A walk on the wild side

Welcome to this month's New to Me link party, where we celebrate our attempts at trying out something for the first time whether it was a success or not!

This month I had hoped to share with you my new, very organised and very tidy sewing room, which was due to be finished yesterday! Sadly the work has not yet started as the designer and fitter has had to rush away to be at a family members hospital bedside so, as of this moment I have an empty room and sewing supplies in boxes and cupboards all over the house. Hopefully the patient will be on the mend soon and I can start dreaming of crafting in a room where everything has a place and finding anything doesn't take so long that I have forgotten why I wanted it when I find it :)

We did visit a New to Me place this month, The Sill, which is the home of the National Landscape Discovery Centre in the Northumberland National Park. The centre was being built when we lived in the North East but had not been finished by the time that we moved to Scotland. A recent trip back to the North East for a family get together meant that we had our first chance to visit The Sill on our journey home.

The roof of the building above is a garden walkway where all of the flowers growing are examples of the flora of the whin grassland in Northumberland. The centre is situated near a fort of Hadrian's Wall, and the first section of the walkway has plants that are typically found along the route of the wall, the species at the top section of the walkway are examples from the Northumberland coast.

I am not much of a plant identifier so I have no idea what these examples are but I thought they were pretty enough to photograph!

I think these may be Red Campion, but I could be wrong :)

It was a blustery day when we visited definitely not a day for sitting out on these rather lovely deckchairs! There was no protection from the wind at the top of that roof, so we were very pleased to find that the Centre's cafe did an excellent line in coffee and cake! If you ever find yourself in the area the Sill is worth stopping for and will make a nice change from all of the Roman sites along Hadrian's Wall.

So that is my New to Me this month now it is over to you to link up and share what you have been trying out this May. As ever the link party will remain open until the end of the month and we are here to commiserate over failures as well as to celebrate successes so be sure to link up regardless :)

You are invited to the Inlinkz link party!

Click here to enter

A Bear Necessity

Our son and his family moved in to their new home just before Christmas (one week before our new grandson arrived!!) and have been settling in ever since.

One of their first moves was to install a bookshelf and comfortable chair in the bedroom of our 2yr old grandson. He loves his story time and has a great memory for his favourite books so skipping pages is never an option :)

Comfort is, therefore, a high priority when settling down with a book pile before bedtime, so when I came across a pattern for a Bear cushion in a recent Bustle and Sew magazine I knew that it would be the perfect addition to that reading corner.

It was really straightforward to make, the cushion itself is made with grey fleece with white, black and pink felt for the nose and ears. The pattern used grey felt for the cushion body but I thought that fleece would make a more comfortable cushion so went with that instead.

The details of the nose and eyes are embroidered on. I could have used buttons for the eyes, which would have been better from a size point of view but thought that embroidered eyes were better for safety.

I delivered the cushion a couple of weeks ago when we went down to visit and I am delighted to say that it was a hit!

Reflections in the rain

Today is the reveal day for the Endeavourers Quilt Group, where we unveil our makes for the quarterly theme. The theme for this quarter was "Raindrops keep falling on my head" which doesn't immediately bring quilts to mind you have to admit!

My piece for the reveal is entitled "Reflections in the rain", it is quilted, beaded and appliqued slubbed silk joined in 4 pieces to create a 3-D raindrop.

When I started to think about this project I remembered seeing these amazing felted teardrops several years ago at a textile art exhibition in Riga, so they were the inspiration for my project. I knew that I wanted to make a 3-D piece for the theme so experimented with shapes to create the raindrop that I wanted.

The prototype that I stitched was definitely more raindrop shaped than the final piece, but as they say "finished is better than perfect!"

I used the instructions in this book for the appliqued heads and it seemed to work well.

Fabrics are coated with Mod Podge before cutting, which gives them a nearly plastic feel and made cutting out intricate shapes like the Japanese lady's head above much easier than it would otherwise have been!

I added small seed beads to the ends of the radiating machine quilted lines to replicate more raindrops

and layered my coated heads across the base of the raindrop before stitching them down with invisible thread.

As ever there were lots of challenges throughout the making of this piece, but also, as ever, I thoroughly enjoyed creating "Reflections in the Rain" for this quarters Endeavourers Challenge.

To check out the wonderful projects that my fellow Endeavourers have produced for this quarter's challenge head on over to the Endeavourers blog and prepare to be amazed :)