Maggie Martin and she runs regular courses in all aspects of patchwork. As well as keeping all 6 of us busy with our various projects and helping some of us more novice patchworkers (ie me) she also kept us provided with some very lovely meals. Her courses are well worth the money so if you are local to Yorkshire then definitely give them a try.

I really loved making these two cushions (in case you are curious the block design is called 'dutchmans puzzle') and I now have a much better appreciation of the time and effort that goes into doing patchwork!

Halloween craft

Hope you all had a lovely Halloween yesterday - we did :-) Because of having two Halloween parties to attend we didn't have enough time to carve a pumpkin this year but we did dress up and I even managed to make some yummy Halloween cakes.

These cakes were simple fairy cakes and butter cream icing. The decorations were made with melted white chocolate and a piping bag... you just melt the chocolate, stick it in the piping bag and then pipe out whatever spooky shape you like straight on to greaseproof paper.

Sam wanted to be a ghost this year so after a quick trawl of the local charity shops I found an old table cloth that I cut up to make a poncho style body and added a hood to the top. He really loved it and I loved being able to whip something up last minute that actually fit okay!