New to Me in November

As ever when the 25th rolls around I wonder whether I have actually tried anything new and this month I am delighted to find that I have managed to try my hand at a few New to Me activities. If you have too, link them up and help celebrate November's link party!

First up, my Celtic Christmas Bauble published in the newest edition of the Fat Quarterly

The cushion used Quick Bias tape which I hadn't used before. It was certainly a lot quicker and less fiddly to use than trying to attach the fusible web to the back of a thin strip of fabric!

In between stops on our recent cruise I took advantage of the classes held on At Sea days to try my hand at another New to Me activity - needlepoint.

This is destined to become a glasses case and might even be a Christmas present if I manage to get it finished in time!

If you have made any Christmas gifts or home dec items this month don't forget to link them up to this month's link party over at Rose & Dahlia where Joanne shares her brilliant tutorial for a Christmas Gift Wrap sack!

Thanks to a birthday gift from our middle son and his wife, I enjoyed another New to Me at Wallsend Hall Regular readers of this blog will know that I am partial to an Afternoon Tea or two, so I was delighted when I was given a voucher for Afternoon Tea at the Hall. I didn't realise until I got there that this was not for your standard, run of the mill Afternoon Tea but was, in fact, for a Northumbrian Afternoon Tea.

 

The Northumbrian Tea is a more savoury affair than your regular tea as it includes such local delights as Ham and Pease pudding croquettes, Craster crab pate, mini Pan Haggerty pies and Lindisfarne Mead jelly. It was delicious! It was my first ever Northumbrian Afternoon Tea but I have a feeling that it won't be my last :)

My final New to Me is yet another New to Me city, this time in Germany. 

My annual Christmas Market trip with my daughters-in-law took us to Aachen in Germany, which as you can see was a wonderful setting for a Christmas market.


So that's my New to Me this month, now it is your turn to share all the fascinating things that you have been up to in November. As ever please help to spread the word by linking back to this post in your post and/or adding the blog button to your sidebar.

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Check out the other links and leave a comment along the way. The emphasis of this link party is to celebrate the trying of something new, whether it works out exactly as planned or not, so a little encouragement here and there would not go amiss! 

The link will remain open until 23.59GMT on November 30th, so you have plenty of time to try something new and link up and join the party :)

An InLinkz Link-up

Beeing happy and winning!

Well you certainly carry around a strange assortment of items in your handbags ladies! With the amount of cash found at the bottom of bags I think many of you need new purses and wallets as well as a new bag :)

Mr Random Number Generator has done his stuff and the winner of the Sew Sweetness pattern pack is

True Random Number Generator Min: Max: Result: 44

Powered by RANDOM.ORG

LindseyAnne22 February 2013 17:25

I love the bag. I once discovered the partially chewed leg of a Barbie doll in my bag when out for the evening. I think the dog rather than a daughter had done the chewing but I'm not certain.

LindseyAnne I will be in touch!

There has been lots of inspiring and fun link ups in this months

The link up will remain open for a few more days yet, so if you have tried something new this month link it up and inspire us!

There hasn't been much in the way of sewing done this weekend as a crucial rugby game in Edinburgh was in the schedule! Ireland v Scotland is always a tense game in our household with both sides equally represented in the family.  This year instead of shivering on the terraces though I was snuggly settled in front of this in Edinburgh.

A much cheerier outlook than 30 muddy men! It turns out too that the champagne was well deserved. For a change the Scottish side of the family were the happier at the end of the afternoon. and that wasn't just due to the champagne and cakes!

Another shot of cakes to whet your appetite :)

A pleasant surprise arrived in the post yesterday.

The October blocks from the SMQ Bee, which means I now have the full set!

These will, hopefully, now become one of my finishes this quarter in the FAL.

Fingers crossed.

So this is what my WIP list looks like now

• In Color Order HST BOM - Top Completed
• (Almost) Irish Chain quilt basted
• Tsatime quilt pieced, backed and basted COMPLETED
• 5 blocks of NY Beauty QAL completed and fabric cut for remaining 5 blocks
• 14 blocks of Craftsy BOM completed (way behind schedule) 
• Sunday Morning Quilt Bee blocks all received
• Sunday Morning Quilt2 Bee blocks sent (on schedule)
• Star of Africa Bee blocks completed and sent (1 month behind schedule now!)
• Friendship Bag Swap - Bag made ready to be filled COMPLETED
• Modern Scrappy Bits Swap 3rd Round Bag made ready to be filled
• Triple Zip A Long pouch  COMPLETED
• Curved Seams Challenge signed up COMPLETED
• And And Sew On BOM - first block completed
• Just my Type paper-pieced block  COMPLETED
• Everything but the Kitchen Sink SAL - 2nd block designed ready to be sewn

Linking up to

Time for tea

This week I have been enjoying working on want to rather than need to projects. So the pressure has been off me, which is just as well as the husband has had a really pressured week and there in only room in the household for one person under pressure at a time!

