Jennie's Threads

Last month I shared my mix tape quilt finish with you. The quilt was gifted by my sister-in-law, Steph, to Chloe. My husband's family knows Chloe's family since forever and Steph is very close to them - like a big sister! You can read Chloe's story here on the local new website - in short, she was diagnosed with leukemia when she was 2 and underwent intensive chemotherapy. Aged 12 she was diagnosed with dilated cardiomyopathy. And by September this year she needed a new heart. Yesterday, she got her new heart, and although she isn't out of the woods yet, she now has a future to look forward to. Chloe can now go on to enjoy life because someone, somewhere, lost theirs. And at the very worst time in their life, grieving and in pain, that family had to make a decision to donate their loved one's organs. I'm telling you all of this because Chloe is one of the lucky ones: so many people still die whilst waiting on the transplant list. Sign up to be an org

That's the second week in a row I've missed WIP Wednesday... but I missed it because I was desperately trying to finish off this project (it was supposed to be gifted today, but of course there's been a change of plan because I called in at Homebase to get dowel to hang it on my way home from work and I stayed up late). A couple of weeks ago I finished an advent calendar for my nephew, James, and yesterday I finished one for his sister, my niece, Ellie-Jo. It's pretty much the same, so I won't bore you with too many details here - I didn't make any effort to get the pockets matching or placed the same, so the numbers are all in different places, but you get the idea. Just realised I need another button - for the dot on the i I have to confess, that by the end I was a bit sick of attaching patches to pockets. I really had to force myself to get the last few finished. And this was the first time I've tried out the blanket stitch on my new-ish Broth

Saturday was the second day with Jennie (you can read about the first here ). I booked up for these classes well over a year ago based solely on the fact Jennie was teaching them. I went to a couple of classes with her back in 2011 and was not going to miss another opportunity! It was about three weeks ago when we finally found out what we were going to be making. Friday's class was lovely - I was absolutely thrilled with what we would be making. I was less enamoured with Saturday's. I don't like basket blocks and this was a basket block. The sample photos looked old fashioned and very "not me". Newcastle is not a hotbed of modern quilters. I don't know anyone else who would even recognise the difference between a modern quilter and a traditional quilter, let alone call themselves a modern quilter (except my mother-in-law because she puts up with me). I'm not getting into a debate about modern and traditional here, but I know that I am definitely not tr

I have been looking forward to this weekend for over a year. Two day-long workshops with Jennie Rayment . Jennie is an author and teacher who takes the characteristic of fabric exploited in the cathedral window technique and takes it further than you could ever imagine. That characteristic is that a bias folded edge can roll and curve. And once you've worked out how to create bias edges in a block by folding fabric cleverly and inserting squares and rectangles into seam lines, the possibilities are endless - and I'm still trying to get my head round them! The full piece so far - there's still a lot of rolling to do on the border, but eventually it will all look like the top right corner Today we did a project called "Does it Need a Button". A central 12" block, plain 3" borders, an ingenious 3" border with more bias edges to roll, and a final 3" border. I chose to make mine in a single colour. Jennie is known as the Calico Queen in the

This evening I completed my mini quilt for the IG Mini Swap! And an interesting bit of fussy cutting! It started as a single half-sized mix tape block I made on a whim. I made this lonely block eight friends in loads of different scraps of fabric, then wrapped them all in a huge amount of white fabric. I even pressed it before I basted it! That huge amount of white open space required quilting. It's a like a garden after fresh snowfall - I couldn't wait to make loads of footprints in it. I spent most of yesterday quilting this up, and I will confess that by the time I had finished I had a few doubts. I wasn't sure about the curve in the quilting - straight diagonal lines may have been better.... but thanks to the lovely people of Instagram, I think I'm happy with it again. I picked some of my favourite tried and tested free motion motifs - matchsticks, circles and figure eights - I also added in some fans which I've only done once before, an

Yep - I went back to work this week after my maternity leave. So productivity has plummeted. It's certainly been a bit of a shock to the system. By the time I'm free to sew in the evening I'm knackered. I have done bits of hand sewing - I'm trying to get Ellie-Jo's advent calendar finished, but it's slow going and not particularly exciting to show you. Yesterday I had a little more energy, so I sorted out the remaining background and organized the colours for the Preppy the Whale quilt I'm planning. I even got the first block done. And tonight I've made another 3. I love how quick these are! I may go and make a few more now... Linking up with WIP Wednesday .

