Back in the groove

The deadline for the fourth Round of the Scrappy Trip Around the World Bee is fast approaching, and the first of my blocks from my fellow Bees in Hive 4 arrived in the post this week.

This great block from Maureen in Michigan was a timely reminder that I needed to get into gear and start whipping up those blocks.

So with my trusty Sizzix machine in hand I have started slicing up 2.5" strips for my blocks.

One of the challenges for me with Bees is selecting the fabrics, it always takes me ages to finally decide. This time around though I am making blocks for two Bee mates that I have already made for in previous rounds, so in theory that should make the decision making process a bit easier. We shall see if that turns out to be true :)

One block down, four more to go!

Linking up to

Shades of Green

I have a WIP list as long as my arm, so what do you think I have been working on this week? Well, if you guessed any of my WIP's you would be very wrong. Naturally, I decided to start a new project!

I pulled out my bag of green scraps and my Sizzix die-cutter and cut out 40 different fabric hearts.

Then put them together on a piece of natural linen from the rather large box I brought back from Latvia. Can you see where I am going with this??

Hopefully, I will have finished this (cushion, table runner, wallhanging??) in time for the celebrations this weekend. Then it is back to the WIP list I promise :)

Linking up to

Guiding light for Santa

I'm guest posting at today Lily's Quilts head on over there to find out how to make this lampshade.

It is just the thing to guide Santa and his reindeer to your door :)


The post is part of Lynne's series

Every month Lynne runs a competition to win £20 worth of supplies from Abakhan Fabrics for their Projects on a Budget series. Readers of Lynne's blog pitch their idea for a craft item made with Abakhan supplies and Lynne then selects her favourite to be made and written up as a guest blog post on Lily's Quilts. Naturally the theme for this month was Christmas and my idea of a guiding light for Santa and his reindeer was one of the projects picked! 

Thanks Lynne and Abakhan one more Christmas project done and dusted :) 

Hope you are rattling off those last minute projects too! 

All Tripped Out!

Well our eldest son has been and gone and guess what he took back to London with him?

A finished Scrappy Chevron Quilt!

It was a bit of a rush job at the end but I managed to get this quilt finished in the nick of time. I am thrilled to bits with it, I have never managed to complete a quilt this size (60" x 60") this quickly before. Fortunately, he is pleased with it too. I was a bit worried that there was too much lilac in it for him, but he didn't mention it so I didn't ask :)

There was no time for fancy quilting so I echo-quilted the chevron pattern as you can see above, and better below.

The backing fabric I had was just a bit too narrow so I added some leftover strips to give me the extra width I needed.

I discovered the perfect purple fabric for the binding, and again as time was an issue I machine bound the double-fold binding using a zig-zag stitch. I will call that a design element to echo the chevron quilting :)

I really enjoyed putting this quilt together and I am encouraged to find that it doesn't need to take months (or even years!) to make a quilt, definitely something New to Me!

Speaking of which, if you have tried something new this month there is still time to link up here to

The Link up will stay open until midnight (GMT) June 30th.

This Scrappy Chevron quilt is also my first (and possibly only!) finish for Q2 in

Linking up this finish to

Crazy Mom Quilts

 

 

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