Monday Made It - Quilts, Vodka and Birthdays!

I love Monday Made It hosted by 4th Frade Frolics and am linking up again to share some bits I have been working on this week!

Quilt for a New Baby

My friend recently had a baby and I wanted to make something for her myself. I bought the Cherry on top jelly roll by Keiki for Moda Fabrics and attempted to use this tutorial from the Fat Quarter Shop. It is a very clear and well presented tutorial but once I had cut my pieces I found they were not the same size as the ones on the tutorial and meant my quilt was going to be far too small! I don't know what I did wrong but am sure it was my fault! 

Thankfully, I had only used half the jelly roll and still had 22 strips to make something from! I decided to just make a simple strip quilt instead!

Laying out the fabric in the order I wanted it - I am not good at decisions and this took me ages!

Sewing the strips together - right sides together and with a 1/4 inch seam allowance

My least favourite part of sewing - I pressed the seams to one  side and then realised I should have pressed them open so the quilt top lies nice and flat.

I pinned a piece of fleece to the back of the top I had just made (you could use any wadding)

I quilted 'in the ditch' (down each seam). This was because I was short of time. I found pulling the fabric apart slightly meant I had a better attempt at sewing down the line more precisely but parts were still pretty wonky! Next time I will quilt about a 1/8 of a inch either side of each seam.

Here's where I forgot to take so many pictures - I'm sorry! It's pretty simple though - I the pinned another piece of fleece to the quilted top - right sides together and sewed around leaving about an 8 inch hole so I could turn the quilt inside out so it was the right way round. Don't forget to trim your corners before turning! 

I turned to the right way and topstitched around the edge so the hole I left for turning was closed up. I threw it in the washing machine and hung it out to dry!

After a good iron (the cotton top and NOT the fleece part - it melts!) I rolled and tied it with a ribbon ready to give!

It's great that it only took half a jelly roll but a shame I ruined the other half as I have another one I need to make! Perfect as a play mat or snuggly blanket!

Vodka Gummy Bears

I was heading to a vodka party at the weekend and we were al asked to bring something along. Last year I make chocolate covered vodka soaked strawberries (which recieved mixed reviews!) and this year I decided to make vodka gummy bears as they were very simple to do and sounded yummy (and were!). It was not rocket science but I did follow a great and easy to follow tutorial from neatologie.com which you can read here. 

The ingredients

Just cover the gummy bears with the vodka (you can top up later if you want a stronger taste)

I let them soak for 2 days and stirred them regularly during this time - I think this is important as there were other people there who also make gummy bears and theirs were a sticky clump!

I decided to serve 3 bears in a shot glass with a cocktail stick for ease of eating!

 They were very popular and I would definitely make them again!

Birthday Bits

I've seen a lot of birthday balloon gifts on blogs I've been reading recently and when I saw the amazing ones made by Cassie at Funky in Fourth (go check out her great blog!), I decided to make some Otter themed ones for my own classroom next year. What she said about her kids not getting to celebrate much at home really stuck with me as this is definitely the case for many of the kids I work with and birthdays when you are turning 7 are very important! So this year I am going to make much more of a fuss of them when it is their birthday! 

I made my own version of the crazy straw birthday balloons:

The ones I made for my class have their names ready printed on so they are ready to go whenever those birthdays sneak up on me! These a a few spares in case I have any joining mid year.

And some birthday postcards - 20 different cute designs using my favourite backgrounds and graphics from some brilliant artists! These are now on my TpT store.

Hopefully, I can make them feel special on their special day - any little thing that helps to raise their self esteem is important and I feel terrible that celebrating birthdays is something I have been so inconsistent with in the past!

Thanks for taking the time to read all the way down to the end! I'm off the check out the big TpT sale now and spend some money!

Have a great week (I'm off to Bruges tomorrow - unfortunately rain is predicted for the 2 full days I'm there...)!