A steep learning curve!

Thanks to all your encouragement I have now managed to complete my project for the Curved Seams Challenge. You were all of course right, stepping away from it was just what I needed. So, one not-so quick, trip to the cinema to see Les Miserables was exactly the right tonic to inspire me to knuckle down and get this off my WIP list.

I appliqued the Orange Peel blocks to a plain background and then had a think about what I was actually going to do with this. My initial thought was to make it a tablecloth, then I decided to make it reversible, just to make that deadline tomorrow even more unlikely!

When cutting out the centre blocks I had several melon shapes of the blue floral left, so they became a flower centre for the back of the tablecloth.

The centre of the flower itself is a yo-yo from a scrap of the brown used on the front. As you can see there is no wadding added as I didn't want the thickness of wadding for the tablecloth, so the front and back were simply stitched together right sides facing and then turned right side out and topstitched.

My husband was pressed into service to hold the top up as it is far too windy today for a photograph. Upon hearing that it was destined to become a tablecloth for the garden table, he has claimed this for himself as the perfect cover-up when he is sleeping (sorry reading!) in the garden on a sunny day. So it looks like I have lost my tablecloth already!

Now that I have this WIP off the list I can make a start on another one. The Triple Zip A Long kicked off on Monday, but I have been putting off starting until this Curved Seams challenge was finished. I ordered several zips from ZipIt thinking they would take a couple of weeks to get here, but they were really speedy delivering them so they actually arrived on the first day of the ZAL. How is that for service?

My fabrics are now cut and I am ready to join in with the ZAL.

Three zips in one pouch should definitely knock on the head any lingering difficulties with inserting zips, well that is the plan anyway!

So here is how my WIP list is looking now.

So my WIP list currently looks like this

• In Color Order HST BOM - Top Completed
• (Almost) Irish Chain quilt basted
• Tsatime quilt pieced, backed and basted COMPLETED
• 5 blocks of NY Beauty QAL completed and fabric cut for remaining 5 blocks
• 14 blocks of Craftsy BOM completed (way behind schedule) 
• Sunday Morning Quilt Bee blocks completed and sent (ahead of schedule!)
• Star of Africa Bee blocks completed and sent (on schedule just!)
• Friendship Bag Swap signed up and partner details received
• Modern Scrappy Bits Swap 3rd Round signed up
• Curved Seams Challenge signed up COMPLETED
• And Sew On BOM - first block completed
• Everything but the Kitchen Sink SAL - no progress

Hope you have had a productive week too.


If you have tried something New to You this month and haven't already linked up to

there is still time, the link party does not close until tomorrow. You can link up here and if you haven't tried anything new but would like to try something New to You then check out the great links already posted, craft bloggers are a really inspiring bunch!

Linking up to WOW and  WIP Wednesday

Curved Concerns

If you haven't already there is still time to link up to

If you have tried something new to you this month you can link up here or if you are looking for inspiration check out the great variety of new skills such as chicken raising and crochet that your fellow bloggers are having a go at.


Although not entirely new to me as I have attempted a Drunkard's Path block many moons ago, the closing date for Rikka's Curved Seams Challenge is this Thursday, so I set aside some time this weekend to try and get cracking on my entry for the challenge.

I don't know why but I have chopped and changed my mind so often on what to do for this challenge that I managed to leave myself hardly any time to do it. In the end I decided to dust off the Double Wedding Ring template purchased in a burst of enthusiasm a couple of months before my son's wedding nearly 2 years ago, and have a go at something with them. Obviously not a Double Wedding Ring anything as they are years ahead of my skills, but the pack contained templates for a simpler Orange Peel block that I thought might fit the bill.

The templates were by Marti Mitchell and were very sturdy and straightforward to use. The instruction booklet that came with them was also straightforward.

I like the fabrics, the turquoise floral was originally purchased for a bag pattern that I never got around to, but this whole project is just doing nothing for me. I really don't know why I am so underwhelmed by this, I can't even blame the amount of reverse sewing involved, although there was plenty of that, as I haven't enjoyed it since the first cut! Do you ever have projects like that?

Even today I was thinking about scrapping it all together and starting something new, but I really would like to get this done and dusted ahead of the deadline for a change. Maybe I just need to leave it for a day and come back to it tomorrow. What do you think? Scrap it or Finish it?


Linking up to Fabric Tuesday

New to Me in 2013 Link-up!

Happy Burns Night and welcome to the first monthly link-up for

This has been a month of several firsts for me already. The blog button above was one of my first New to Me experiences this month, and thanks Pam for helping me figure out how to make it work properly!

Next up as New to Me was hosting my very first linky party last Friday, when I hosted

Apart from being rather quick in closing the link down, sorry Amy (!) it all went surprisingly well. Next time I will work out the time zones better I promise :)

My main New to Me in 2013 for January though is something that I signed up to do many months ago, but it has taken the extra nudge of the link party to actually make me go ahead and start.

As many of you will know once you are signed up to the Craftsy website you will receive many notifications of sales and reductions on the classes they offer. It was in one of those too good to miss sales last summer that I signed up for the Wire-wrapped Stones, Crystals and Clusters class. The class outline introduced a number of tools that I did not already have so I set about building up an appropriate toolkit to start the first class.

I bought the necklace above at a bric-a-brac stall as I was sure the stones and charms would come in handy one day! That is as far as I got - until now.

Yesterday I printed out the class materials, gathered together my supplies and sat back to watch the class. Then I hit the first problem, wire for jewellery is graded differently in the US and Europe and as all of my supplies had been purchased in Latvia, they bore absolutely no relation to the grades mentioned in the class or in the materials list. A quick search of the internet and a print out of a wire gauge conversion chart and I was again ready to go.

So here is my first attempt at wire-wrapping. Even although I can see that the wrapping maybe isn't as neat as it could be, I have to say I am pretty pleased with that. I don't own a mandrel to wrap the wire around so used a pen instead, worked just as well and was a lot cheaper :)


Now I am not saying that it was all entirely straightforward, the lengths of wire now sitting in my rubbish bin will testify to that. but I do now have a pair of wire-wrapped circle and bead earrings handmade by me!

In fact I have two pairs!

Linking these up to The Sunday Showcase 

So that is my New to Me for 2013 now it is time to catch up with all things New to You!

As ever please link back to this post in your post and/or add the blog button to your sidebar and 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 for a week so if you haven't already tried something new you still have time :)