Mother's Day

Here's my mum (93) with the gorgeous flowers my sister in New York sent. This lily is so beautiful.My two grandsons, Josh, 17 months, and Jack 6 years old having a great time with their corn on the cob. Thanks Suzie, Heather, John, Jason, Jack and Joshua for a great Mother's Day! Love you all. And to my dear Quebec family - son Neil, Lee-Ann, Caleb and Brynn....missed you guys, but see you soon.

Sugar Ice Skates

Here's the skates. Made from colourflow icing. And here's the cake. I added a few little blue flowers to the three empty corners after I took the photo, and across the front under the lettering I scratched the surface of the icing to look like skating marks on the ice.

Piping Ruffles

This pretty buttercream edging on the cake was done with a Wilton 140 tip. As I piped, I just moved the piping bag from side to side just a little bit and it produced these lovely ruffles. Below is the tip.

The cake has a figure skating theme and I made a pair of skates in colourflow. This was the pattern I used. I'll post a picture when I'm finished.

A new quilt

At the Piecemakers, the group that I mentioned in the violets post, we have just started to make a new quilt. Susan is one of our resident expert quilters and I am a very willing student. She brought in a sample block, made up of lights, mediums and dark values. This is a blue one, but the quilt will contain many colours. The fabric had been cut into small rectangles and pinned onto paper printed with sewing and cutting lines in triangles. It's a very interesting process, and I will do a step by step of this quilt's construction, week by week.

A closer look

Seen from a distance, just a blur of colour.......

But look closer.........

Joan, a member of the Piecemakers from St.Margaret's in the Pines Church, planted just a few roots in the church grounds ages ago, and these sweet little violets have multiplied over the years.

Marie's "Beaded Bits"

Marie Alton's niece Amy is riding 200km from Toronto to Niagara Falls in June in the Ride to Conquer Cancer and Marie has made a bunch of lovely beaded bits to sell towards this good cause. The whole story is on Marie and Amy's blogs which are on my sidebar. Anyway, these are the two "bits" that I chose:

CQInternational FFT#7, RR

Mary's block is on the move. In a previous post I showed it completely bare of anything as I am first one to work on it. Here's my stitching:

The fabric is pink metallic. I used a variegated dark green/maroon/pink perle 5 thread for the scallops and an pink perle 8 and dark green beads for the flowers.This fabric is a dark green metallic. The green thread is perle #5, the flowers are perle #8. This piece of heavy pale coffee lace is over cream coloured metallic fabric. I added some cream seed beads.

CreativFestival

I spent yesterday afternoon at Toronto's CreativFestival mainly looking for beads, but at this show small beads were missing. There were lots of larger ones for jewellery. There are lots of classes offered and I spent one doing a little crochet rose in wool, which I am going to try in a crochet cotton. I signed up for another - Cast on stitch, and for the first 15 minutes I was the only student. The instructor was very good, Erla Wilson, and I certainly improved under her guidance. I began with 2 strands of DMC floss just to get the idea of it, and then progressed to Iris (the wriggly stuff!). She tamed it by running it through a little moistened folded piece of sponge. After the last cast on stitch goes on the needle, she advised me to bring my thread under the needle to the back to help stop the "petal" from twisting. Also, keep a firm hold on all the stitches on the needle until the thread has been totally pulled through and the petal is sitting where you want it. Cost for materials and instruction $3.00 for an hour - well worth it in my book!

East End Cake Decorators - April 2009 Meeting

At Sunday's meeting Lyne Coderre demonstrated how to make this barrel cake. (Thank you June from Katie's Cakes for permission to use this photo.) Lyne began with three 3" high, 8" rounds which she carved to make the barrel shape, then iced with buttercream.To make the aged wood slats, she began with fondant that had been coloured with three different brown shades, then rolled the fondant into a long sausage and twisted the sausage shape to mix up the colours. After that she rolled it out in long uneven strips. The outcome looked like slices of bacon! These strips were laid onto a rolled out piece of cream fondant and pressed into it.

She used a wide strip cutter to cut this into about 2" wide strips which she attached side by side onto the cake, adjusting at the top and bottom where the strips overlapped.

Next she added the "metal" rings around.

And painted them black to resemble iron.

Here's another photo of the original cake. The grapes and leaves add a nice finishing touch. Thanks Lyne for a good demo. Next on the agenda was a "Show and Tell" by Jean, one of our most talented members. She brought some items that she had made many years ago. One of the plaques could be a workshop at a future meeting.

Our members like to get their hands into something during the meeting, and those who wished to participate brought iced cupcakes and decorated them with cut up fruit roll ups. It was a little warm in our meeting room and the flowers drooped a bit!

Next meeting will be on Sunday May 10th. There will be a garage sale of character pans. June and Lyne will demonstrate some of the different ways to use the character pans.

CQInternational FFT#7, RR

Never a dull moment in this house! I've just finished my stitching contribution to Cathy's block, and I'm ready to begin Mary's block. Here it is completely bare of anything! But shiny as can be, just waiting for something to happen!

My favourite things RR, Cathy's Pines block movin' on!

Cathy's Cowboy block will be on it's way later today to it's next stop on our RR. Here it is after it's visit to my place. I posted before, about a week ago, on it's progress. Now I am finished and I have to say it was fun to do. Brown is definitely not a colour I like much, but Cathy's various brown fabrics were really interesting. She has some lovely Japanese satin, leather look fabric and gorgeous brown heavy lace trim. Before I began stitching I flipped through one of my stitch books and found two stitches that would be perfect - the wheat ear and the fly stitch. I used the wheat ear behind the fence to look like cattle. And the fly stitch looks good on the stacks of wheat.

Below is the fence, the cows and the re-worked trees.A flowery seam and some wagon wheels Stacks of wheat (oats? barley?).

Tiny Tatting

I've mentioned before that I get lots of interesting bits and pieces from the ladies at the Seniors club that I belong to. These two cards are the latest treasures. They measure 3 1/2" x 6" and the little tatted pieces are so small and dainty. Really tiny thread was used, the leaves and stems were inked.

Baby Competition Cake

CSSA's 2009 Cake Competition was held past weekend in Toronto. There were a total of 48 entries in the various levels of Wedding Cakes, Baby Theme, Birdhouses and Sculpted Cake.

It was an amazing show of talent and pictures of the cakes have been posted on CakesCanada's website, and will also be on the Canadian Society of Sugar Artistry's website.
I participated with a baby cake and received a 3rd place in the Master's Class.

Even with sugar, I can't get away from stitching! If you look closely, there is a patchwork blanket and the hood of the cradle is battenburg lace.

The cradle hood

Amy's Ride to Conquer Cancer

Marie Alton's creative mind and busy fingers have produced 50 different beaded fobs that she is offering for $5 each. Funds raised will go towards her niece Amy's 200km Ride to Conquer Cancer from Toronto to Niagara Falls, on June 13 and 14th. There's also a really special draw for those who participate!

Cathy's Cowboy Block

Cathy's cowboy block has made it's first stop at my place. It's part of the "Favourite Things Round Robin". It's totally brown except for a great picture in the middle of a cowboy on a hill with his horse, looking at his cattle in the distance. The all brown block was intimidating at first, and it took me a few days to get going on it. I'm not finished yet, but here is some of my stitching. The trees are wrong, they should line up with the posts on the fence, so they will have to come out. Also I see a few red tacking stitches that I missed. I still have some more to go on the block, but rather than be a worry to do, it's become fun!