I stitched up this little elephant from issue 267 of Crossstitcher. As soon as I saw the pattern I knew it would be perfect for a birthday present for my friend. I used a beigey-brown coloured aida to stitch on to really make the colours stand out. I also added some small, red coloured beads to embellish the design.
It was my Aunty and Uncle’s silver wedding anniversary this week so I made this little bee embroidery as a gift for them. I got the pattern from a free pattern book that came with issue 261 of Crossstitcher. I altered the pattern slightly by substituting the golden colours for silvery ones, adding beads to the crown and including the number 25 at the bottom and my aunty and uncle’s initials at the top.
My boyfriend and I went to Southport last week to look round the charity shops there and to see if we could pick up any bargains. I always find really nice skirts but more often than not they are longer than the style I normally wear so I don’t buy them. In order to remedy this I looked into how to alter skirts. When I found this skirt I decided to buy it and just take the plunge and alter it and it doesn’t look too bad!
The original skirt.
Bits and pieces I used: fabric scissors, tailor’s chalk, a tape measure and iron-on hemming.
Measuring how much I wanted to cut off.
After cutting I then pinned the iron-on hemming onto the bottom, folding the material under the width of the hemming. I then ironed to attach the hemming.
The finished skirt!
A lot of my friends and family have birthdays over the summer so I have a lot of projects to complete. One of my friends really likes Marie Antoinette and I was going to cross stitch a simple “let them eat cake” design and frame it in a hoop but I decided I wanted a change from cross stitch. I asked my friend, who is amazing at drawing, to sketch me a little design of Marie Antoinette which I could use as a template for a hand embroidery project. I love the design she created for me and hopefully I can do justice to it with the finished piece.
The design. How gorgeous is it?!
Supplies needed. I sewed this design onto muslin with meant that some of the detail of the original design was lost. I was worried the end piece wouldn’t look very good but it ended up working quite well.
The finished piece! (I definitely need to work on my hand embroidery skills)
I was in Berlin a couple of weeks ago and was really keen to pick up a German cross stitch magazine. I did manage to find one but I was a bit disappointed with it. The magazine shops in Berlin literally sold 100s of magazines and I could only find one devoted to cross stitch. There were a couple of projects that caught my attention and which I could definitely see myself stitching up at some point.
Cute heart and garden themed sampler
Colourful hens
Heart sampler. An individual heart could make a good valentine’s day design.
Roses
June’s recipe in my Great British Bake Off calendar features lemon and raspberry mini macaroons. I was so excited to give these a go that I couldn’t wait until June to bake them. I have attempted to make macaroons before whilst at university but the results were not good. I think having the right equipment, such as an electric whisk, and a good recipe is essential for macaroons and this recipe was okay for the most part. However, it did lack one instruction I have always thought to be key when baking macaroons; banging the tray of liquid macaroons to get rid of any air bubbles and letting a skin form on top of the liquid macaroons before baking to ensure a shiny top. I was in two minds whether to add this step to the recipe as I a cautious about erring from instructions when baking but I decided to go for it and I am pleased I did. These macaroons taste great! The texture is amazing and the filling is delicious and fruity. My sister helped me to make these macaroons and it ended up being a competition to see who could make the best macaroons; Claud made the rapsberry ones and I made the lemon. We can’t decide who the winner is…
Lemon macaroons
Raspberry macaroons
Mini Macaroons
For the lemon macaroons:
For the raspberry macaroons:
To assemble:
2 baking tray, lined with non-stick baking parchment, a piping bag fitted with a 2cm plain tube
Preheat oven 10 140C. Draw 12 even circles each 5cm across on the baking parchment for each tray.
To make the lemon macaroons, put the egg white, caster sugar and a very little colouring paste into a mixing bowl and whisk with an electric whisk until the mixture is very thick and mousse-like. Combine the almonds and icing sugar and gradually whisk in, then continue whisking for 1 minute after the last addition to make a shiny, smooth and thick mixture. Spoon into the piping bag and pipe inside the drawn circles to make 12 macaroons. (This is the step I added: lightly bang the baking trays to get rid of any bubbles.)
Make the raspberry macaroon mixture in the same way, using the red colouring paste instead of the yellow. (This is the other step I added: leave the macaroons until a skin forms on top.) Clean the piping bag and tub. Bake both trays of macaroons in the heated oven for about 25 minutes, until firm. Remove from the oven and leave to cool on the trays.
When ready to assemble, whip the cream until stiff, then divide in half. Swirl the lemon curd through one portion of the cream so that there are visible streaks of lemon. Add the raspberry jam to the other portion of cream and swirl together in the same way. Spoon the lemon cream into the clean piping bag and pipe a blob of cream on to the underside of 6 lemon macaroons. Then sandwich with the other 6. Clean the bag and tube again and repeat, using the raspberry cream to sandwich the raspberry macaroons. Chill until ready to serve
For a while I have wanted to do something decorative with cardboard letters and when I found some at Hobbycraft I couldn’t resist buying 4 to spell out LOVE. I also bought some white paint to paint them with. I had red paint at home which I wanted to use to create a polka dot look. I used paper ring reinforcements to create the polka dot look by sticking them randomly over the letters and filling them in with red paint. I then carefully peeled them off to reveal the polka dot look!
First coat of white paint
Hole reinforces randomly stuck all over the letters and filled in with red paint
Hole reinforcers
The finished letters
In position on my bookcase
I picked up a paint-by-numbers kit when I was at my grandparent’s house last week. Me and my sister used to do them all the time when we went to visit so we thought we would try it out again. I bought mine as I had seen this project at A Beautiful Mess and really wanted to try out. So far I have completed the paint-by-numbers and now I am on the lookout for some letters and a phrase to complete the project.
A quick update on my “Vote Knope” project. Its taking me much longer than I anticipated and I still can’t decide how to frame it.
It was my friend’s birthday last week and I didn’t have any wrapping paper but I did have lots of brown paper left over from Christmas. I thought it would be fun to decorate the brown paper using a potato print stamp and some red paint. I used a small potato a cut a heart design into it. I then used a paintbrush and painted the stamp with red paint and started stamping!
The painted stamp
Rows of hearts
The wrapped presents!
crossstitchandkeepsakes 