New to Me in December

Merry Christmas to one and all, I hope you are having a lovely day!

Graphics Fairy image

Welcome to the last New to Me link up for 2013, this month in my Christmas gift making I have tried out a couple of projects that were very definitely New to Me

I have made my first ever jars of Chutney and Jelly, which are hopefully being opened by their recipients as you read this.

Sewn my first ever pair of pyjamas, and have already got a request for another pair :)

And tried out transferring an image onto wood for the very first time!

So what have you been up to this month?

Link up your New to Me posts below and share your triumphs and/or disasters.

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.

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 December 31st so if you found some exciting new tools or kits in your Christmas stocking you have time to try them out and link them up :)

If one of your New Year resolutions is to try out new things in 2014 then you will be pleased to hear that the New to Me Link party will continue in 2014. We have had an amazing array of new skills and activities tried out over 2013, from raising chickens and inserting zips to taking a hot-air balloon ride. I am really looking forward to seeing what everyone tries out in 2014.  Join with me on the 25th of each month as we celebrate our successes and commiserate over our failures!

An InLinkz Link-up

New to Me in November

It's the 25th of the month, which means that it is time for another look at all the wonderful new things that you have been trying out this month.

My New to Me activities this month have been a very mixed bag indeed.

At the beginning of the month our holiday to France involved the first New to Me, a new route across the Channel, or to be more precise, under the Channel.

Our first ever trip on the Channel Tunnel was a great success, no delays and time for some sewing too!
It was a bit strange driving in to what is effectively a rather large tin box on wheels, but given that gale force winds were being predicted for the Channel the weekend we travelled, we were very pleased not to be sailing on our usual ferry route :)

My second New to Me was part of the sewing you see above. I decided to try out a new method of transferring embroidery patterns for the embroidery blocks in my Home for the Holidays table runner. I have used transfer pencils and pens in the past, but have struggled with the pattern lines being too thick sometimes. I am not the most accurate embroiderer in the world so sometimes have trouble covering the lines entirely. The thought of having pattern lines that will disappear after the stitching was very attractive! So out came the Frixion pens bought on our last trip to France (they sell them in the local supermarket, very handy!) and away I went.

You can see where I marked window panes with the pens in the embroidery above. I changed the pattern slightly as I was stitching and didn't stitch the panes in the end, so I was a bit worried that I might have messed the whole thing up.

Thankfully though the lines all disappeared when ironed. Cue much relief :)

I have read that the lines can reappear when the temperature is very low, but if this Table Runner is in minus temperatures so that the lines reappear, I will have much bigger problems on my hands!

My final New to Me was much less successful :(

Technically speaking I tried this in October but on October 31st so I am counting it for November. I had read that you could substitute plastic containers for shrink plastic to make jewellery. The plastic needed to be a particular type, with a number 6 inside the triangle recycling symbol for the shrink process to work. For several weeks I scrutinised every plastic container that came my way, and eventually discovered that the only ones that fitted the bill were the containers that the liquid washing detergent capsules come in! So if you happened to see a woman acting strangely in the supermarket scrutinising the bottom of plastic containers before rejecting them, now you know what I was doing :)



The plan was to create some sugar skull earrings for Halloween, so I drew out my sugar skulls with permanent markers on the washing tub plastic and went to town on decorating them.

So far so good, but then this is what they looked like after being shrunk in the oven!

Shrunken true, but not exactly evenly :(

I thought that the problem might have been that I was shrinking them in a fan oven, so tried again in the ordinary oven but it didn't make much difference.

Ah, well back to the drawing board!!


So that's all my New to Me this month, now it's your turn to share what you have tried out for the first time in November.

Link up your New to Me posts below and share your triumphs and/or disasters.

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.

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 November 30th so if you haven't already tried something new you still have time :)

An InLinkz Link-up

New to Me in October

It's the 25th of the month, which means you know what is coming in two months time!

Less worryingly it also means that it is time to link up to

There hasn't been a lot of new activity going on in my little part of blogland, although hosting a voting competition was very definitely a first for me :)

Responses from the prize winners suggest that winning a competition was a first for some of them too!

I can't wait to do it all again next year :)

My other first this month was much messier than sewing, as my daughter-in-law and I treated ourselves to a cupcake decorating class a couple of weeks ago. Instead of dressmakers pins it was rolling pins that dominated our afternoon.

We learned a number of different techniques and surprised ourselves at the standard of our finished cupcakes, not quite Great British Bake Off admittedly, but certainly much better than we had hoped for at the start of the day.

Needless to say they didn't last long on our return home :)

So, what have you been up to this month?

Link up your New to Me posts below and share your triumphs and/or disasters.

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.


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 October 31st so if you haven't already tried something new you still have time :)

An InLinkz Link-up

New to Me in September

September is always a month for new beginnings in this part of the world and although I no longer have boys to get ready for new school terms, there is still a new school feel around with the prospectus for the Local Authority evening classes landing on the mat tempting me to learn a new language or even take up dancing!

It's the perfect time then for this month's

The big New to Me for this month doesn't actually start until tomorrow, September 26th, when submissions open for my first ever hosted competition!

I will be waiting nervously for the first submissions to link up I can tell you.

As well as hosting the competition this month I have also created my first carved eraser stamp

and had a go at a Bargello quilt for the first time too.

So that is what I have been up to, now it is your turn to link up and share your New to You activities in September.

Link them up below and share your triumphs and/or disasters.

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.


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 September 30th so if you haven't already tried something new you still have time :)

More details of the Holiday Memories Mini Quilt Competition can be found by clicking the link at the top of this post too.

An InLinkz Link-up

New to Me in August

It's the 25th of the month, which means that it is time to share any new activities that you have tried out in August.

