Jennie's Threads

I don't bake. It's not that I don't enjoy it, it's just that there always seems to be something else to do. But once a year I do bake. The end of June means Wimbledon and the Church and Mum and I run the cake stall every year, and bake approximately half the cakes for it. I started on Wednesday with 48 jumbo cookies (that's 6 batches). And Thursday was brownie day. And the most amazing brownie ever is the Chocolate orange brownie which started as a tripled chocolate cake with rich icing in a magazine I borrowed and photocopied, but which has changed unrecognisably over the last few years..... it takes me an hour from starting to getting in the oven and I normally make 4 btches of the recipe all at once (if you're doing it, you might as well do it properly!) Ingredients: (four one quarter of what you see in the photos below) 100g marg 100g dark chocolate - I use Bourneville 125g caster sugar 3 large eggs, separated (I hate separating eggs) zest of two...

I'm spending the week with my parents, which means no sewing machine.... and that means I can get some hand sewing done! So far this week I've been basting hexagons.... nothing as satisfying as a row of neatly basted hexies. And this evening I started piecing them into flowers This will form part of the mini quilts I'm making for the Fat Quarterly Retreat sample swap. I've also been plotting some embroidery - some to go with the hexagons, the next few months of my own BOM, the name tag for my partner at the Fat Quarterly Retreat, and some quilt labels. So the next few days may see some embroidery too. I'm linking up with WIP Wednesday and heading over to check out some of the other eye candy!

It's finished. Actually finished! And in time.... This quilt started as place mats, and grew a bit - you can read through the conversations I had with my father in this post here - at one point, when asked what colours the recipient liked we got the answer "I don't know. She wears a lot of scarves"..... In the end he did pull the fabrics we ended up with (with assistance) - 7 batiks in oranges, green, browns, blue and black, and Mum picked the background fabric, Floral Elements from Art Gallery. He also picked the layout which is from Gen X BOM (but made bigger). I love the negative space and it meant we could create a large double bed quilt in just a couple of months. I knew that if I did the same block over and over I would get bored and the quilt would not get finished, so I picked a sampler style - 15 different traditional blocks from a variety of sources - the Gen X BOM , the Farmers Wife, Jelly Roll Sampler Quilts...., each made twice but with differen...

Thursday was a great day for quilts. I finished three! That is not something that happens often. The first finish was the big yellow giant which refused to be basted nicely on Monday. It's so large that I can't photograph it. I'm hoping to take some really good pictures this weekend - I just need it too stop raining and stop blowing a gale. So watch this space for a post all about it. In the meantime I also finished two baby quilts! The blue and pink quilt for Ellie-Jo made from Color Me Retro is now finished. This started as an "I love that fabric" moment when Color Me Retro first came out and before I knew whether Jane was expecting a boy or a girl - I'd been admiring plus quilts online so I made a piece 20" x 20" and wondered what to do with it. Luckily it was a girl (who will probably be a bit of a tomboy) so dark pink and blue is perfect. I made it bigger - 36" x 24" and then ignored it for a while. I finally got round to layer...

This quilt is fighting hard not to be finished. My deadline is bed time tomorrow because on Friday I have to go to work and then we are driving down to my parents and I have to hand over a finished quilt so Dad can take it to Ireland in the first week of July. No pressure. Wadding for the quilt was tough. Normally my LQS has extra wide cotton wadding in. But they didn't. And it took forever to come in.....Backing for this quilt was tough. I found a lovely batik extra wide that would work with the batiks on the front. Dad didn't like it. We ended up with a super king size flat sheet in chocolate bought off Amazon. But of course, it didn't have the size on Amazon. When it arrived it turned out it was 120" x 100". Great. The quilt was 106" x 106". So I cut it apart and added in a pieced strip of leftover fabrics from the front. I hope Dad likes it - he didn't seem sure when I told him what I was planning..... Linda and I took over the church hal...

Look at our garden now! A whole load of mates came round yesterday and attacked the garden - we cleared all of the rubbish that was in the garden when we moved in (over four years ago) and that has accumulated since - there is currently a full skip on the drive. We still need to level off the area which will be the lawn, and then we can start moving things in - turf, flowers.... the bbq has moved in already and we thanked our friends with meat, meat and more meat! But that isn't all we've been up to this weekend. Remember the ultimate classic - the S-reg Corsa my hubby used for the rally in May? It got another run out today - we took part in the Whickham and District Motor Club Rally. Together. As in he drive and I navigated. And we are not getting a divorce! We tested four and half years of marriage and we survived!!! We came seventh out of twenty cars - not bad! And of course, I've done some sewing too. What would a weekend be without it. Debs's quilt is stall...

