A couple of you have commented about how fabulous I am to have been doing some sewing and posting about my brights lap quilt whilst making all the desserts in the world. Y'all have me pegged as some super hero.

The truth is so far from that! In a fit of organisation at the beginning of June I thought to myself, Self, you're going to be kinda busy at the end of the month and beginning of July making all the desserts in the world, why don't you write and schedule some posts so that you don't have to worry about posting.

So that's what I did, and I kinda forgot, sorry! From here on in, we're on pre-scheduled posts up until the end of the choir week. I might treat y'all (hee hee!) to a what I wore post on Monday, but it'll mostly be pre-written.

I just googled 'cute photo' because no blog post should be without a photo, right?

In the meantime, you can check out the tabs I have at the top of this page. Some of you may need to check out more about me if you've come over from Emily's post and are hunting info.

For the rest of you, pop over to Emily's blog Mommy's Nap Time before Monday to enter a giveaway for one of my patterns. I think there'll be THREE winners!!!

For everyone else, have a week off and enjoy these posts I made earlier. Just know this, I'm through with baking desserts again for a LONG time! x

Remember ages ago I took part in the Covert Robin swap and made friends with Mary?

Well I won a prize....wohoo!! I like to think it's cos what I made was so amazing, but I think it's just because my name was pulled out of the hat. Let's pretend it's because what I made was awesome.

Well I won a FQ pack from Jill at Made with Moxie. Wohoo!

Thank you very much Jill, it's much appreciated!

They're brighter than this in real life!

The pack of 5 fat quarters arrived one day with an adorable home made envelope and notecard from Jill. Hmm, what to do with it, I thought. I had a scout around on her blog to see if she said anywhere what range they were from to see if I could get hold of any more or any matching fabrics but they're not named. She just called it a Moxie FQ pack.

What then? Oh go on then, let's cut each FQ into 4 and sew it together into a really small lap quilt!


I only have this really pouffey wadding type stuff but I thought it would do ok and I used light grey for the backing.


I have never quilted a quilt before so I just stitched in the ditches and hoped for the best.


There are a few ninkles on the back (is there a technical term for those?) so I'll need to unpick those and redo them and I need to bind it now. I emailed Liz, the fount of all quilting knowledge (It was too early for Sarah who's mum is a quilting queen) and asked do I need to stitch around the edge before putting the binding on and I'm afraid she got rather excited at the thought of me making another quilt!

Liz, don't get too excited now that it's been confirmed. I did all of this in one afternoon and it's been sitting waiting to be finished for 3 weeks now. I don't think we'll be looking at a finish photo anytime soon :)

Hello! You know it's been a busy weekend when it takes me to Tuesday to blog about it!

This weekend was cold and wet and dreary. I put my thick winter coat on and stepped outside to see if I would be too warm. I wasn't so I went back inside and added a scarf!

I posted on instagram Sunday morning this photo with the caption, Nothing says summer in Wales like boots and woolly tights.


Then when we got home from church I set to baking the Alabama Fudge cakes and forgot to have my picture taken. Luckily Dus came along and snapped a pic of me in action. I don't look too impressed!


I do have nicer aprons but I was attempting to make red velvet cake and didn't want my nice aprons to be stained.

So, Nicole tells me that pudding is a very definite type of dessert so I'll call the rest of the puddings, desserts from now on, seeing as I'm in American mode now and all. Y'all.

Let's have a dessert update. I've not made any more shortcakes since the last time we spoke, I have made 9 pecan pies (I made ten but one had to be sacrificed for taste testing because it erupted like a volcano) and I've made 4 Alabama Fudge cakes.


However, the fudge cakes are really not right. I just don't trust the recipe having done it so many times and them never coming out right. I tried googling it, but there only seems to be one recipe for Alabama Fudge cake and that's all that's coming up. New plan. I emailed Toni and she gave me some options and I settled on trying Red Velvet cake next. This is all the while panicking because I've got so much to do and changing the desserts this late is not helpful!

