A quilt patch

When I was writing the post about my daughter's Liberty Print birthday quilt, I realised that I'd forgotten to make a quilt patch for it, so here it is, finished just in time for her birthday. I actually made it last weekend, when everyone was out of the house and I had several hours of pure, unadulterated sewing time. There was music*, the heating was turned on and there was a wonderful feeling of being back in my sewing cocoon, which I don't find time to retreat into as often as I'd like at the moment.

I made a border of tiny, tiny squares of Tana lawn, which felt like ridiculously good fun, as it fulfilled my favourite project criteria of being both miniature and utilising Liberty fabric. These tiny squares make me think of Tutti Frutti sweets, before they started making them using more natural colourings.

It felt such a long time since I'd done any appliqué and writing with my sewing machine that I had to remind myself how it all worked (I've just noticed that my daughter's name is covered with two different seam rippers in these photos...tip-of-the-iceberg-evidence of my library of mistake-unpickers). [Amended to say after Kate's comment: This isn't actually an embroidery machine and the in-built letter stitches are, sadly, too ugly and badly-formed to use. You can write like this on the most basic of machines by using a closed satin stitch, lowering the top tension, sewing at a snail's pace and raising the foot to turn the fabric very, very frequently. It took me around two hours to write the words on this quilt patch, so it's not a fast option, but quite satisfying if you like fiddly things].

My husband made my daughter a birthday cake that had a similar feel to the quilt patch, or at least half of it did. 

This photo was taken from above, but the sides were entirely covered too. Two days later when she had friends over for dinner, he made her another cake, this time entirely covered in chocolate sweets. My daughter had been given an extraordinary cake decoration by her Great Aunt and Uncle, which we jokingly put on the top, but were then wowed by quite how incredible it was. It was made from lurid pink plastic and when we first lit it a firework of sparkles shot directly up into the air. The flower then began to spin, the petals unfurled until they were spread out as they are in the photo below and a very tinny rendition of Happy Birthday could be heard coming from somewhere inside the flower. Despite it being neither tasteful nor stylish, I'm considering buying one for all our future birthdays as it made everyone squeal with laughter and had an odd synthetic magic to it - I think the unveiling of the annual flower decoration could be a family tradition that we'd all welcome. Just in case you're keen to get your paws on your own singing flower decoration, you can find one here. It will make your cheeks ache with laughter.

Florence x

* I was listening to Passenger, whom I love. However, my husband loathes them on the basis that they rhyme the word 'rocket' with 'pocket' in two different songs. This causes ranting and contempt not only on the grounds that he believes it a staggering display of songwriting laziness to not think up a new rhyme, but also that he adds insult to injury by using, what my husband believes to be, an affected cockney accent when saying the words rocket and pocket. It's easier to overlook these misdemeanours when my husband is out of the house, so not only was it a good morning for sewing, but it was a good morning for Passenger songs.