Jennie's Threads

Here she is at the end of another week. Monday, 22nd May: Guilloche stitch in aqua on the left of the hoop running horizontally. Tuesday, 23rd May: A new stitch tonight, woven cross stitch in pink, a row of four on the left of the hoop. Wednesday, 24th May: Algerian stitch in green - close to the centre, this was another new stitch. Thursday, 25th May: twisted chain stitch in pink, near the top of the hoop. Friday, 26th May: another new addition: L'Abeille stitch - the blue triangle near the top of the hoop. Saturday, 27th May: a single double cross stitch in burnt orange - can you spot it? Sunday, 28th May: I unpicked the green heart around the two flowers at the top of the hoop and replaced it with a back-stitch box, and now I'm much happier! #1yearofstitches # embroidery # jenniesthreads1yearofstitches

Back in March or February I shared the first block in the Delilah quilt. This is my first foray into templates and hand piecing - properly, not English Paper Piecing. It's proving to be a challenge, not helped by the fact that months 1 and 2 were all about the curves! My plan for this quilt is bright and scrappy with dark backgrounds. Here are my month 1 blocks. And my month 2 blocks. And I've just finished the first month 3 block. Now to pick out fabrics for the second of these blocks and hope that the next monthly installment doesn't drop through my letterbox just yet!

Things got a bit hectic round here the last few weeks so I'm a bit behind in sharing things here on my blog. We're now up to week 11 on the Long Time Gone sew along and I need to show you weeks 9 and 10 as well. So here is week 9: log cabin quarters. Week 10 saw the start of the half square triangles. And week 11 is more of the same. And even more in week 12 I laid out all of my blocks so far this week. This is definitely a scrappy quilt in the making!

At a snails pace my snail quilt is coming along. And I realise I haven't shared any snaily updates recently. This week I took the opportunity of open floor space to lay out all the snails so far. Except the 2 I couldn't find. I'm hopeful that the chequerboard effect of black and white background will pull together what is otherwise a rather haphazard and Mia-driven colour scheme! The plan from here is to continue making snails until I have 42 blocks. Once together in a quilt top, I have bought a very lovely shower curtain for the backing, and this will become a picnic blanket for our summer holidays. I have until the end of July to make this happen! Any tips on sewing with shower curtain greatly received!

I'm getting later and later in the week with these posts, aren't I! Well here is the hoop as of Sunday evening. We're 20 weeks in and the hoop has 51 different stitches on it! Some very successful, some less so! Monday, 15th May 2017: my 50th stitch tonight was Rhodes stitch - the pink square right in the middle. Tuesday, 16th May 2017: For my 51st stitch I added double cross stitch, which is also known as Smyrna stitch in lime green on the right hand side of the hoop. Wednesday, 17th May 2017: I attacked the laced arrow head stitch I did way back in march tonight. I've never liked the colour combination of green and pink - it just looked brown from a distance, so I unpicked the pink and replaced it with yellow and it's lifted the whole bottom left section of the hoop. Thursday, 18th May 2017: Four little orange cross stitches in a vertical line at the top of the hoop. Friday, 19th May 2017: I returned to the whipped back stitch tonight for another back...

Angie @Gnomeangel is at it again. Another fabulous quilt along. Another 100 blocks in 100 days from Tula Pink's City Sampler book. Let's not talk about the unfinished version I already have of this quilt, shall we!  Instead, let's start about the new one! My plan for #100days100blocks2017 is a Christmas quilt using the Garland collection from Cotton and Steel. I'm not much of a fan of traditional Christmas colours of red and green, but Cotton and Steel have added aqua, blue, pink and coral to the mix and I love it. Here are my first ten blocks: #100days100blocks2017 #garlandcityquilt

I had an idea about my hoop this week. And I decided to run with it. I think it's totally changed the look of the hoop and I'm really pleased with this new direction. Monday, 15th May: I realised last week, that I hadn't actually used running stitch anywhere in the hoop. So I did. Red running stitch! Tuesday, 16th May: Pink whipped backstitch - this was the start of the change. I added whipped backstitch in pink in the corner near the blue whipped back stitch - just to the right of the three yellow satin stitch boxes. Wednesday, 17th May: And this was the day I saw the way forward - I continued the whipped back stitch to create a box in pink on the left of the hoop. Thursday, 18th May: I continued the theme and took the existing blue whipped stitch and carried it round into another box, weaving under existing stitches. When I got to the line of existing chain stitch, I threaded it with the same navy I had used for the whipping. You can barely see it, but it ties...