So off I went to Asda to get a bottle of red food colouring but I didn't check it properly, it was natural red food colouring. You know, the one made with beetroot and paprika rather than crushed beetles and additives.


Yeah no, the cake came out greeny brown. It just looks brown in the pic below.


I thought there was something wrong but assumed that there'd be some sort of chemical reaction when it baked and it would turn bright red in the oven.

I've put some food colouring gel onto my Tesco shop for today so I'll try again. Failing that it'll be fudge lovers strawberry chocolate cake, it's one cake I know I can do!!

Oh yes, and I sewed up loads of strips of patchwork for making table runners out of. I went to the charity shop today and bought some blue and white fabrics for putting them with and I found a red and white table runner so that'll do for one of the tables.


Making patchwork makes me snooze, I find it so boring to sew squares together!!

O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave!

Yes, I had to look up the words :) But at least I think they're accurate because I looked them up!

So, something's coming up that I want to give you due warning about because it's taking my attention away from you and my regular work. Fortunately my husband is my boss so I can get time off work, I've just today finished my sewing commitments (other than for this thing) and I've done a load of laundry. 

From tomorrow, I will be all singing, all dancing, all baking and all preparingly American. A Wenglish American. 

See, there's this thing. Let me start from the start. 


We are so very fortunate to have a choir from the New Hope baptist church in Atlanta, GA come to us, one week a year to put on various events and partner with us in sharing our faith. That week is coming, it's the first week of July this year. 

Here's a run down of how that week's looking so far. 

When the choir visited our church in 2010

Monday 1st July we have a food safety briefing led by...oh yeah, me. I'm the 'catering co-ordinator' for the week for our church. I gave myself that title, it's cute, huh? 

Wednesday 3rd July our church is hosting a ladies night, "A taste of America". We've got around 60 ladies already signed up to attend that night and we'll be serving 4 southern puddings. One of the puddings is being provided by Miss Linda, the catering co-ordinator from America so I've only got to make 3. 

The team have given me the recipes so as long as I've got them right, we should be ok. We'll be serving Pecan pie, Alabama Fudge cake, Strawberry shortcake and Banana pudding (Miss Linda's providing this one). 

I've never made any of these before I was given the recipes. I thought I'd burnt the pecan pie it was so dark (google convinced me it was ok though), the shortcakes came out more like scones (I'd been expecting a light angel cake) and the fudge cake was incredibly sweet!

This 'taste of America' logo I pulled off Google is a bit odd...

I reached out to my friend Toni and expressed my fears that the American ladies who would be coming that evening would know they weren't right and would say something. Toni reminded me that a) they'd probably be baked correctly and b) they wouldn't say anything because that's not the way their momma raised them. That really made me giggle and still does now I think about it. Panic eased! 

Not my dessert, hopefully mine might at least resemble this though!

Fortunately I'm not in charge of this event, just have to make the 180 ish puddings, a big container of sweet iced tea and sew up some table runners. Oh and get the kool aid for the favour bags. (Should I call them favor bags as it's a taste of America?). Thank goodness for Helen who's doing all of the organising!

Thursday 4th July we're hosting a massive youth event (yeah, Dus and I are the youth leaders, we are in charge of that one) where we'll open the church to the local youth. We've booked a disco, surf simulator, we've got messy games being organised by the missions team, we've got a cafe, other games and stuff and a talk being given by one of the American members. This was only decided on last week with 3 weeks to go....it's a crazy plan but it's go big or go home, that's what they say in the US, right?

Thank you Paul for this design, you're skilled beyond measure!

Friday 5th July is free and then...


Saturday 6th July is when we will be having the gospel concert. It starts at 7pm and is in the Moriah Aman Christian Centre on Fforchaman road in Cwmaman.

My role on that evening is to feed the 60 choir members at 6pm and then clear up and convert the back hall into an overflow room with no trace of dinner and pudding. I have a team to help though, thank goodness!

