Jennie's Threads

This weekend we stayed with my parents and went to the wedding of an old school friend. It was one of those wedding invites that didn't come with a gift list. And as I haven't seen this old school friend in quite a few years, and never met her now husband before, I had no idea what to give them. If in doubt, sew something. I can at least be sure that no one else got them the same thing! I did some pinning, and came across this pin , which linked back to a no-longer-open Etsy shop. I googled a bit and found nothing more except broken links - all I know is that the original design was by someone called Bec Groves. With the printer not working, I ended up redrawing the image I had found. I surprised myself at how well that step went.  I also added in names and date which weren't part of the original. My finished embroidery is definitely a copy of the pin I found, but with a few personal touches. As well as the names and date, I also did a chunkier leaf border using fea...

In the current sewing drought I forgot to share something with you that I actually finished. Back in July. It was an extra for the Thimble Blossoms mini quilts swap. I work on the basis that everyone loves zippy pouches and you can never have too many! I used a mini charm pack of Odds and Ends by Julie Comstock which I've had for ages. I always struggle to know how to use them, but this was the perfect project: I laid them out in two 5x4 grids, carefully positioning the lowest volume charms together on one side. This gave me a canvas for a small sewing machine embroidery. It's hand stitched in one or two strands of DMC stranded cotton in dark grey and I added some basic cross hatch quilting by machine. The 5x4 layout left two mini charms over, which I used to add tags to each end of the zip when I made the pouch up. Unfortunately I totally forgot to square off the corners! And I struck gold with this extra - apparently the fabric line was one of my partner's f...

Five posts in the last two months is pretty low for me, so it's about time I told you why... It turns out that when I'm pregnant and in the first trimester, I have energy for anything! Baby is due early April and I'm now 13 weeks in and starting to feel like I have a little more energy - if only the sickness and nausea were starting to abate as well! I did manage to turn on my sewing machine yesterday so hopefully some more sewing in the near future!

I signed up for a lot of swaps this year, and I couldn't resist a Harry Potter mini quilt swap. I read the books when they came out and I love the films so this had to be done. But it took me a long time to decide on a quilt to make, because this kind of novelty sewing really isn't me at all. I'd started collecting ideas on a Pinterest board , and loved the patronus ideas, but wasn't sure I could pull them off as well as I wanted. And then I came across the quote from Ron about the Burrow "It's not much, but it's home." I couldn't get this idea out of my head. My first idea was to paper piece it, but as soon as I sketched out what I had in mind that seemed like a really stupid idea. Free motion applique for the win. And even then it took some thought, making sure I got the layers right! I finished the building and wasn't sure whether it was right. So I keep adding free motion details of plants, and driveway until the house seeme...

I've been doing a lot of hand piecing again this month and my focus has been my La Passacaglia quilt. I've been working on three different rosettes: first up this blue one. I used quite a lot of Kate Spain fabrics in this rosette. The aqua around the centre is a Cotton and Steel basic cut so you can't see the dots, the dark blue star centres are Pearl Bracelets and the star points are a shot cotton. I had originally basted enough pieces for 8 stars, but once I started piecing I was quite concerned that there wasn't enough contrast between the large pentagons and the star points.  So I stopped with just 4 stars. However, since I stopped, this rosette has really grown on me, so I'm going to add on the remaining stars as originally planned. The lower contrast means that different shapes jump out at you when you look at it, which in a quilt of many similar blocks is quite a good thing, I think. I started a rosette using an Art Gallery fabric from Carnaby Stree...