Jennie's Threads

I have always struggled to like blue and orange as a colour scheme, but when I found out how many people I know are having/have had baby boys, I just new I wanted to make a baby quilt using blues and oranges. So I raided my stash and came up with these. I started with 20 different oranges and 20 different blues. I put together the design whilst in Budapest - I'm not claiming originality but it shows off the fabrics well! It took about two hours to cut all the fabrics, but I pieced it in just three hours - that makes a very quick quilt top. Hopefully I can get it quilted in the next few weeks but I have put together a quick tutorial - well more of a cutting guide. You can find it as a PDF here . I'd love to see anything you make!

We're visiting my parents for the Easter weekend. They have a large garden, so we managed to take some pictures of my two biggest quilts. They have a large living room. Or at least I thought so, until we tried to baste the monster... Here is the monster (116x116") in the garden Strict instructions to crop my mother from the photograph! This photo gives quite a good idea of the colour of the fabric. And here's the baby monster (80x80") in the garden And being basted - you get a better idea of the warm pinky look from the sashing in this picture. We also basted my neon stained quilt. and the back of Stained - a wonderful Ikea print which turns out to be 60" wide - no seam down the middle of my back! We are now high on 505 fumes! Whoops...

Is that how you spell Ginormous? anyways... I like fiddly, intricate, tiny... But none of that for me this week. Instead I've been putting together some quilt tops that have been waiting a while. And that means long seams and lots of pins... I posted the first two of the weekend - the quilt tops are finished and this weekend I hope to baste them on my Mum's living room floor! Above is Steph's quilt - it's about 80x80". Below is a quilt that I'm not really sure what I will do with. It's about 38x48" (I think). And tonight I have finished piecing the monster of all monsters.... it's so enormous I can't get a photo of it. I'm hoping Mum and Dad will pose with it at the weekend so I can post some proper pics. This is me fighting it through the machine... Each block has the creamy square in the middle and are about 17x17" The fabrics are Durham fabrics by Lecien and they are very pretty - not my normal colours at all,...

Progress has been made! Two finished flimsies! Wohoo! Steph's quilt was stalled from word go. I just found it really boring - I much prefer fiddly, intricate sewing. But it was a good exercise, because it made me realise that! And int he future, I would pick different quilts to make when people ask for one/I offer to make one. It's too big to photograph easily Just before I went out to Budapest again I trimmed all of the blocks - I did it with company to make it less boring and make me finish it! Then yesterday I sashed it. All in one go. Done. It went amazingly quickly. I thought about adding another couple of borders, but it is already huge, so I think I will just finish it off with a scrappy binding! This is only one quarter of the quilt top Speaking of borders, my Three Peaks quilt top was nearly finished. Yesterday I added the three borders I had planned, and this is another quilt top ready for basting and quilting. One extreme to the other - Steph's qu...

I worked on a few projects last night, but couldn't really settle. First up was my Bee block for Stash Bee - the colour inspiration was Americana/4th July - it turns out that I don't have many true true blues in my stash, but eventually I found something I was happy with. Although this isn't my favourite colour combination, I like the block and I'm really pleased with how it turned out. Having said it isn't my favourite colour combination, the next thing I worked on was a baby quilt in the same colours. So many people we know are having babies at the moment. And they are all boys. So this is the first of quite a few baby quilts - so far I've cut all the circles, but got no further. And then I pulled out the Rhubarb and Custard quilt - this got stuffed in a draw when I stitched something wrong and couldn't be bothered to unpick - never a good idea. I unpicked and re-stitched. then I carried on and made quite a bit of progress with the sashi...

A day long quilting retreat in Edinburgh this August - my favourite city! Find more info here 

It's been fairly hectic since I got back from Budapest, but tonight I got a bit more sewing time and finished off block four in the Lucky Stars foundation piecing BOM. This is the Ninja Star And here are all four together...so far so good! But mostly this weeks Work in Progress is my stash :) Look what arrived today (in addition to two parcels yesterday)... And look what came out of those envelopes.... A fat quarter bundle of Comma, a few fat quarters of Kate Spain, a low volume fat quarter bundle from Pink Castle fabrics, Painters Canvas (in lipstick - yummy), Backyard Baby, some large pieces of Simply COlour chevrons for backing which was on sale, and lots of Kona fat quarters - and it was free fat quarter week at the Village Haberdashery and I got a wonderful surprise of some Summersville and a beautiful blue spot. And I finally got a Kona colour card - so many colours - it's so pretty. It's like Christmas. Linking up with Lee at Freshly Pieced  ...