Sunday 7th July we've decided to hold a breakfast at 10am followed by our regular church service at 11am. I'm guesstimating around 100 people will be there for breakfast as we'll put the invitation out during the concert night for people to join us.

So there we go. That's exactly 2 weeks until the first event (at time of writing, I've probably scheduled this post so use your imagination!). Between now and then I'll mostly be baking and freezing, cooking and freezing, sewing up some table runners, printing banners for the youth event, purchasing sweets etc for the cafe and trying to keep the house clean enough for visitors staying over that weekend to attend the concert.


I've made 46 shortcakes so far....only another 24 to go. Then 7 pecan pies, 7 Alabama fudge cakes, spaghetti sauce for 60, and that's it. Oh yeah, then breakfast. Ah well, we'll worry about that when the time comes.


Please do feel free to join us for the concert on Sunday, come and find me. I'll be the stressed one in the kitchen :)

hello! Usually I'd wait until the recipient received her swap item before posting about it, but it seems as though many are being encouraged to link up as soon as it's made and photographed. Today is that day for me. Where did the rest of June go?! I'm sure it was the 1st like yesterday?

Anyway, here's my tote bag for my partner, I will tell you more about her when she receives it so as not to ruin the surprise. In the absence of one good, accurate photo, here is a bunch of bad, inaccurate photos so that by the end of it you'll know all about this bag. I'm really selling this tote, aren't I?!


My first challenge was to discover what was expected of me. To me, a tote bag can either be a handbag or a shopping bag, I decided to go with handbag because how disappointing if you'd made a handbag and then received a shopping bag in the post!

My partner was fairly easy going and her mood board collage thingy had lots of good graphic patterns. I chose this Sublime Swirl in grey from the Bonnie & Camille range 'Ruby' for Moda hoping it would be right up her street.

I used my Rosie patchwork tote pattern, but instead of patchwork, I used a FQ of this gorgeous print and quilted some byAnnie's Soft & Stable to it.


Ok, enough of the small talk, onto the finished article. I chose a mustard yellow peachskin for the lining and interfaced it to give it some stability.


The top of the tote is made from pure wool fabric and I topstitched in yellow thread. I wish I'd lengthened my stitch length here a bit to make it more obvious. I did the top curve of the bag with stitch length 4 but this was only 2.5 and it is a little hidden.





I added a zipper pocket, lined with the grey swirl print for a bit of hidden fun.


Looking at everyone else's totes popping up on Flickr I feel a bit overwhelmed, there are so many amazing bags! I'll have to add a Kit Kat to distract my partner from the other bags :)

Phew, what a difference a week makes! We're fully back in winter wear. I had a chat with my friend Toni last week about when summer is. I thought summer started on 6th June, she thought 23rd June. But then I decided it was a moot point because our summers are so rubbish that when it's hot....it's summer. When it's not, then it was good while it lasted!


Thick tights, knee hight boots (not pictured obviously), cord skirt, jumper and I wore a scarf and my coat too!
I'm not sure whether this skirt really does make me look this short or whether it's the camera angle, I'll have to assess the situation when I've got someone else around to take my pic!

Please tell me summer's coming back?

Here's a prayer I've been asked to read in church today and I thought I'd share it with you. Happy Father's day all of you gents out there.



As an aside, every Mothering Sunday our church gives a small gift to all of the women and then Father's day we take the time to honour our men. We don't just give to fathers and mothers, but take the time to honour the women, and then the men. It's lovely, really lovely.

I've got their gifts all ready and wrapped up and not a chocolate or shower gel in sight! I hope they like them!!

My dad at my wedding reception. He wore the requisite FOB outfit for the majority of the wedding then got changed into his 'disco' t shirt for the disco :)

So I've got a friend. Let's call her Stacey*.
*Her name is actually Stacey.

Here's Stacey.


Stacey's always wanted to go to Paris. Since like, FOR EVAH! Monday was her 25th Birthday and her friends got together a party to celebrate. (Good friends, right?)