Today I have finished the top of my afternoon tea quilt that I started many moons ago, and has been gathering dust wrapped up in a map roll on top of the wardrobe ever since. As the quilt was intended to make use of an embroidered panel there was no pattern for the top, so I had drafted out the cutting and sewing measurements myself. Although I knew maths was never a strong point of mine, until today I hadn't realised quite how bad I was! According to my calculations I needed 28 6.5" blocks for the second border on the quilt, so I duly cut and pieced 24 Friendship Star blocks with the intention of making 4 different blocks for the corners. When I laid out the quilt centre and pieced Star blocks I discovered that my calculations had been way out, instead of needing 28 blocks in fact I only needed 20! So out with the seam ripper to take off the extra 2 blocks on 2 strips.

The dodgy maths mean though that I have 4 Friendship Star blocks ready to make up into a matching cushion, so it wasn't all bad.

I would love to be a bit more adventurous with the quilting on this lap quilt and ideally, quilt some form of teacup in the striped border and on the linen centre, but that may just be a bit over-ambitious as I have never even tried free-motion quilting! All tips will be much appreciated.

Last weekend there was a large pan-Baltic Folklore festival in Riga, part of which was a Craft Fair and open-air concerts in one of the City parks. I was delighted to see these girls with their flower headdresses working on their looms and thought you might like to see them too.

And just to prove that all you need is attitude to carry off the flower wreath look!

Have a great weekend.



Linking here and here

Giveaway Winner

We have just come back from the family wedding in Dublin, which involved several late nights so this post will be very brief!

I want to give a huge thank you to everyone who entered my first ever Giveaway, it certainly sounds like I am not alone in my enjoyment of tea and cakes (especially cakes!).

I am delighted to announce that the random number generator drew the following entry

Enter a lower limit:
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Random Number:

The 128th comment was from

Hippie Housewife25 May 2012 07:15

Lemon squares are a must. :)

So  Congratulations Hippie Housewife  I will be in touch to get your address so that I can send your Giveaway Bag Package out. I hope you get as much fun from bag making as I have and I look forward to seeing what you do with these bag making goodies soon. ( I think you are right too about the lemon squares!)

If I didn't get around to replying to your comments whilst we were travelling please be assured that I enjoyed every single one of them, and will have no problem now thinking of suitable cakes for our next afternoon tea.

I am off now to catch up on some sleep :)

Time for Afternoon tea and a Giveaway

A weekend in London is the perfect time to savour the delights of afternoon tea, so when my husband and sons organised a sporting weekend for themselves, it wasn't difficult to work out where the females of the family would go! The opportunity for a peek inside the newly renovated St Pancras Renaissance Hotel whilst taking tea was also just too good to miss. So whilst the men donned their rugby shirts and headed off to Twickenham the ladies donned their gladrags and made their way to the more rarefied environment of St Pancras!

As well as beautifully cut sandwiches and scones with jam and cream we had 9 different, dainty cakes to consume. It was a challenge but one we all rose to! Sometimes life is just tough :)

A trip to London wouldn't be complete without a visit to the fabric department of Liberty, and thanks to Needles and Lemons guide to fabric shops in London I was also able to sigh over the fabrics in the many fabric shops on Berwick Street nearby.

How about these to brighten up your day?

Or this for inspiration?

Speaking of inspiration, the Sew Mama Sew Giveaway Day at the end of last year was so inspiring that I resolved when I started blogging that I would take part in the next Sew Mama Sew Giveaway Day, if I could. I am, therefore, delighted to be hosting my first ever Giveaway as part of this year's Sew Mama Sew Giveaway Day. Prior to starting this blog and being introduced to the joys of quilting I was an obsessive bag maker. I started off making bags for the bridesmaids at my son's wedding and never really stopped. So, in an effort to introduce a fellow blogger to the delights of bag making I have put together the following Giveaway Bag Pack for my first ever Giveaway.

The Giveaway Bag pack includes;

1    Party Purse pattern from Nicole Mallelieu Designs (website)
1    FQ Cream/Blue swirl fabric
2/3yd Blue/Red Flower Zippity doo dah fabric by Sandy Gervais
1     Invisible Sew-in Magnetic Snap
1     Magnetic Snap set
1pr  Snap Hooks
1    Loop Handle Purse Frame
2     1" D rings
4      1.5" Gunmetal D rings

There are certainly enough supplies there to get anyone started on their first bag, but I must warn you you may well end up hooked!

To win the Giveaway Bag Pack all you need do is tell me which cakes you would like to have on your Afternoon Tea plate.

International entries are, of course, most welcome! The Giveaway will close at 12.00 GMT on Saturday May 26th, when the winning entry will be randomly drawn. If you are a no-reply blogger please remember to leave your email address in the comment otherwise I will be unable to contact you if you win!

For new visitors to my blog I hope you enjoy your visit and I shall look forward to seeing you again some time soon!

P.S. Don't forget that Beth at Plum & June is hosting the Let's Get Acquainted Blog Hop , which is for bloggers who have started blogging in 2011/12. It kicks off tomorrow, Tuesday 22nd May with Kelsey Sews & Billy Button Designs! I shall look forward to meeting you there.