Happy 4th Birthday!

It was my youngest's 4th birthday yesterday and I have to say that it went extremely well. If you'd seen me the night before you might have not expected it to go that way though. Jamie decided that the only cake worth having was a Ben 10 one so of course I agreed. I'm not the best baker in the world but I have tried over that last couple of years to make the kids cakes. I just think it'll make great memories for them, although the temptation to dash to the shops is very strong.  I have recently discovered the local cake shop which as well as turning out wonderfully decorated cakes sells an amazing array of cake toppers, candles, balloons and cake making sundries. ooo! sundries that sounds posh where did I get that word from?  My daughter was in 7th heaven when I took her down to buy the green and black icing for the cake. She loves baking and  has already eyeballed several must have items from the shop.

Anyway after much cursing,  re-rolling of icing and exclamations of  'why did I decide to do this' I made my first and hopefully only Ben 10 cake.

In an earlier post I showed you the beginnings of a Thomas the Tank cushion, another birthday request so here is the finished result. I wanted to try out making up the piecing as I went along (there is a word for this but my brain has seized and I can't remember it). I can be a little bit too reliant on patterns and being shown what to do so this is my first little step towards thinking for myself. The random pieces were sewn in a quilt as you go style a bit like this sew we quilt tutorial only I didn't use a backing fabric. Also the blue strips directly above and below are 'flanges' apparently, I just thought they'd add a bit of texture to the cushion. I'm really pleased with the piping. I didn't take too much time to make up the binding from scraps of the other colours. Straight line quilting seems to be my favourite which surprises me as I thought it'd be a real pain to keep things lined up but as far as my dodgy arms are concerned it beats free motion quilting hands down. Anyway I'm very please at how it all came together and Jamie took it to his bed last night so I think that's a thumbs up.

Last on my list was another small developing tradition here which is an 'i am' T shirt. One of my first ever blog posts was to show his age three t-shirts so a year on here is this years one. It's very simple and sewn very late at night and in this photo covered in bubbles, cake and crisps. The mark of a good party eh!

So thank you too Jamie's friends for coming and for making his day so special, his first words today were 'is it still my birthday today''?

Anyway I'm off to watch the Royal Wedding and enjoy what looks like another lovely sunny day.

Bye for now