I got dressed appropriately.

Because of course all French people wear stripey tops, berets and bright red lippy!

Her wonderful friends all chipped in to send her to Paris this coming weekend. She cried! (I had nothing to do with it, I was just in front of the screen at the time so jumped in on this cool photo)

We had a great time and I know who I'm going to for novelty cakes now!!

This cake is amazing! A.M.A.Z.I.N.G!

Hasn't she got a bunch of wonderful friends? My favourite part was the jelly snail sweets. Oh, and the red, white and blue lollipops!

Here I am at the end of the evening, lipstick still in tact. Thank you Lipcote!

Ok, this is an unusual post here and you can all ignore it and go on your merry way if you'd like.

Here's the thing, long story short etc. I need around 50 packets of Kool Aid sending to me from America. I'm willing to pay for the Kool aid, postage, packaging, whatever...but I need them sending this week. I was going to email one of my friends and ask her, but I personally find it really difficult to say no, even to tasks I have no time for so thought I'd ask on my blog in the hope one of you would help me out please.

If you are able to do me this favour then please leave me a comment below and I'll email you so we can talk logistics!

I'll let you know why I need them soon...I just have to get around to writing the post :)

My rust cord skirt made it into the top ten A line skirts for Crafterhours' skirt week!!

I've never been in the top ten before!! If you wouldn't mind popping over and having a nosey at the other 9 skirts and then adding your vote into the mix I'd be very grateful. You don't even have to vote for me (although I'd like it if you did of course). I'm up against some very stiff competition!

Summer has been with us for ages now, at least 3 weeks! It was beautifully hot yesterday, around 23 degrees in church (74 in F) so I got to wear a skirt. For once I took some pics of what Dus wore too. I know you 're interested!

Dus was on the sound desk at church this week. Doesn't he dress appropriately!

See, I told you it was sunny!

 I wore my circle skirt with pockets with a plain white t shirt and a white cardigan.
I do like this skirt but it's an awful lot of fabric to be wearing. I felt bulky all day! Especially when trying to squeeze along the pew to the sound desk at church!
(The majority of our seating at church is chairs but we still have the pews at the back as they are raised ones.)


I did a twirl so that you could see how much fabric there is in this circle skirt. I think next time I'll go for making a half circle skirt! I quite like this photo, I look most amused by my twirling!

It's kind of overcast here today, I'm hoping that just means it's saving the sunshine up for this coming weekend instead!

So my final entry for skirt week is this full corduroy skirt in rust. When I woke up this morning I didn't even have this fabric in my possession. At lunchtime it was finished in the washing machine and hanging out on the line to dry. At 3pm I thought, ah go on then, I might as well start and see how far I got. Guess what...I finished it!

Not quite as good as the previous wall

 I used 1m of rust cord fabric (bought new for £5.99) and used a Burda Style magazine pattern from issue 07/2006 style 131.


The front has two v's on the yoke and the back has one deep v and two darts. I had a few issues sewing the V's in and would appreciate if anyone has any V sewing tips!

I inserted an in seam pocket on the right seam. The left seam called for an invisible zipper but I had a lovely dark brown metal zipper the perfect size so I used that instead and I'm really pleased with the look of it.

I didn't have any coordinating bias tape so unfortunately I had to do the hem properly, turn and press, turn again and press then stitch. *sigh* I hate hemming properly.


This skirt has got quite a wide hem radius (I totally made that phrase up) which will make it comfy and easy to wear. One day my legs might start looking a bit less pale too.

Next to tweed, corduroy is my favourite clothing fabric.

This rust coloured corduroy skirt is my final entry into the Skirt Week competition and I was going to put it into the Full category but looking at it, it's more A line than full so I'll put it in the A Line group.  Hopefully I won't be penalised for putting it in the wrong category!










p.s. Sorry for bombarding you with posts this week, normal service will resume next week!