Celtic Thistle Stitches: November 2014

Tuesday, 25 November 2014

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.

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

Tuesday, 18 November 2014

Ho, Ho, Ho and on We Sew November

Well you can't say that we haven't been warning you for a while, but with the countdown to Christmas now being measured in days in my local Post Office, it really is time to knuckle down and get that Christmas crafting started!

So, with that in mind welcome to this month's Ho, Ho, Ho and on We Sew Link party.

This month's link party is hosted by the very talented Joanne at Rose and Dahlia. Joanne was one of the contributors to the lovely Christmas jumper quilt in the recent issue of Fat Quarterly, and she has been stitching up a storm of Swoon blocks, definitely one to check out if you haven't come across her before! Joanne has a great project lined up for keeping all of those Christmas wrapping essentials neat and tidy, and that is definitely something that I could do with :)

If you are new to the party, let me fill you in on the details. Paula and I decided at the end of last year that Christmas 2014 was going to be different, this time round there would be no late-night sewing sessions or frantic last-minute dashes to the Post Office. This time we were going to work on Christmas and Holiday projects throughout the year so come December we would be so organised we wouldn't know what to do with ourselves :)

We decided to share our plans with our blogging friends and invite them to be organised too, with a monthly Link Party to provide a gentle nudge. As ever we have a lovely incentive for you to get crafting and linking and this time we have some FQ's of lovely Christmas fabric to give your Christmas crafting a nudge.

The winners of last month's givewaways were Karen at Practically Pippy and Sandra at Suddenly Sandra. Thanks for linking up!

Having only returned from yet another holiday my Christmas crafting has been somewhat minimal this month, but I have at least one Christmas project to add to my tally.

My Celtic Christmas Bauble cushion!

So, now it is your turn to head on over to Rose and Dahlia and link up your Christmas projects for November. As ever the link party will remain open until the end of the month so there is plenty of time to get those projects completed!

Grateful thanks as always to our generous giveaway prize sponsors.

Posie: Patterns and Kits to Stitch by Alicia Paulson

Friday, 14 November 2014

Celtic Christmas

It is a very long time since I posted this photo of the fabric pull for an upcoming project

Well, the top fabric was discarded in favour of green bias strips and the project eventually became this

my Celtic Christmas Bauble cushion!

The applique is made with some of my carefully hoarded Liberty lawn and ready-made fusible bias strips. The pattern and instructions for the cushion has just been published in this

http://www.fatquarterly.com

There are so many wonderful projects in this issue it is hard to pick a favourite, but isn't that Christmas sweater themed quilt on the front cover just wonderful?

After a very long absence I am delighted to finally have a Friday finish :)

Linking up to Crazy Mom Quilts