Learning new craft skills

Morning all.  We've had a rather wild and woolly night here last night - tremendous rain (again) and strong winds.  I had to text someone last night, and got a Met. office yellow alert on my mobile, and it helps to have warning  . . . we may be going out the Top Way to Town later on.  

Anyway, yesterday it was a meet-up for the little sewing group I belong to, and my first turn to host it.  My friend Dawn, who is an expert craftswoman (she used to have her own craft shop back in England) brought us the "ingredients" for trying out  silk painting, new to all of us.  The designs were for Christmas cards, and the gutta design was already applied.  Using a fine brush, we began to mix our colours and paint.  I chose a Partridge in a Pear tree (above) and it was so therapeutic to paint.  A bit like grown-up painting by numbers - only without the numbers!  

You use an absorbent layer beneath the silk design so that the excess paint goes through.  The hardest part was lining up the very thin and VERY sticky tape on the back prior to pressing the card on the design - mine was not 100% central, but hard to know how lined up it is when you press the card onto the back of the design and not vice-versa.

Here's everyone at work, and below, here is what we achieved.  Aren't they lovely?

I forgot to take a photo of the rich chocolate gluten-free cake I made (for recipe, see Frances' Chocolate Cake in my recipe pages above), but it went down well!  Above is the Duck-egg Quiche I made, which has a layer of finely chopped onion and LOTS of chopped well-cooked bacon on the bottom, lots of cheese and has a cheesy pastry.  (A tad scorched). I put up a quick mixed salad too.

Below are the bread rolls I made, which also got scorched as we were doing the Grand Tour of the house whilst they were in the oven. They are made with oat-flour, which makes such a lovely soft tasty bread.

Finally, here is a rather gloomy photo (don't know why the flash didn't work) of a LOVELY Welsh dragon sewn for me by my friend Gail.  It was totally unexpected and is much treasured - it is always lovely to have a hand-sewn present from a fellow crafter, and this is on tiny-count Aida so Gail's eyes are better than mine!!