Baking and Making

I've had a busy few days ......

lemon curd butterfly cakes

peppermint creams

lasagne

 

 lemon cheesecake

string block mug rug (started)

......baking and making things and it's been very relaxing :)  Tried my hand at peppermint creams for the first time since primary school, these ones were made with condensed milk - not mashed potato as a friend suggested.  Not sure how what I think about making them with mashed potato - seems a bit to weird even for me!  But I might give it a go just to see.

The cheesecake was a first for me and it is lovely, very impressed with my attempts even if I do say so myself!

And my first attempt at string blocks, for some reason these scared me!!  So I decided to bite the bullet after reading Sukie's blog as I mentioned in my last post, and they are really simple to do and very effective!  Why did it take me so long to figure that out!?!?  To be honest for a first attempt they are ok - not ideal but passable for a mug rug that I'm going to take into work.  Things I'll do different the next time I try these - iron, iron, iron as finger pressing the seams isn't effective enough and possibly use some starch spray to stiff the fabric.  It was VERY stretchy when sewing the blocks together, this might have been due to the small size (each quarter is only 3.5" square) but I think it will help to starch the fabric for a little bit of stabilisation.

I've also sewn together a quarter of my star quilt main block and I'm really happy with how it is looking.  I've got a few hours to myself this afternoon so I'm planning on finishing the star today and then the next decision will be what backing fabric to go for - the more I think about it, I'm leaning towards red.  So maybe Pedro is right after all!!