Birthday Tea

I know breakfast is widely regarded as the most important meal of the day but I disagree.  I also know that lunch is the perfect time for a break in the day but I know a better time.  And dinner has universal appeal.  But there is one meal that knocks all these into touch – it is a meal I am particularly fond of, a meal that has universal appeal to young and old alike and it is a meal that transforms an ordinary day into a blissful day.  Yep, it is time for tea ......

..........and cake .....

 

It's TEA TIME!!

The Zakka 2.0 project for this week is applique based – right up my street.  So much so that I combined Ayumi’s letters with my mug pattern from my One Block pattern book.

This week's project specified linen as the fabric of choice.  But, if I learned nothing else from Zakka 1.0 I did learn that linen is awful to launder.  It creases as soon as you hold it and it soaks up water like a sponge.    I didn’t want my handiwork spending more time in the washing machine than on display so I chose to work with 100% cotton instead. Having said that there are some linen tea-towels in the Flickr group that look awesome so I have to stress – this is just my opinion.

Also, as Amy points out on Amy Made That (and she made a gorgeous retro tea-towel) – linen is expensive whilst cotton is not.  What is more, cotton tea-towels are easy to come by.  I purchased a set of three from Marks and Spencers and they even came with a little hanging loop on one corner just like Ayumi's.

(I am wondering if the M&S designers have read Ayumi's book - same hanging loop!)

Once I got down to the applique this project went together quickly and easily but ..... and it is a huge BUT ..... why, oh why do the publishers not provide us with full-size pattern sheets.  I know the argument about saving space in a book but in this day-and-age they could provide on-line access to the full-size sheets or even on-line access to the print outs so that we could enlarge them quickly and easily.  I believe the book is available in an on-line version anyway so it wouldn’t even be that much work for the publishers.  I wasted over an hour trying to get the letters to the correct size. 

My copier/printer would only enlarge to certain sizes – 167% was not one of them!!  In the end I scanned the page and saved it as a PDF.  Enlarging a PDF at print time is easy – it is on the print screen.  But I have yet to figure how to print an enlarged pattern over several pages.  This is, and always will be, a bug bear of mine.  It needs shouting from the roof tops – FULL SIZE APPLIQUE SHEETS PLEASE!!! 

Onto other matters ..... you must’ve heard about THE BIRTHDAY.  It is the talk of the world.  I do not mean Queen Elizabeth’s birthday although I did celebrate this with a cuppa and a cookie.

 I don’t even mean Prince Phillip’s birthday though this too was marked with another cup-of-tea and a cookie.

No I mean THE birthday – the Patchsmith’s birthday.  Surely you didn’t think all the flags and bunting were for Lizzie and Phil?   This coming week is a royal week here at Patchsmith Palace as my birthday marks the start of another year of fun, fabric and friends. 

As a special treat I would like to mark the day with a little competition ...... ‘guess the Patchsmith’s age’.  Now it has to be said that I am like the Queen in that I have two ages – one official (birth certificate in evidence unfortunately) and another that is my preferred age.

I will be giving away three mug rug patterns:

 

Spring Chicken ......

Is the Patchsmith a Spring Chicken or an old bird?

Flower Patch .......

and Coffee and Cake........

These three patterns will go to the first person to guess my preferred age.  Just leave a comment with your guess (only one entry per person) and I will check in regularly to see who guesses first (you should also make sure I can contact you via email somehow!)

***** UPDATE - Competition is closed *****

Linda guessed my preferred age as 38 y.o.

Thank you everybody for taking part in this little bit of fun.

Sew until next time ........