About Me

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Sydney, NSW, Australia
Craft/ food story Developer, Writer & Photographer for Newspapers & Magazines. first Book on Quilts out March 2015 with @Interweave All images and content belong to Siobhan Rogers, if you would like to use my images please email me.

Wednesday, August 14, 2013

Polka Dot Cake


We have had another Birthday in our household!

My youngest turned seven yesterday.

Gosh time goes by so quickly......







Thanks to Pinterest I found a polka dot cake

The original recipe is here

I didn't follow all the instructions ..... for many reasons

first one was because I was running out of time and had to use the ingredients in my cupboard - the other was the recipe was written for US baking not Australian....

I had no idea what pudding mix was??
or flour baking spray etc

I think a trip out to Costco before baking would have helped me!!

Anyway my first attempt went ok,
could have been better but Ms 7 was happy enough. 

The cake pop balls took four attempts, I was ready to give up. 
The batter had to be very thick and the pan needed to be sprayed and flour coated for the cakes to come out of the pan - I made the presumption that it was a non stick pan and I could get away with just using baking spray.... and it stuck like no tomorrow.

MUST USE BAKING SPRAY & FLOUR

so after my fourth attempt I had some colourful cake pop cake balls  



My second mistake was making butter cakes as the main cake, I thought I needed a moist dense cake - I was worried about the polka dots drying out.

It did work BUT as a double layered cake it was too much cake - a lighter fluffy cake would have been better.






I iced the cake with a simple butter cream icing - I used four times the quantity in the recipe to cover the whole cake and the middle.
To keep it simple I used chocolate freckles to decorate the outside.





Not the best picture in the world, this is from my Instagram feed - as you can see the polka dots worked.... but more Polka Dots would have been good. 

I thought I packed them in pretty tight in the cake tin, I had around 15 polka dots in each layer. I think I was being a little too careful and should have crammed in a few more. 




So Voila - Ms 7's birthday cake 


I'd love to know if you have any tips or tricks? 


Xx Siobhan 

Wednesday, August 7, 2013

Where do you get your Inspiration from?






Sometimes things on pinterest and magazines catch my eye and they get filed in my head for a rainy day.

Reading one of my favourite French crafty magazines, Marie Claire Idees - October 2012  I saw a cute little black board map of France.



and all the vintage school maps started popping up everywhere - which I really liked too

and I cant forget to mention Pip Lincoln who made an embroidery version of an Australian Map

and then I meet Annabel Wrigley at Portland Quiltmarket this year and saw online her awesome patchwork map of the USA that she was doing with kids.....


and then I jumped on the map bandwagon and made my own Australian version!

and...
Its now happily hanging in my studio 







Xx Siobhan 



 - EDIT - NEWS - 
after lovely Florence's comment - I decided to create a flickr group

Patchwork Maps

Please Join in and make a patchwork map - I would love to see lots of Maps from all over the world :) 

Xx Siobhan 

Monday, August 5, 2013

Are you flying your flag???


...... Hello!
Just a quick drop in to tell you about a quilt along that Shannon is doing (aka Aunty Cookie)
its a new pattern called 
flag2-#auntycookie

here is the time-line if your interested in playing along



Week 1. (Finish by 16 August 2013) Pick it! Fabric selections – in a show us your flags kind of way.
Week 2. (Finish by 23 August 2013) Cutting it! cutting out & making the flags – ideas for personalizing flags, tips on making it fancy.
Week 3. (Finish by 30 August 2013) Sewing it! yes that would be sewing it all together.
Week 4. (Finish by 6 Sept 2013) Quilt it! ideas and inspirations and techniques.
Week 5. (Finish by 13 Sept 2013) Bind it! And lets perve at your finished quilt….
Week 6. (Finish by 20 Sept 2013) QAL Wrap up & the awarding of awesomeness.

&

The hashtag on instagram is #flytheflagquilt





Below is the selections of fabric I was playing with this afternoon. I am attempting to go for the crazy colour look.... I really wanted to do a natural linen as the base and coloured prints as the flags BUT I want to see what it will look like with a colourful printed fabric as a base.... we will see!

It could work or it could not....









and below are some bits and bobs of my studio

I unfortunately have far too many secret projects on the go - which is really no fun when you are blogging 

&

I'm all stocked up with Aurifil threads




and my little sideline project has been this chair - a post all of its own will come soon.





Thats me all caught up 

Xx Siobhan 
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