"2" cake

Volunteered to make a cake for a combined 2nd b'day party, as my son is allergic to eggs. However, in the end, he got chicken pox a day or two before and we couldn't go but I still had to make a cake (it was too late to make other arrangements). Although I had planned to make something from the Women's Weekly birthday cake book, time constraints meant I had to switch to plan B - a Vegan Chocolate mud cake (muddy but not too chocolatey and not as unhealthy as it sounds), with icing decoration.

I also wish I could say I made the icing and piped it in a piping bag, but now you can conveniently buy tubes of the stuff at the supermarket. For emergencies only - in future I'd rather make my own and save on plastic packaging. But anyway, if ever you need to make a cake a *little* bit more special than usual, this is one thing you can do...

Quilt cover

OK, so not strictly a Groovy Thing, I know, but I don't get to make things too often, so this is a bit of a big deal for me. And I designed it from scratch.

Bought a child's quilt from Icki-ya, but found it was bigger than what the standard seems to be for cots in Asutralia. Decided to make a couple of covers for it myself. Nothing like the sudden chilling of night time temperatures to spurr you into action! This one is plain to make sure I could do it, but next one will have an applique design on it.

Started with sheet the same size as quilt + 5cm each side to add for quilt puffiness and seam, + an extra 2cm at the bottom end, to allow for doubling over of hem for buttons/velcro/press studs - I went with velcro this time. First, I sewed the hem at the bottom end, making it wide enough for the velcro dots. Then stuck on the velcro dots and sewed them on with crosses (you can see the reverse side on the picture above - I probably should have sewed the velcro on before folding the hem over, but I worried that I wouldn't be able to keep everything in the proper place and would end up with velcro bits that didn't meet). Then I sewed one side hem, put the quilt on top to make sure I wasn't too off with my proportions, pinned the remaining two sides, and sewed them. Voila!

Velcro dots were OK - they stuck in place well while I sewed them on with the machine. But using the machine meant that the adhesive gradually gummed up the needle. Also the added thickness made sewing difficult - it may have played with the machine tension - and my sewing was a bit messy on the underside, which unfortunately is the side you can see on the outside. May go with buttons or press studs next time, as positioning can be adjusted somewhat.

Fabric printing a go go

Further to the earlier foray into t-shirts, I'm now playing with printing onto reams of fabric. This is a simple black pattern repeat on a course weave dark coral/red cotton. sPattern is pretty simple gumnuts in various sizes. I plan to do some with overlays in different colours but wanted to start with the basics.