I think - because now it's finished I'm not really sure if it fits in any category because of it's size... but even if I'm disqualified on the grounds of being a funny size, I am thrilled with my finished entry for the Emerald Challenge.   It was a bit hit and miss whether I would get it finished time as before I went away all I had was two blocks with a border,  and by the time we had dinner I had my finished project. I'm following a lot of BOMs this year and that results in a lot of block sitting round for a long time. So I've made myself a block keeper. The quilt-y part of this project is 36" x 17" but it will always be folded up as you can see in the above photo, so finished it is 18" x 17". I made two blocks: ET Phone Home from Lynne at Lily's Quilt s and Lone Starburst block by Anna at Six White Horses . I've been admiring these blocks for ages, just waiting for the opportunity to used them. I had a lot of fun q...

This is F-2: Kaleidoscope - maybe I'll just call it Francesco's Star - it seems more appropriate, given I pieced it whilst watching the pictures from Rome tonight. It turns out that those tiny triangles - there are 16 of them - are not symetrical. It also turns out it's not easy to unpick EPP. But I did - 14 of them were unpicked and restitched! The fabric is from Benartex and is called Space the New Frontier. I've also made a start on quilting Jane. I decided I wanted to quilt by hand. I may regret this in the future, but so far I am enjoying putting a little bit more of me into each of the blocks. There is no way I would manage to hand quilt the finished monster, so I'm using a quilt as you go technique - this has the added advantage of not having to do all the sashing in one go - I love sashing....not. Here is progress so far. I've been rather Jane-focussed the last couple of weeks, here is the evidence but I've now run out of pre-prepa...

I hope you're not too bored of Jane yet! I'm not. I have two blocks to share tonight and then only one more prepared while I'm here, so there will be a bit of a break after that. I promise. And when I get home I have a few other projects I want to play with. I started yesterday by finishing off the block I used in my EPP tutorial . It just needed some diamonds appliqued. I struggled with these, and the points are not sharp. In the end I basted them to freezer paper and the appliqued them; next time I'll baste to something slightly more sturdy and try again... but it is finished and I'm ok with it! It is block F-1: Big Top and the fabric is from Grandmother's Flower Garden by Lecien. Yesterday's second challenge was curved English paper piecing. It is possible - look at this tutorial . So, to avoid applique, I decided to tackle it. I didn't make it easy on myself - nice small pieces, and I didn't cut enough of the white background fabric, so I w...

Whilst I'm away from home I've been working on some Dear Jane blocks. I've tried regular piecing by hand in the past with somewhat dubious results, so to piece by hand I use the English Paper Piecing technique. This is a great way to do inset seams, which is something I'm not great at on the machine (having started my double wedding ring, I will be getting a lot of practice of this). On my last post I shared a very bad photo of block D-2: Mouse in the Mirror. So here it is again, with better lighting: I've also completed B-9 Tinker Toy The fabric is Oval Elements from Art Gallery Wendy then asked me how I do my blocks with EPP, so I thought I'd share a little tutorial. This isn't the only way to do it, and it most likely isn't the best way, but this is my way.... the block is F-1: Big top and the fabric is from Lecien. I start by tracing the block design from the book onto freezer paper. I just lay it over and mark the corners on the dull si...

I haven't stayed in my hotel room all day - I've been for a wander.... and here are some photos to prove it! The Chain Bridge from the Pest side of the Danube (my hotel is behind me and to my left)  Another view across the river - I have no idea what the building is because I forgot my guide book again  The Chain Bridge from the Buda side of the river - cropped so you can't see that an eyesore my hotel is!  Parliament  Why a picture of a car park, I hear you ask. I first came to Budapest almost exactly 7 years ago (OMG I feel old) at the end of March and the Danube was in flood: everything in the photo above from the riverbank to the railings (including the tram line that you can't realy see in the photo) was under water! From memory of that trip 7 years ago, I think this is St Stephan's Basilica