Cake, cake and more cake. . . Oh and a minion

I know I said I was going to share some sewing photos with you next time I visited but I have been doing rather a lot of baking the last few days and I thought I would share a few pictures with you while it was fresh in my mind.

This first cake was for my husband's 35th birthday.

He had said not to worry about a cake for him but the boys are at that age when a birthday involves a cake or it's not a proper birthday. They loved it, husband loved it and the 18th month old loved it. As we have so much cake at this time of year I took a large slice, (almost half the cake), to our good friends up the road. Their boys were quite excited by it. We got to talking about cake and I dug out a picture of the first cake I made my husband, 8 years ago now.

He was a groundie back in those days so it seemed fitting.

But back to the current baking, our oldest munchkin turns 6 on Tuesday and is having his party tomorrow. He requested a minion bowling. Nothing complicated about that at all. . . 

We decided we would attempt a rainbow cake, our colour selection wasn't great but it's not too bad.

This is him after the 22nd interruption from one or other of the children. We gave up at this point and took them to a friends barbecue for a couple of hours.

 

And here he is finished. Minus his bowling ball which is not quite finished but not far off. Needs it's finger holes and it's number 6. There is going to be a lot of cake going spare as we only have one lane booked which is for eight children.

I am pleased with him, he is by no means perfect but he is homemade with love and a little bit of stress.

Sewing blunders and new creations.

I had the in-laws this weekend so I wasn't able to sew at all for five days. I really missed it, more I think because I couldn't. 

So last night I thought I would whip up a quick pinafore dress for the smallest munchkin from some owl baby cord I had picked up at the Stoffmarkt the weekend before. There was just enough to squeeze in a pattern I had traced previously. Unfortunately I had forgotten to write the place of origin on it so had no instructions. I added a facing to my pieces for the front and back knowing that would be necessary and sewed the facing on to the two pattern pieces before sewing the back and front together. This all worked out really well and I was feeling very pleased with myself until I realised there must have been more to the original pattern. The shoulders were clearly meant to have been sewn together and an opening left somewhere around the neck to get the head in. However I managed to bodge it by adding two Kam snaps as closures at the top of the straps and I even managed to squeeze a couple of pockets for the front out of the last scraps of fabric.

Not the best picture I know but it gives you an idea. I am going to go on a little web search for the original pattern and I will let you know what went wrong.

My second blunder occurred today when I thought I would run the oldest munchkin up a pair of shorts. His little brother has all his old ones and a pair I made him, whereas he seems to be down to two pairs I made one last summer and one earlier this summer and a cut off pair of jeans which had a hole in both knees. Not ideal when we are having highs of 30+ to 40+ regularly. I found an off cut from a bag we made his best friend and decided that it would be a pretty nifty pair of shorts. I used the Simple Shorts pattern from Designs by Moo. It is very simple as it suggests and I have it pre cut in age 4 and 6 in my pattern file. I decided that as the material I was using was a bit thicker than the last time I sewed this pattern I would use the age 6 pattern but the age 5 length to suit the fabric better. I don't think it's quite right for bermuda length. I whiped up the shorts pretty quickly as I no longer need to refer back to the original instructions and I even added a back pocket to make them different form my last make. I was feeling quite pleased with my quick make until I realised I had sewn up the back pocket when I was doing the waist casing. I had thought I had lowered the pocket enough but not quite. I unpicked it and re sewed the casing and the shorts are now safely in his cupboard but it was my second blunder in as many days.

I forgot to take a picture of the shorts before putting them away but here is a picture of the fabric to give you an idea of the result. A little bit geeky maybe but he liked them when I showed him the finished result.

Now lets hope the next project goes a little more smoothly. I shall be back soon to show you the bag and cushion we made as a leaving gift for a best friend and the gifts for middle munchkins Frog class mates.