I'm setting myself up for a lot of quilting in the next few weeks. Yesterday I bought 5 metres of 125" wide batting.... the man at the shop asked if I was making a tent - I'm not sure a tent made of batting would be particularly weatherproof! Some of the quilts are barely even started, but I made good progress this week in making up a few more quilt tops: The butterfly quilt: I made three butterfly blocks using a pattern from Tartan Kiwi and made up the size of the baby quilt using a fabric I picked up at Harrogate - it's Theodore and Izzy Mountain Meadow by Andrea Turk for Camelot Fabrics. I started off with this fabric and picked the fabrics for the butterflies to match. Boats Quilt: You've may have seen a few boat blocks that I've made, and over the last week I've been making foundation pieced Maltese Cross blocks. Today I put them all together to make another baby quilt. I was stretching my fabric with this quilt - mostly through poor forward

You know those quilts you start because you absolutely have to? When you have many other things you should be sewing.... this was one of those quilts. I got Issue 3 of Quilt Now and dropped everything to pull navy and emerald from my stash - and a bit of pink and get piecing. The fabrics are Navy: Violet Craft, Domino Dots, Pearl Bracelets, Cotton and Steel Basics, Kona and a slightly marbled navy; and Emerald: Safari Moon, Pure Elements; two Pearl Bracelets and two Color Me Happy. The pink is Kona Candy Pink. I finished the quilt in an afternoon. I've used it to show off my favourite colour scheme (favourite at that moment in time - it changes regularly), but if you were to size it up, it would be a great pattern for showing off larger scale prints too. I'm pretty pleased with the back of the quilt too. Most of it is a fat quarter which my Mother-in-Law brought back from New York for me. It seemed a shame to cut it up, but wasn't quite big enough, so just a single

Last year I thought about making advent calendars for my niece and nephew. But my niece was only 9-10 months old and I left it far too late... isn't that always the case - I always forget that you need advent calendars a month earlier than all the other Christmassy stuff. But this year I remembered! And one of those advent calendars is now finished (the second is a little way behind). The design is based on a pattern in issue 13 of Love Patchwork and Quilting but I made a few changes... I made the whole thing bigger so I could fit on the kids' names (to prevent arguments, perhaps not this year, but definitely in the future); I quilted the background with a fairly wide cross hatch just to give it some more body when I fill the pockets with goodies and prevent the front sagging too much, and that meant that I bound it rather than bagged it; I embroidered the numbers because I don't own stamps and also embroidered the top of each pocket but attached them to t

Totally unintentionally I have found myself doing a lot of foundation piecing the last few days: I've been making more mini mix-tape blocks for the #IGMiniSwap. I need to add some white to bring it up to size and then decide on some quilting. I've made the remaining two butterfly blocks for a baby quilt. This is a pattern by Tartan Kiwi and is definitely the best butterfly block I've seen. I've been catching up on the Vice Versa BOM and rather than use templates, I foundation pieced the funny shaped triangles in these final blocks. I had a little helper And today I started some Maltese Cross blocks (also foundation pieced) to finish off the boats baby quilt. The theory is they look a little bit like wind turbines! Linking up with WIP Wednesday

...Get out of the Kitchen! A good friend celebrated her "significant" birthday last weekend. She absolutely loves the Great British Bake Off so to celebrate her big day I made her a mini quilt. Just a few weeks ago I discovered a website called Urban Threads - they sell machine and hand embroidery designs. I don't do machine embroidery but I do love some hand embroidery. And the designs on this site are so different to the usual twee flowers and never-ending Sun Bonnet Sue! I spent many hours browsing the site, and I could spend many, many hours completing a lot of their designs. For this project I picked "If you can't stand the heat get out of the kitchen". The majority of the embroidery, which is all done by hand, is backstitch in one or two strands of DMC thread. I used satin stitch for "kitchen" and it seemed to take forever. The colour scheme was an easy pick - I love friends who have Pinterest boards to help me! I finished off