Jennie's Threads

I was planning on showing a mini quilt in progress tonight. But Little Miss Mia has been a star today and happily sat watching the snooker in her bouncy chair, so what I actually have to show you is a finished mini quilt! I got my copy of Love Patchwork and Quilting through the post on Saturday morning and found the Mini Cheerio pattern by Camille Roskelly. I had to wait until Sunday afternoon to pick the fabrics, which were loosely based on this Design Seeds Palette . These colours are not "normal me" at all but I fancied trying something different. This was my first layout but I felt it lacked a little pzzazz. So I  made up another block in navy and asked for opinions on Instagram. The majority said with navy, so this morning I stitched it up. I got out my free motion foot again for the straight-ish line quilting (I've now officially run out of quilting needles) - I love the texture this creates, then cut a skinny binding - 2" according to the pattern -...

Mum, if you read this before the weekend, just look surprised! Just before Christmas my Mum and Dad both bought new laptops and new laptops bags - identical laptops in identical bags... after a few times of picking up the wrong bag, Mum asked me if I could make her a key ring of some sort to identify hers. I've been a bit busy since Christmas and inspiration never really struck. Saturday morning I had a brainwave. Scrappy key rings. Free motion appliqued. I made one for Mum and one for Dad. I made up a template for the tag and drew round it generously on piece of felt - twice per key ring. I then arranged some small scraps on one of the tags and using a small amount of glue, stuck them in place. As the machine was already set up for free motion quilting I attached the scraps that way. I then free motion quilted a pattern for the reverse of the tags - on the green tag I played with the circles on string which I had loved when quilting my neon stained quilt, and fo...

My quilting marathon continues! Yesterday and today I've been quilting my Three Peaks quilt. Not very long ago it looked like this... This shows the colour of the quilt best This quilt has been around a while with no purpose, so it never got beyond the completed quilt top stage. But now I have a baby quilt I want to quilt with a spiral and I've never done it before, so rather than jump in at the deep end and make a total dog's dinner of a quilt I want to give away, I decided to use this quilt as a practice. I started off by checking out a couple of tutorials here and here . I decided to start off by marking a spiral using a pen that has run out of ink - it works a bit like a hera marker but is more accurate. Then I free motion quilted the first few rounds. I then changed to a walking foot and continued outwards. With hindsight I should have free motioned a few more rounds, as it was tough to keep the line smooth for the first part I did with the walking foot. Once...

After I posted earlier this week I had a few questions about the Microstitch gun I had mentioned. I had heard about it from a friend and recently my supplier of reasonably priced basting spray (which I love) has stopped shipping it (something about spray cans and the Royal Mail....). And me and pin basting are not friends.... Before I go any further, I paid for mine, I'm not being asked to review by a supplier etc,. I got mine from Amazon in the UK for approx £23. It works by firing little plastic tags through the layers of your quilt - like the tags you get on new clothes, but smaller. The gun came with 1800 tags half in white and half in black. I basted four quilts: The City Sampler at 90"x 90", a lap quilt and two baby quilts, and I used about half of the supplied tags. It seems pretty easy to buy additional tags and probably works out cheaper than the basting spray overall. If you aren't comfortable spray basting larger quilts, then this is a good alt...

It isn't finished yet, but today my neon stained quilt is officially a step closer. I have finished the free motion quilting. Warning - this post is photo heavy as I dissect my free motion quilting! Ive found loads of inspiration online for the quilting ideas and it's all pinned on my Pinterest board . Progress shot! First up a shot of the whole quilt from the front (I totally lucked out with the light in our living room this afternoon to get these photos which show the quilting off so well)... ...and from the back (I've heard rumours Ikea are discontinuing this print - does anyone know if that's the case in the UK too?). I think this may be my favourite quilt ever. I have taken each block of colour and individually free motion quilted it in a variety of filler designs - some were successful, some less so, and there are some that I want to revisit again in the future. I love the texture of pebbles (orange top left) and the really dense straight (?!) lin...

This weekend we had loads of family round - my parents and brother came to stay for the long weekend and on Sunday 17 of us sat down to dinner including a six-year-old, a 13-month-old and Mia. Of course that meant not much sewing time, but here and there I have done a few stitches. I've been working a lot on my Neon Stained quilt. I'm free motion quilting each block using a variety of fillers - Pinterest has been invaluable for inspiration and I've got a board dedicated to quilting inspiration Progress is being made but you can't see it very well from the front - I've quilted all the pink and all the orange. The back shows it better - I love this Ikea print. The green and yellow are still to do and my aim is next Monday when I'm showing a local group how to free motion quilt - this will be a great way to show them the results - I'm nowhere near perfect but the practice I'm getting from this quilt is really helping. All of this practice wil...

It's been a week of quilting and basting. I've been working on four different quilts. I've set up my machine for free motion quilting and started off with my Skill Builder blocks. I was quite pleased with the result... So I moved on to my Neon Stained quilt. I want to try lots of different fmq ideas on this one - some are working out better than others... The third quilt is all hand quilting - when I get a few moments I'm quilting my Thread Along quilt. I'm using #12 perle cotton in white and mostly doing echo quilting. So far I've done the centre and just about made a start on the main blocks. And the basting? Hexies. Two weeks after cutting the squares, I've basted 125 1.5" hexagons for a quilt for Mia. It's amazing how much you can get done in a few snatched minutes here and there :) Linking up with WIP Wednesday .

It's been a while since I successfully free motion quilted, but with a good clean (it's hard to clean your machine properly if you've never be shown how to before) my sewing machine appears to be behaving - for tonight at least. So whilst Daddy did bath time and tried (unsuccessfully) to convince Mia to take formula milk from a bottle), Mummy managed to quilt these two blocks... Not bad for an evening!

So, once a baby hits six weeks old, everything clicks - routine, sleep, feeding.... right? And I get time to sew, right? Hey - can you see that pig flying pas the window? I know that the reality will be snatched sewing moments here and there, even if it's only just five minutes while Daddy changes the nappy. But that isn't going to stop me putting together a really stupidly long Finish Along list - I just never know what will take my fancy. Arabella Hexagon Quilt: I started this just last week - you can see why in this post here - and needs to be gifted in mid-May, so I need to get this basted, quilted and bound. Arabella Hexagon Quilt II: In boy colours. Apparently black and white are some of the first colours a baby sees so really this could be for a boy or a girl but is definitely more boy-ish Mini Swoon Quilt: I started making 6" Swoon blocks before Christmas - I've made three and want to make 9 in total, but all the fabric is cut. Neon Stained: I hav...