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