Jennie's Threads

I know it's still a fair few weeks till Christmas, but I have a Christmassy finish to share with you nevertheless. This is the quilt that nearly beat me . Ten months ago I shoved it in a suitcase on top of the wardrobe in disgust. And it was all because of wool wadding. I'd never used wool wadding before and thought I would give it a try. A decision I have regretted. Apart from smelling like wet sheep (seriously) it doesn't like basting spray. As in, don't even bother trying to spray baste. I learned the hard way - after a whole tin of it. Because it doesn't work and it doesn't hold it together so when you come to quilt it, you get so many puckers you'd think you were making a pair of curtains! The spray basting fiasco was just one in a series of  set backs. The quilt is made using a Jelly Roll of Joy by Kate Spain. I loved it when I saw the whole range lined up on the shelves of my LQS and knew I'd be making something with it, but what really sold ...

I accidentally started a Halloween quilt last week. In total I spent 6 hours on this quilt: one hour working it out and cutting the fabric (I started with a mini charm pack, but needed to double the number of charms and add sashing); 2 hours piecing the quilt top; 2 and a half hours pebble quilting it and half an hour binding it! I started with a mini charm pack of The Boo Crew from Sweetwater and a metre of a Robert Kaufmann halloween fabric for the backing. I bought both last year from Fat Quarter Shop in the post Halloween sales. To bring the quilt up to a sensible size I cut another 38 charms from my stash: a couple of Kona solids, two prints from Aspen Frost by Basic Grey - it was the perfect green, and a couple of bluey-purples that have sat in my stash for years now. I added a generous portion of Kona black to make the quilt peekaboo sized and so it fit the piece of wadding I had left over from other projects! Having used pebble quilting on part of the mix-tape quilt I...

I know - it's still October, but Christmas isn't a million miles away - only 56 days in fact! I've been working on Christmassy themed projects today: I finally got round to attaching the binding to my Christmas Jelly Roll quilt. This is the quilt that beat me last Christmas, but last week I finally got it re-basted and quilted. I resorted to kneeling on the floor to trim this quilt - it's HUGE - 70" x 90"! I'll have a post in the next couple of days to reveal the finished quilt. And then I moved on to the advent calendars for my niece and nephew - only 33 days till I need these to be finished! I had a play with the layout. And I finished embroidering the pockets for the first calendar this evening.

Seven years ago today I got married to Michael. I'm British so I don't do gushy, but I wouldn't be without him! I got a lovely piece of vintage jewellery and some chocolate from him today and I have very generously allowed him to go away for a lads week this week! I also made him this little mini quilt inspired by some of the pins on my embroidery Pinterest board The whole piece is hand embroidered using one strand of DMC threads for the lines and "punched holes" and two strands for the writing. He won't see this in person until he comes home next weekend, but I have sent him photos already!

Whilst my first entry in the Blogger's Quilt Festival was an easy choice, the second wasn't and it came down to two quilts - the one I've picked here, and the Mix Tapes quilt I finished last week. In the end I went for my cushion because you've seen the Mix Tapes pretty recently if you're a regular reader. If you aren't a regular reader, you can find the Mix Tapes quilt here and let me know if I picked the right one! :) So squeezing into the mini quilts category by measuring exactly 80" all the way round, is another of my favourite finishes this year and another one that we use all the time: my City Sampler cushion. The background to this project was that I've pieced the full 100 blocks of Tula Pink's City Sampler and I want to quilt it a la Angela Walters. I can dream, right? So this was a practice before I hit the real thing. It also served two other purposes: getting the colour scheme of mint green, peach and grey out of my system and lea...

It's Quilt Market time - that means two things: lots of time spent on Instagram drooling over pretty fabrics and patterns (I've seen three projects so far that I'd like to be spending some time on next year...); and the Blogger's Quilt Festival. My first entry for the Festival this year was a no-brainer. It's my favourite quilt I've made this year: my Nested Churn Dash Quilt. This was a tutorial from Quilt Jane , that I wasn't in love with until I saw some settings of different sized blocks. As soon as I saw that, I knew I had to make one. I started at the end of June and the quilt was finished within a month! I decided to used a long-hoarded half-yard bundle of Happy Mochi Yum Yum in the warm colour-way and supplement it with fabrics from my stash and order some Kona solids so that the end result looked quite scrappy. I also threw in a couple of greens and blues. The part I enjoyed most about this project was the quilting. I did lots of...

Another zippy pouch finished (and gifted)! This is pouch two of ten from my original Finish Along list for Quarter 4. This was the photo that showed a zip and some lace. The zip is the same one, but the lace just wasn't working in the end so I left it out. I started by perusing my Pinterest board where I collect embroidery ideas . I picked an Urban Threads design of Autumn leaves . The design comes with the leaves individually and with the leaves on a tree. The tree would look fabulous as the centre of a cushion - maybe one day. The embroidery is done on Essex Yarn Dyed Linen in natural with DMC 3809. I used two strands to outline the leaves and one strand for all of the internal detail. I did some more graffiti quilting - you can see it this time, because I didn't have a thread that matched the fabric. I think it's Aurifil 4654 - a variegated turquoise. This bottom photo shows the colour better! The fabrics are Botanics on the front and a sim...

Back in January I wrote a post called " Beaten " about a Christmas Jelly Roll Quilt. I had chosen wool wadding for the first time and discovered in disastrous manner that wool wadding and spray basting are simply incompatible. I shoved the quilt, with the small amount of puckered quilting, in a suitcase and exiled it to the top of the wardrobe in disgust! Needless to say it was not a Q4 finish for 2013. Well, it's Q4 again for the Finish Along and as this is a Christmas Quilt (in fabrics which came out and were purchased just before Christmas 2012 - Joy by Kate Spain), the quilt reappeared on the list. This was last year - you can just about pick out the single line of unsuccessful quilting Whilst I've been off on maternity leave, I've been sewing with a great group of friends each week in a village hall - and village halls mean lots of space for basting. This week was my last opportunity to baste before I go back to work (there's a couple of weeks of...