The making of a cake.....

It was L's 10th birthday party with his school friends today. He was having a laser tag party - the perfect indoor venue for a winter baby! I asked L what he'd like for a birthday cake. "A laser gun", came the reply. Now, I'm not much of an illustrator and I certainly didn't idle my time away doodling illustrations of guns like boys generally do. I was more the 'etcher of rock stars names' over my school books. And we've been so busy at work, I'd had no time to research the illustration and print it out in an enlarged photocopy format. So this morning with iPad on the table I went searching for the perfect reference image. Enlarged it as best you can with an iPad, traced a dodgy pieced paper copy and made a paper template for a rough outline on the cake. It doesn't look much in these early stages with its patched bits (see the join at the tip of laser) and quite scary with limited blobs of butter icing. It's at this stage I always lament that I've bitten off more than I can chew and started to worry that my cake was going to look more like a hair dryer than a laser gun! Onto the full set of colour icing. Still a little bland without a lot of depth. (But nice colours...make mental note for next quilt!) Add some black icing...just like eyeliner for your cake! Not finished yet. Add some trim in the form of Smarties and mini M&Ms. Mmmmm....a winner. And what did L say? "It's perfect mummy!" What's more, we walked into Zone 3 and the staff went off, took photos and loaded it up onto THEIR Facebook site. I'm mildly chuffed to say the least! (Facebook: Zone 3 Adelaide check it out!)

Ten

Happy birthday L. You've been itching to turn 10 and have finally hit double digits, the big 'one-0'! You take life in your stride and work really hard with more homework than all the other grade 4's, you laugh a lot, love running outside and playing lego, your wii and DSi. Have a great year little man!

I'm going to make you a star....

My red, white and blue Maverick Star quilt top is finished. Now....for the back. Kay made the wonderful suggestion of using the triangles cut from the stars to make pinwheels. A few of these will definitely be incorporated in between 10th birthday party celebrations, an extremely busy week (or two) at work, a new computer and software and some uni chapters that need finishing. Life is never dull, that's for sure!

Channelling my inner Ralph....

I wasn't intending to work on a quilt like this but I was chatting to Joshua's mum about the quilt I made for him a while back (2009!) and it got me thinking about red, white and blue maverick stars again. I just love how these colours are just so classic and it's no wonder Mr Ralph Lauren sticks with them year after year. Here it is on the design floor. I've used a lot of Prints Charming that I've had in the cupboard, a heap of spots and dots in various configurations and splashes of solids. Each block measures 12" finished and I used this tutorial for the blocks (but without the wonk). It should finish up around 60 x 72.