I had an idea that August had been a bit of a slow month but to my surprise, August has seen several firsts for me, the big one of course being hosting my first ever competition - the Holiday Memories Mini Quilt Competition

The Competition, which was launched on August 2nd with this post , is for a mini quilt based upon a Holiday Memory, and all of the details are available by clicking on the Holiday Memories tab at the top of the page.

Another first was my attempt at a Stained Glass Applique block inspired by Charles Rennie Mackintosh.

Even with the fiddly 0.25" bias binding to make, this was quick and enjoyable to do, so will, hopefully, not be my last try at the technique.

More fusible bias binding was involved in the last of my new techniques this month,

with a lot of free-form machine embroidery thrown in for good measure :)

So that is what I have been up to, now it is your turn to link up and share your New to You activities in August.

Link them up below and share your triumphs and/or disasters.

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.

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 August 31st so if you haven't already tried something new you still have time :)

New to Me in July 2013

It's the 25th of the month already, so time to link up what you have tried out this month that is New to You.

This month I have been all at sea :)

At the beginning of the month we went on our first-ever Cruise.

This was our ship at Bergen, Norway the last port of call before we sailed back to the UK. We really loved Bergen and will definitely go back there someday, hopefully not on a Sunday when the quilt shop in town is closed though!

So we spent a lot of time occupying these

 and even more time admiring views like this.

On days at sea the ship held a craft class in the afternoon, so when I managed to tear myself away from the loungers and the view I got to try my hand at something else New to Me too.

My very first attempt at painting with watercolour pencils with a bit of decoupage thrown in :) The card front is a stamped image, which was painted by either dampening the watercolour pencils on a palette and applying as paint, or, as I did, lightly colouring the image with the pencils and then softening the applied colour with a damp paintbrush. I really enjoyed having a go at this, and as I have a set of watercolour pencils that I bought to mark quilts with, I will definitely have another go at it. In fact, I may just have bought some stamps that were 70% off in the garden centre yesterday for exactly that!

So that is what I have been up to that is New to Me this month, now it is your turn to link up your New to Me activities.

Link them up below and share your triumphs and/or disasters.

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.

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 July 31st so if you haven't already tried something new you still have time :)

New to Me in June 2013

It's the 25th of the Month again and time to have a look at what's been New to You this month.

This month has been a mixed bag on the New to Me front.

I have spent a little bit of time making cocktails

and a lot of time stitching strips

Some for myself

And some for my Scrappy Trip Around the World Bee mates

All of the Scrappy Strips have been made with the help of my newest toy and my New to Me project for June.

I orginally treated myself to a SizzixBig Shot die-cutter in December last year, but within a couple of weeks it became obvious that there was  a fault with the machine. As I had purchased the Big Shot on a trip back from Scotland, returning it for a replacement meant a trip over to the other side of the country so it was a few weeks before I got around to replacing the original, faulty machine. Then it sort of stayed in the box for a while until I made up my mind which of the several quilting dies available might be useful.

When the Scrappy Trip Around the World Bee started up I had my answer - the 2.5" strip die, which meant buying extended cutting mats too.

Without wanting to sound like a Sizzix salesperson, to say that they have transformed my quilting is not that much of an overstatement. I was able to cut out all of the strips for each of the STAW Bee blocks in a matter of minutes and these strips for the Scrappy Chevron quilt for my son were powered through in a similarly quick time.

Once the strips were sewn together the Dies were back in action cutting the strips for the Scrappy blocks

Being able to cut through 8 layers of fabric at once really speeded up the making of the blocks.

Now that I can cut my own jelly rolls with ease I am searching through my patterns to see what I can try out next! Amy has a great Lone Star project on the Sizzix blog that is definitely being added to my "would love to try" list, when the dies are available here.

So that is what I have tried out for the first time this month, now it is your turn to share your New to Me in 2013 projects.


Link them up below and share your triumphs and/or disasters.

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.

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 June 30th so if you haven't already tried something new you still have time :)







Linking up with Fabric Tuesday and WIP Wednesday

New to Me in May!

It is the 25th of the month again, which means it is time for

 This month my New to Me projects have all been about freedom!

Free form Machine Embroidery on this Seagull Cushion and the Birds on a Wire below was definitely a first for me!

I enjoyed the Free form Embroidery so much that I attempted some more Free form but this time FMQ lettering, another first!

If you look really closely you can see "Rioja" spelled out in the quilting above!

So that's my New to Me activities this month, now it's your turn to show what you have tried that is New to You this month.

Link them up below and share your triumphs and/or disasters.

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.

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 May 31st so if you haven't already tried something new you still have time :)

New to Me in April 2013

It's time to be inspired again, by checking out all the fascinating things that crafty bloggers have been up to this month.

I left it a bit late to try something new this month as I only tackled this yesterday, but I am delighted to have found a new way to use up some of my stash - Lampshades!

When I was looking for fabric for curtains for our newly decorated bedroom, I bought a metre of Beach Huts fabric. After it had hung from the curtain rail for a couple of days I decided that it wasn't what I was looking for. Rather than consign it to the bottom of the fabric pile I decided to make a lampshade for the new room with it instead.

Never having made a lampshade before I opted to buy a kit rather than try to find all the materials separately. The kit came with the metal lampshade rings, the adhesive backing fabric, the transparent sticky tape and full instructions. So I was good to go.

The lampshade turned out to be so much easier and quicker to make than I had thought that I wondered why I had never tried this before :)

I have since bought another kit to make a pendant lampshade and I'm trying to get my head around getting the curves right on the directional fabric. I can now see why a drum shaped lampshade is an attractive proposition!

So now it is your turn to link up your New to Me in 2013 projects.

Link them up below and share your triumphs and/or disasters.

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.

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 April 30th so if you haven't already tried something new you still have time :)