A Weekend of Bunting, and Sweetheart Bunting completed!

This weekend I was very productive and managed to get four strings of bunting finished, including my sweetheart bunting that I have been working on for a few weeks now. 

I love the selection of colours in this bunting. Most people think that bunting should be bright and sunny colours, but I think the muted and vintage tones work just as well.

The spotty hearts and ribbon were left over from my previous string of bunting, and worked really well alongside the patterned flags.

I bought this gorgeous 'Star Delights' collection of fabrics at The Branblepatch years ago, and paired with my light blue / grey polka dot and picot lace edged bias binding, it looked so pretty! Again I had two spotty blue hearts and ribbon flags left over from my previous bunting string and they fitted in really well with the fabrics I had already chosen, I love it when a plan falls into place! 

To make full use of the 2.5 meters of bias binding I added 12 flags to the length, which makes a really gorgeous collection of colours and some extra length to my standard bunting length I have worked with. 

And here it is! The finished sweetheart bunting. In the end I managed to make two lengths of 10 flags to make full use of the different combinations of red and white. The little wooden buttons looks very cute in the centres of half of the flags, and I used a subtle cream lace underneath the plainer hearts. I love the red bias binding as well as it pulls all of the colours together and finishes it off beautifully. 

Although it was quite time consuming to make, I'm so pleased with the finished outcome, and I'm looking forward to experimenting with different colours and shapes in my future strings.

A Weekend of Bunting!

This weekend I have been working not only on my sweetheart bunting, but I have finished another string that I had started a while ago and was crying out to be completed. I ordered some more bias binding earlier in the week, so I set too and finished it. 

I finished embroidering the hearts with the wooden buttons onto their calico triangles this week, so I sewed the backs to the fronts today and turned them the right way out to create the bunting triangles. I also sewed the lace to the calico triangles for the plainer hearts, and now these need to be blanket stitched on top. I have the red bias binding required for these strings, so they hopefully now shouldn't take too long to complete! I just need to pick up the speed of my blanket stitch and I will be away!

A Weekend of Baking...Salted Caramel Brownies

As I hadn't made anything for a while, I decided to try out a recipe I have had my eye on for a little while now, salted caramel brownies. 

I had a tin of condensed milk, and instead of buying an extra tin of caramel, I decided to make my own by using the method from my Millionaire's shortbread recipe. 

All was going well until I took the pan off the heat, and I have a feeling I may have heated the sauce too much, as instead of a lovely smooth caramel, I had a lovely smooth toffee instead! I added the salt to half of it as specified in the recipe and added the other half to the batter. I added half of the brownie mixture to the pan and then went to add the caramel, however this was when I realised that I had made toffee! So I made salted toffee crumbs, and then poured the other half of the mixture over the top. At this point I decided to rename the recipe, so this batch of is called Salted Toffee Crumb Brownies!

Due to the texture of the toffee, the brownies took a long time to cook, and after 40 minutes, I decided to take them out. Having just tried them they are indeed delicious albeit rather squidgy (!) and the slightly chewy salted toffee is a lovely contrast to the chocolatey brownie.

Overall I am happy with the result, however if I make them again I think I will relent and use the caramel from the can as the recipe suggests...however I will not be defeated by a delicious little mistake, onwards and upwards!

A trip to Blenheim Palace

Last weekend on Valentines Day we decided to go out and visit Blenheim Palace, a gorgeous historic house and gardens in Woodstock, Oxfordshire. Blenheim was built in the early 18th Century as a gift to the first Duke of Marlborough, John Churchill, the military commander who led the Allied forces to victory over the Spanish. It was originally designed by Sir John Vanborough and has parkland and grounds designed by Lancelot 'Capability' Brown, but is probably best know for being the birthplace of Sir Winston Churchill.

It was a beautiful sunny and crisp day when we visited, perfect for wandering around the palace and the grounds, and we enjoyed it so much that we upgraded our tickets to free annual passes so we can go back and explore the rest.

Here are some of my favourite pictures from the trip. I would thoroughly recommend a visit and you can find out more about the house, park and gardens at the following link: http://www.blenheimpalace.com

The decorations in the Great Hall culminate in an allegorical painting at the centre of the ceiling by Sir James Thornhill, at 67 feet above the floor. Grinling Gibbons also carved many of the decorations in this room.

The Water Terraces built by Achille Duchene

Italian Garden, also by Achille Duchene

The frescoes in the Saloon were painted by Louise Laguerre 

The palace has one of the most impressive collections of paintings in Europe. As well as the paintings, the state rooms hold a number of beautiful tapestries. 

Statue of Queen Anne who gave the grounds and a sum of money to the 1st Duke of Marlborough to build Blenheim Palace

The Long library is home to Europe's largest privately owned organ.

The Chapel was the last part of the palace to be built and was consecrated in 1733

Sweetheart Bunting - Continued!

This weekend I continued with my sweetheart bunting, and started to add the decoration onto the calico triangles. I always use a medium weight calico as the basis for my bunting as it's the perfect thickness to hold the decoration and I really like the colour, I think it compliments and brings out the colour of the fabrics perfectly. I cut out a few more than were needed so I can get a head start on my next string!

Next I cut out the lengths of lace required for each of the triangles that would have a heart on without a button. I thought that this would be a nice addition and a bit of extra decoration as well as the blanket stitch.

I pinned the hearts with the button onto their calico triangles, and then started to blanket stitch around them. To make sure that they were level and straight I measured from the top of the triangle to the top of the heart, which will hopefully mean that all the triangles will be level when they're lined up on each flag.

Here's the first one looking all fancy! This one will be ready for its other calico side and then be stitched before being turned the right way around, pressed and attached to the bias binding. 

Sweetheart Bunting

Whilst I have been experimenting with my embroidered words on calico, I decided that I wanted to improve my skills and bought myself 'The Stitch Bible' by Kate Haxell. It covers a huge range of stitches from beginners to advanced along with a few projects to try along the way. I had some bunting in mind that I wanted to try, and I wanted to use a stitch that I had learnt when I was little...but had forgotten! I love blanket stitch, and it is a lovely yet practical stitch used on a lot of country craft. One of my favourite designers who uses this stitch a lot in her work is Jan Constantine who has a gorgeous range of hand embroidered textiles that I love.

I drew out my hearts on a paper template, and then made sure that they fitted on my bunting triangle.

Along with my embroidery book I bought a washable fabric marker pen, to help mark up smaller pieces for sewing. I started to draw around the hearts onto the white felt, however unfortunately being blue and being a pen it did soak all the way through to the other side, so that went straight in the bin! I then discovered that pencil worked just as well, so I stuck with that! Luckily it worked very well on the red.

I cut out a mixture of sizes and colours, and then started the embroidery using my new book! I had to adapt it slightly as I'm left handed and the hand that you hold the work in and the hand that you move the thread with are quite different, but once I had got used to it (and it took a little bit of time, it is definitely not like riding a bike!) it turned out quite well. 

I then added my favourite wooden buttons to the centre of half of the hearts, which added another layer and a different texture. The plain hearts will be sewn onto lace or decorative fabric to provide some more interest, and I'm looking forward to seeing the finished bunting string.

This was as far as I got over the weekend, however I plan to keep going next weekend to try and get the flags made and then I will need to attach them to the bias binding. This seems like an apt project coming up for Valentine's Day, so for once I've managed to hit the seasonal craft nail on the head!