Jennie's Threads

There's about 9 hours of 2012 left, so time for a bit of  housekeeping (new blog header!) and a review. Non-quilty we had some fantastic holidays this year, my brother-in-law got married and he and Jane announced that they are expecting in March 2013. We had a fantastic summer of sport and celebration, and although I didn't go to London for either the Olympics or the Jubilee, the atmosphere in the whole of the UK was fantastic. There have been downs as well, but in general I think 2012 goes down as a very good year! My sewing machine has been very busy this year: I finished four lap quilts in December and presents for my parents (and a joint effort on a toddler quilt, which I haven't included in the collage): Notebook cover , Countdown to Christmas (2) , Braided Chain , NYB Placemats , Papillon , Mod Pop I finished some other quilts this year too: four baby quilts, three bed quilts, five lap quilts (four pictured, plus another Papillon quilt) and a tablecloth S...

Before Christmas I showed you five quilts that needed basting, quilting, binding. Before Christmas I finished four of them. I knew that the fifth would not be gifted until my parents went home, so I had until they left to get it finished. We had a quiet day on 27th so I used the opportunity to my Braided Chain quilt finished. I really struggled to photograph this quilt so that the sashing colour showed the right colour. A lot of the photos show it quite orangy, but it is actually pink - this first photo is perhaps one of the closest to the correct colour. pre-washing I started this quilt way back in February with a Cabbages and Roses Jelly Roll from Northcott as a class at my LQS. The pattern is from Pam and Nicky Lintott's "More Layer Cake, Jelly Roll and Charm Quilts". post-washing crinkle The backing is one of the fabrics my Gran gave me over the summer. There was over 3 metres and it was a perfect match to the fabric I'd used on the front. It's ...

I hope everyone had a very very good Christmas! I certainly did - made even better because Christmas day was at Aunty Barbara's house and not at ours! Rosie absolutely loved her new quilt, as did the three Aunts. We had some lovely food and lovely company. My sister-in-law had a lovely hangover :) Boxing day was at our house and I fried up two enormous pans of bubble and squeak! My wonderful husband bought me tickets to see Phantom of the Opera in London at Easter and my parents bought me a new camera. So I had a play with it - look at some of the lovely fabric I've got. From my Mother-in-law I got a fat quarter bundle of Mama Said Sew by Sweetwater. plus a green fabric that I just liked! I ordered a fat quarter bundle of Architextures. And I got an early birthday present from my parents of a fat quarter bundle of Noteworthy (also by Sweetwater) And here are my purchases from today including some Art Gallery Floral Elements, and some batiks. And a Charm ...

My last quilt for Christmas is quilted with a free motion squiggle and bound. It's the second jelly roll hexagon quilt in the Papillon fabrics. The only difference between this one and the first is the fabric we've chosen for the borders. Today's finish: quilt number 2 And quilt number one! This is what the quilts look like in full (this is the first one) This is another for the Finish Along. If you can count, you may have noticed that I am a quilt short against the ones I listed two weeks ago. The final quilt isn't urgent - Mum and Dad will be taking it down home with them just before new year to give when they get back home, so I have a bit more time for that one! I hope you are all ready for Christmas! My house is tidy and my parents and brother have arrived. My husband has decorated the tree - he put on all of the decorations including fairy lights, before plugging in the fairy lights and realised they were totally broken. My brother then dec...

It's ok - Christmas can happen: the place mats, a present for my Mum, are finished! They don't have quite as much embroidery on them as I had planned, as I couldn't transfer the design with much success. But now they are finished and laid out together, I do like the simple running stitch. They are quite small - only 12 x 10" - but that suits my Mum's table. The pattern for the New York Beauty Block can be found here  and I used the freezer paper foundation piecing technique (great tutorial here ). I have then quilted wobbly lines, added the running stitch in DMC threads to match the fabrics (which are all batiks), then finished them off with a batik back and some top stitch (which very nearly broke my sewing machine when then needle snapped!). I love the leaves on the yellow fabric To finish off the present, I took some of the off-cuts and stitched them together to create a "ribbon" in the loosest sense of the word, and tied a bow round them...

.... so I guess I'd better finish off those Christmas presents! I started off with working on Mum's place mats. They are now fully pieced and quilted. I really love the New York Beauty blocks. Tomorrow I need to finish them off with some embroidery, hand quilting and backing. Aunty M's Jelly Roll hexagon quilt is quilted. I just need to bind it and that is finished too. This is the one I was dreaming (nightmares) of still working on on Christmas Eve. I'm now close enough to the finish that I hope that won't be the case. I got a new project today. Linda has made a quilt for her Dad, my husband's Grandad, and had decided to free motion quilt it herself. This was her first attempt and it didn't go well - she went into total melt down... I'm going to encourage her to sign up for some FMQ lessons in the new year. In the mean time I quilted the quilt - a small scale stipple in all the background areas. It has really made the stars pop - I hope she like...

I completed three pink quilts today. The first one is a Christmas present for my mother-in-law's cousin's daughter who is about 15 months old. Linda wanted to make her a pink quilt, so we pulled all of our pinks fabrics out of the stash and Linda cut 6.5" squares from each, which I then pieced, quilted and bound (the binding did not go particularly smoothly, but I think I've rescued it!). We've used polyester wadding to make it easier for Mum and the finished quilt is about 36 x 36". While she was cutting 6.5" squares from all the pinks, Linda also cut 3.5" squares for another project. Back in November I received an email from a lady who had found my blog while searching for incubator quilts for her twin girls who are currently in hospital. I said I didn't know where she could buy incubator quilts or covers, but that I would make her a couple of incubator quilts. She asked if they could be pink with the girls' names on. The finish...

Two down, three to go! The Countdown to Christmas Jelly Roll Sampler Quilt is finished! This is for a friend of my mother-in-law's who saw my quilt this time last year and asked me to make one for her. She bought all the fabrics and I made it up. I didn't refer back to my original at all when I was piecing this one, so although it's the same fabric, they are all in different places, so it looks totally different (you can see the two side by side in my last post about this quilt here ). The quilting is different too. Since last year I have learned (but definitely not mastered) free motion quilting, so I did a stipple all over the quilt, instead of last year's wobbly lines. The thread started off as a YLI spring green. My sewing machine did not like it. It refused to FMQ with it, so I did a mad dash to my LQS and found an Aurifil (it hadn't been there when we'd bought the YLI or I would have started off with this thread in the first place) in practically t...

One down, four to go - quilts for Christmas, that is! Today I quilted and bound my Mod Pop Quilt. I started this with Leanne's QAL and used my collection of browns and blues which turn out to be mostly from Pure by Sweetwater (I really do have a bit of a Sweetwater thing), but there are some other random fabrics added in. This was the first time I've done a quilt with lots of curves - I've done a sampler block of a drunkards path and I'm working on my Pac Mania quilt which is large scale curves, but Mod Pop was proper curves. Leanne has a great video for how to sew curves without pins. I think if I had had to pin all of these curves, this quilt would never have been made! There were loads of options for quilting this. The way Leanne quilted her first Mod Pop is stunning, but it was a bit too modern for the recipient of this quilt, so I went for a free motion stipple in the "background" - the brown - and left the blue un-quilted so that it po...