New to Me in May

Welcome to this month's link up for

where we celebrate the trying of something new whether it was successful or not!

This month I have had a go at a new method of paper-piecing, well new to me anyway :)

Paper-piecing on stabiliser is certainly something I had never tried before and I am pleased to report that it seems to work!

Well, those points are much neater than anything I have achieved in the past.

I have also been trying out a new to me method of quilting on a quilt for my brand-new great nephew. I read Benta's recent post on her method of quilting as you go and was intrigued, so when I came across a pattern in a magazine for a baby quilt using a similar method I thought that I would give it a go.

The quilt top was pieced in strips, then instead of joining the strips together before layering with the wadding and backing, the strips were placed right sides together on the wadding and backing and stitched with a 0.25" seam. The strips were then pressed open and the next strip joined in the same way. It was a very quick way to put together a quilt top I can tell you.

So quick in fact that the top is pieced and quilted and ready to be bound in less than 2 days, which I realise is not that quick for many of you, but believe me that is very quick for me! It helped that my husband was away and youngest son was at work, so I had the house to myself too :)

So, that's what I have been up to that was New to Me in May. Now it's your turn, 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.

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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 May 31st, so you have plenty of time to try something new and link up and join the party :)

An InLinkz Link-up

Don't forget too, there is still time to add your link to the Ho, Ho, Ho and on We Sew Link Party too!

This month it is over at buttons and paint, you will love what Sian has done with some unwanted ties!

Looking forward to seeing what you have all been trying out this month :)

Master Mariner?

This week at my new Quilt Group we were tackling the Mariner's Compass block. Being organised as usual (!) I only looked at the supply list, that I had been sent, the night before the class, where I discovered that instead of paper for the foundation piecing I was going to be using stabiliser. Not having any of the recommended Stitch-n-Tear to hand and with no time left to find some, I had to rummage through my stash cupboard where I eventually found this.

 I bought this roll of stabiliser whilst we were living in Latvia, so I had no idea whether it was appropriate or not.

Fortunately, the next day at the class there were several versions of stabiliser on show and a quick feel of the others suggested that this might be slightly thicker than the recommended Stitch-n-Tear but otherwise seemed fit for purpose.

We traced the templates for the block on to the stabiliser fabric and cut around the shapes roughly.

Then we stitched the fabric to the back of the stabiliser along the traced lines. I had never used stabiliser as the foundation for piecing before and found it to be much easier to manoeuvre when stitching. Also, as we didn't reduce the stitch length as you would usually do when stitching on paper, unpicking was so much easier too!

 I frequently have problems getting points to match when I am joining paper-pieced sections together, but again the more flexible stabiliser backing seemed to make even this part go much better than usual, i.e. I only had to unpick once :)

I am rather pleased with how this turned out!

For the moment the stabiliser backing is still in place so I may revise my opinion when I attempt to remove it later, but so far it has all been good. I won't be attaching the star to the backing until the next class, which is not till June, so next up is a Drunkard's Path block to bring me up-to-date. Curved seams are so not my favourite thing!

This is my first paper-piecing project for what seems like a very long time, so I am delighted to be able to link it up to