Bookworm beginnings

We have been on our travels again this month, and although you would think that would mean my New to Me's are not sewing related for a change they are!

Our first port of call on our travels was to Bath and rather fortunately the house that we had rented was only 10 minutes away from the American Museum & Gardens! Although I have been in the area several times since our son and daughter-in-law moved to Bristol a couple of years ago, I had never managed to find an opportunity to visit. Being so close this time though it would have been rude not to :)

The Museum is known for its' quilt displays and happily for me there was a new exhibition on of Kaffe Fassett quilts. The quilts, which are featured in this book, were all his interpretations of quilts in the Museum collection and both the original inspiration and the modern interpretation were displayed. I did take photos of some of the quilts but cannot find them so you will just have to take my word for it that they were all, both old and new, amazing! The exhibition continues until November 3rd so if you are in the area before then it is definitely worth a visit.

You will not be surprised, I am sure, to know that the book found it's way into my shopping bag :)

A book that I have had for a while is the inspiration for my second New to Me this month, Crafted Applique by Lara Buccella.

The method in the book involves coating the back of fabric in Mod Podge and cutting out the applique shapes when the coating has dried. Apparently the resulting raw edge applique will not fray! I can't attest to that as so far I have only coated and cut the fabric, but it certainly does make life easier when you are cutting out intricate shapes.

So those are my New to Me's this month now it is over to you to share your attempts at something new in April. As always the link party will remain open until the end of the month so if you have been sitting on that fence about trying something new consider this your nudge to jump off and dive right in! Encouragement is good too so check out our linkers and applaud their efforts :)

You are invited to the Inlinkz link party!

Click here to enter

Back to a new normal

As you can no doubt imagine there hasn't been a lot of something New's going on around here for a while so this will be the first New to Me link party of 2019 with a shiny new blog button made especially for the occasion!

Celtic Thistle Stitches

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 I do hope that you will join me in celebrating the trials and tribulations of trying something out for the first time. It takes me longer every time to create a new blog button as I can never remember how I did it the last time :) This time I tried the InLinkz blog button creator and it seems to have worked but I am still keeping my fingers crossed!

All of my New to Me's this month have been travel related as there hasn't been much in the way of stitching going on.

At the beginning of the month we took a belated birthday trip to Skye, where our boys had given us an overnight stay at the Kinloch Lodge hotel The booking included a 7 course tasting menu with wine pairings so it was just as well that we were staying overnight!

The weather was atrocious whilst we were there but the welcome couldn't have been warmer, definitely somewhere to add to the bucket list if you are planning a trip to Scotland. The food was pretty exceptional too :)

As the weather was so bad we didn't get to visit the Fairy Pools or Coral Beach but we did manage a quick stop at the third place on our list - Talisker Distillery! I really like the Talisker Storm malt whisky, so it was nice to be able to see where it is actually made and to see just how many different whiskies they produce. 

On our way up to Skye we stopped overnight in Fort William, which is at the foot of Ben Nevis, the highest mountain in Scotland. Amazingly this bronze statue of a model T Ford, which sits on the main street, was made to commemorate the unbelievable feat of one Henry Alexander in 1911 who drove the original car up to the top of the mountain! A team of 77 equally mad stalwarts took the original car up the mountain again 100 years later in May 2011, this time in pieces and re-assembled the car in the middle of a snowstorm! I am guessing that it sounded like a better idea when it was suggested than it actually was :) The bronze statue was cast in 2018 to commemorate both trips. 

My final New to Me trip was a bit closer to home, to the outskirts of Glasgow to visit the House for an Art Lover. The house was built using designs by Charles Rennie Mackintosh for an international competition in 1901, but not actually built until a local businessman decided to realise Mackintosh's designs in 1989. The photo above gives you an idea of the style and scale of the house. It is absolutely stunning and deserves a blog post all of its own!

So, that is my New to Me's this month now it is over to you to share your experiences whether good or bad with trying something for the first time. As always the link party will remain open until the end of March so you still have time to try out that new technique or visit that new destination and link up. I would love it if you added the new blog button to your post and checked out the linkers to share the celebrations too. 

You are invited to the Inlinkz link party!

Click here to enter

A little sewing

Thanks for all of your kind words on my last post, I really did appreciate them.

Despite the recent turmoil here there has been a (little) bit of sewing going on.

A top and  2 pairs of leggings for the newest addition to the family.

I made the 3 month size but it doesn't look like he is going to get a lot of wear out of them does it?

Naturally, I turned to my trusty Brindille and Twig patterns for these makes just like I did when I made similar for his big brother.

Of course, I couldn't make for our newest grandson without making something for his big brother too!

Our gorgeous grandson has a vivid imagination and loves dressing up so when I saw this book I knew that I had to buy it.

Here is my first attempt at an outfit from the book - a lion hat, which I am pleased to say fits and has gone down well :) It is admittedly a rather elderly lion with all that grey hair in his mane but sometimes you just have to work with what is available!