Coconut Cake

Made I coconut cake in a great hurry. My daughter is in the school play and on Saturday afternoons a group of parents get together to make costumes. I went to my first workshop a number of years ago expecting to throw a few elastic-waisted pants together. Oh noooo! These are the real deal. Fancy period bodices and capes and bonnets and beautiful ruffled Edwardian dresses! My dressmaking has improved out of sight.
Anyway I promised to take afternoon tea to the the latest sewing session and literally threw a cake together.
I would have a photo but there were only crumbs left!

Coconut Cake
125g butter (1 stick)
1 cup sugar
2 eggs
1/2 cup dessicated coconut
1/2 cup boiling water
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 1/2 cups self raising flour (or all-purpose flour with 3 tspn baking powder)

Pop the kettle on and put the coconut into a bowl. Pour the boiling water over the coconut and leave it to soak.
Meanwhile cream the butter and sugar and add the lightly beaten eggs slowly.
Once this is nice and fluffy mix in by hand the flour, vanilla and cooled coconut mixture.
Pour into a beautifully prepared 20 cm caketin and cook in a moderate oven for 35-40 minutes.
When cool, ice with Lime Icing which is just about a cup icing sugar with enough fresh lime juice to make a reasonably stiff icing.

Put the kettle on again. Make a nice pot of tea. Take a knife and cut a big slice. Plop on the couch with a cup of tea and a piece of cake. The world is a wonderful place!

Beautiful gardens

Just spent the day with a dear friend at the National Gallery of Victoria Open Garden Day. OMG!! The gardens were huge and incredibly beautiful.In some ways it was really nice just to stroll around knowing that we will never have an indoor pool and tennis court but wouldn't it be luverly!
No photos unfortunately because weren't allowed so I put this in instead.

What a gorgeous quilt from the Material Obsession blog.
I have both of Kathy's books and continually go through them trying to decide which project! All those delicious colours!

Rainy day quilt

Horrible weather here yesterday-rain and hail all day. So I put together the beginnings of a strippy quilt. This is will hopefully be for my dear in-laws in Scotland for their 50th wedding anniversary. What do you give people who have everything? A quilt!








We had a long drive this morning to choose a puppy. They were only 4 weeks old and so cute we wanted them all. Not very practical in a suburban backyard! So we finally settled on this one.

Now we are having troulble coming up with a suitable name for him. I am quite keen of "Jeffery" but didn't get alot of support!

Oh and this is my friend Jane's quilt which I snapped in a hurry so hence the awful photo. The colours are lovely!

Favourite colour?

I don't know if anyone has noticed but I am slightly obsessed with red and pink. Can't think of a quilt I have made that doesn't feature one or both!
So I just love this bag made by Vanessa.



Would love to put together a quilt using similar colours.

Should I admit that I am an idiot?!

I have had the same rotary cutter since I first started patchwork about five years ago. Somehow I always found rotary cutting tedious, difficult and not very accurate. It was also a bit of a pain in the wrist but I decided I had to persist otherwise everything was just too slow. Imagine my amazement when I realised that I had been putting Olfa blades in a Kai handle. That was the clunking I couldn't get rid of! The most amazing thing is that I have admitted this to the outside world!

While I wait for a new handle to arrive (cheaper than throwing away my 10 pack of blades) I managed to cut out this:

...but it was not easy to put together! Entirely my own fault!
It will eventually be put with lots of other blocks as a group surprise for someone. I had better not say any more!

While on my travels I couldn't go past these Lecien fabrics. The colours are lovely and nice to use instead of flat plains.


Oh and spring has finally come to Melbourne. We have gone onto daylight saving time and our darlings are enjoying the sunshine!