Kirsty's felt biscuits

I've been itching to blog about this for ages, but it was top secret until the village Flower Show last Saturday!  

Whilst we were on holiday last summer we visited An Tobar, the Tobermory Arts Centre on the beautiful Isle of Mull where I spotted a tiny wee book called 'Felt Biscuits'.  When my daughter wasn't looking I bought it and then kept it hidden until Christmas.  

I thought Kirsty (age 12) would probably like to have a go at making a couple of the biscuits.  I never imagined that she'd tackle the entire project of a complete set of biscuits, a box to put them in and a tray shaped to house each biscuit!

Here's the box...

...and here's what's inside.

A custard cream and a jam sandwich.

Pink wafer, Bourbon and shortcake.

The inner tray was by far the hardest part and caused Kirsty a lot of frustration.  She stuck at it though, and whilst she'd accept advice from me, I wasn't allowed to help with any of it as she was planning to enter the box into the village Flower Show so it absolutely had to be all her own work.

She had never used blanket stitch before but, after a shaky start and a bit of unpicking, she became very adept!

The lid required a lot of careful planning, cutting and positioning.  Kirsty struggled with french knots and did a lot of practice ones on a scrap of felt before starting on the real thing.  

If you've ever sewn with metallic thread, you'll know that it's not the easiest thing to handle!

And the result of her weeks and weeks of hard work - the much coveted rosette for the Best Exhibit in Show - that means she beat all the grown ups in all the various categories.

Winning was the icing on the cake though - the achievement of actually finishing this project was reward enough!

Result = one very happy daughter and one very proud mum!