I can't even think of much to write. I'm not really feeling inspired to do anything at all really..... I finished the hexagons for this month in the Get Your Hex On Bee - I love these fabrics and I've used them a few times in my own projects - it was so relaxing to put these together. I basted a few more hexies too - still a few to go! And I've made another two blocks of the City Sampler: Block #8: Square Sets: the name comes from ceilidh dancing where couples form square sets. On Saturday night we went to a ceilidh back home with my parents. My Dad plays in the ceilidh band (and I use to) and it was a great night, catching up with lots of old friends and making some new ones! The fabrics are Snow Queen (from Northcott), Kona Periwinkle and Natural Elements from Art Gallery. And Block #9 Coproliters. This is the name of the band. Where I come from in Bedfordshire is an area rich in Coprolite - a mineral mined at the turn of the last century because...

I don't have anything new today.  But I wanted to share with you a frustration I'm experiencing at the moment. Maybe putting it down on words will help me focus on it... It's about hand sewing. I love hand sewing. It's where I started - with cross stitch. My first quilt was made entirely to show off some embroidery. This time last year I discovered and fell in love with English paper piecing. I have so many ideas for things I would like to make that involve hand sewing. My frustration is that I always seem to put it off. It's something I seem to do when I can't use my sewing machine like when I'm on holiday or visiting my parents. But then I'm there to have a holiday or spend time with my parents so I don't actually get as much higher stitching done as I planned. The relative instant gratification of things made on the machine often wins out over hand sewing which takes longer. But do I do this hobby for finished items or do I d...

I've jumped on the Zakka band wagon! Yesterday and today I made myself three Bell Pepper Coasters. What a fantastic design! These were really quick to put together and are so cute. They are finished, so not really a WIP but I would like to make at least one more so it's a set of three. I love a lot of the projects in the book, but I really can't commit to a project a week, so I think I'll pick and chose which weeks I join in with, depending on other stitching at the time. But I do have one enormous WIP this week: it's the quilt I'm making for Dad to give to some friends of his. I had planned on having a completed quilt top, but as you can see, it's looking a bit wonky in this picture. Michael's arms aren't quit long enough - there another row of blocks on the right too That's because I ran out of the yellow... again. There are two more rows which I couldn't sash at the weekend. I picked up more yellow yesterday but got distracted...

So two of this week's blocks have been niggling. They just weren't quite right. And I worked out why this afternoon - they just aren't saturated enough. Not bright enough! So I re-did them. I know it's early for a redo, but it was bugging me.... I'm trying really hard not to use fabrics from the same line together, to try and mix lines - it was hard today - Luxe in Bloom was tempting me.... Block number 5 [Fabric Delivery] old one new one The fabrics are Floral Elements, Splendor 1920 and Luxe in Bloom (all from Art Gallery). I'm keeping the name even though I'm not using a fabric with postage stamps on any more Block number 6 [ Horse Chestnut] old one new one Fabrics are Textures, Pure Elements in Ash and Pure Elements in Lemonade (still not the most contrast but...) And I've named Block 4 - Hebe and Lavender - because these are two plants I am going to have in my new garden - and the block colours are just right (well - a br...

I can't get enough of these City Sampler blocks. Once I've got over picking fabrics they go together so quickly and they are so bright and saturated. So here are this week's blocks! Block 4: as yet unnamed - I'm working on it. Fabrics are Color Me Retro from Art Gallery, Bella by Lotta Jansdotta,  Kona Dark Violet, Pearl Bracelets and Summersville Spring from Moda. Block 5: Fabric Delivery, because I got a very good fabric delivery this week, and I'm using this wonderful postage stamp fabric from Free Spirit. Fabrics are Pearl Bracelets, a Kaufmann blender, and Postage Stamps. Block 6: Horse Chestnut, because today we took out an enormous horse chestnut tree from our garden - by "we" I made a gardener. I loved the tree but it was just too big - you can see the process of jungle to bare earth on my previous blog post here . Fabrics are Brown Nature Elements from Art Gallery, a yellow from Makower, and Cupcakery from SPX Fabrics (this one may ...