Jennie's Threads

Last week I got nominated by Lin at St Victor Quilts in the Round the World Blog Hop - she has followed my blog for ages and her blog shows off the fabulous arty quilting and embroidery that she creates - it's the kind of quilting I would love to do, but just don't have the imagination! Please go and say hi if you have time. Thanks for the nomination Lin! If you don't know me, I'm Jennie and I've been sewing since forever - first cross stitch and more recently quilting. I'm a new Mum - my daughter Mia is now 7 months old and I love #naptimesewing. In live in Northumberland, UK with Mia, my husband, Michael, and our very naughty "puppies", Archie and Charlie! So I have to answer some rather tricky questions... and to divert attention from the fact that I'm not answering them very well, I'm going to stick in lots of photos! 1. What am I working on? Seriously - this could be a blog post in it's own right. I don't just work...

At the moment I'm really enjoying spending my evenings sat on the sofa with a bit of hand sewing, and my poison of choice is embroidery. I've got three projects on the go and I've been experimenting with some different techniques for transferring the embroidery. Firstly, inspired by some of the mosaics and stitching in the Big Stitch Swap , and having made some mug rugs for my brother and his new wife, I'm still playing with the periodic table. We've recently moved the furniture round in our living room and hung the TV above the fire place. This meant we had to remove the pictures that were hanging above the fireplace, and we have a rawl plug now on view. And it's bugging my husband. But we're lazy. Rather than removing it, filling the hole with polyfilla and then touching up the paintwork, I'm making a small quilt. But the Periodic Table is limiting, and many of the words and phrases you can create are totally inappropriate....there are lists of them...

The Mini Medallion, which I pieced at the start of summer is now DONE! The pattern is by Corey Yoder and was shared on Sew Mama Sew during May . I got totally hung up on the quilting. I wasn't keen on the straight line quilting of the original quilt but couldn't think of anything I liked better. After much deliberation I decided to quilt it with a spiral. Unlike previous spiral quilting attempts I've spray basted this quilt.... it wasn't all hunky dory - I had some serious issues with the machine skipping stitches, but I didn't have as much issue with the fabric moving and there are no puckers on the back of this quilt . The binding was sat for months, neatly made and wound up so it's nice to finally be attaching it - no more chances to lose it! I couldn't believe how much the yellow binding changed the look of the whole quilt! The fabrics are Architextures and Botanics by Carolyn Friedlander, Minimalista, Modernology and Urban Mod Pointelle by...

Oh yes - another one! This is one project which went through a lot of changes. The original plan was nine 6" swoon blocks in a traditional setting. I cut all the fabric. Made three blocks. Put it away. Had a baby. Pulled it out. Made another two blocks. Decided I was bored. But five blocks doesn't get me very far and I had loads of fabric ready cut. One Saturday evening I sat and randomly pieced together the remaining cut fabric. I then spent several evenings trying to put these random pieces together, limited by having only a fat quarter of the grey background fabric left. This is a kind of piecing that I DO NOT enjoy. It makes my head hurt. The resulting quilt is not entirely successful. I've called it Swooning in a Crowd because the Swoons don't stand out - which is a shame given how much work goes into them. The cross hatch quilting doesn't help - it hides them even more... I added a little hand quilting - just lines here and there. But again, the thr...

Back to finishing ways - I have three to share with you over the next few days! First up is my favourite (at least for today). My Modern Alphabet Quilt. The pattern is by Tula Pink and is for a lap size quilt. Although I love the quilt, I didn't want this as a lap quilt - certainly not with that much white in our house! So the pattern sat and was forgotten for a long time. Until I shrunk it to make a (fairly large) wall hanging. The fabrics sat on my sewing table for a while. First with blue, then without blue, then blue without green... it wasn't until I added in the orange and pink (originally I was just going to use one of them, but I couldn't decide) and decided to go with green that I was happy. It's also one of the few quilts I've made with only solids. I also had an inkling I wouldn't be quilting the background very early on - so instead of leaving large areas of background at the start and finish of the alphabet, like the pattern, I pieced in some ...

By the end of today I should have three, yes three, finished quilts. None of them are enormous, but all of them are ready for binding and the binding is ready for them. My mini medallion... ...my Modern Alphabet... It looks like it needs a damn good press in this photo ...and Swooning in a crowd The baby's asleep (I've just realised I still have children's TV on)  and I'm about to turn on the sewing machine. Speaking of the Baby - Mia is 7 months old today! She has also been sick since Saturday morning... so this is a photo from Saturday in between "episodes". I would just like to clarify: that is Mummy's quilt! Linking up to WIP Wednesday

Because I need new projects like I need a hole in the head! [warning: phone photos only because I'm feeling lazy] But when Issue 3 of Quilt Now arrived yesterday and I had a quick flick through it, I knew I had to make myself a Teardrop Mini Quilt. I went to sleep last night dreaming of navy, green and a flash of pink. Tonight I need to go to bed dreaming about how to quilt it! This isn't the only thing I've started this week... a friend is having a baby girl later this year and I decided to make a butterfly quilt for her. I picked Tartan Kiwi's foundation patter n - by far the best butterfly I could find. But it's good because it has a LOT of pieces! It took me ages to cut the fabric, create the templates (I use freezer paper for foundation piecing) and then piece it. So much so that I'm debating my plan to make three of these blocks, and maybe go with one. We'll see how that works out. For the time being I am really pleased with my one block! ...