I experienced a bit of a creative block with my hoop this week, but still added something every day, including a few new stitches. I'm hoping inspiration will strike again soon. Monday, 1st May: Yellow stem stitch to outline the inside of the circle with the two hearts in the centre of the hoop. Tuesday, 2nd May: A new stitch tonight over on the left of the hoop: barb stitch. This is basicially two rows of blanket stitch, back to back and lined up, then whipped. I really like the effect. I used light blue for the blanket stitch and dark blue for the whipping. Wednesday, 3rd May: Another new one: La Mouche stitch. This is the pink triangle you can find towards the top right of the hoop. My hoop sadly lacks areas that need a stitch this shape but I'm on the look out for more opportunities! Thursday, 4th May: Lime green chain stitch to create a heart shape around the two flowers at the top of the hoop. I don't know that I like it. I reserve the right to unpick it. ...

I'm still with you all for this Quilt Along. And this week sees nine Court House Steps blocks. I chain-pieced these on Saturday morning and they went together quite smoothly! And laying them out like this makes me wonder how good a whole quilt of them would look. I would only need 120 blocks....

I have to confess that it has been a while since the project listed for May has been out of the cupboard. I did a quick search on my blog, and the last time it got a mention was December 2014, when I announced my plan to finish it in 2015! And then in July 2013, when I added it to a Finish Along list. In fact the last time I can see any evidence that I worked on it is April 2013... Well, today I got my Double Wedding Ring quilt out of the cupboard and took some new photos of it. A couple of pieces of good news: I still absolutely love it; and all the pieces are cut! The bad news: I'm not even half way through piecing it! And there are Y-seams every two inches. And where there aren't Y-seams, there are curves! The colours are still beautiful: the fabrics are Poetica from Art Gallery with Floral Elements as the background. The whole thing was dye-cut as a class at my local quilt shop. So it's cut, it's accurate and there are little nicks for lining up the curves...

The April project for the APQ Resolution was my Summer Sampler quilt . Whilst I didn't manage to get it finished, I did go from 10 blocks to 15 blocks. I struggled an awful lot with the fabric selections for these blocks. The fabrics are all from Dreamin Vintage by Jeni Baker, and the scale of the prints is much larger than I would normally use, and there are prints with sneaky directionality. I even tried some fussy cutting, with mixed success. I think they'll do fine in the finished quilt, but I don't love them all. One of the blocks I do love, is this one: Michael and I are calling the orange "caravan orange" - the exact shade of caravan upholstery from the 1980s! I love it. he's not so keen! I need to do another 5 blocks, decide on a layout and sash it, quilt it, and bind it - not much then! But I'm pleased with the progress I did make! The ladies who ran the Summer Sampler 2016 have just announced the Summer Sampler 2017. Perhap...

Another week - the year is flying by! Monday, 24th April: Peach French knots in the arrow head stitch at the top of the hoop. Tuesday, 25th April: Lavender bullion knots in a ring to create the first of two flower at the top left of the hoop. Wednesday, 26th April: Pink pistil stitch in between the bullion knots. Thursday, 27th April: Aqua French knots in the centre of the flower. Friday, 28th April: Yellow pistil stitch to create a second flower in the top left. Saturday, 29th April: Peach long-arm lazy daisy stitch - this was a new stitch, and I really like it. But it doesn't show up very well where I did it, so I think I'll be using it again somewhere. Sunday, 30th April: Orange French knots in the centre of the second flower. The photo at the top has a couple of extra days, as the photo I was going to share was a night-time one and very dark, so I rephotographed it today. #1yearofstitches #jenniesthreads1yearofstitches

It's getting harder to keep up - the quota of chaos in our household has just gone through the roof the last few weeks! But I've had my cutting party and I am now totally cut out for the whole quilt top, except for the large sashing pieces! And that feels good! I might just be able to keep up with the cutting done! This week was all about Churn Dashes. It's one of my favourite blocks. But there were 21 of them! It seemed to take a lot longer to piece than I had expected. But that seems to be true of every block in this quilt along! The individual churn dashes go together to make two larger blocks. Court House Steps blocks next week!

Another month done and dusted, and the quota of chaos in our household just seems to be going up and up. Both the girls have been ill, and Jess is teething on top of that, and I was ill over Easter. Jessica turned 1 this month. She is unstoppable: she hardly ever sits still, she loves playing with Mia's toys, she has the cheekiest little grin, and there have been some pretty bad nights, where you give her a bottle at 2am and she's just simply awake. And two hours later, she's still awake. And when I've had only 4 hours sleep, something has to give. And it's been the diet. I'm back to eating crap. It's a cycle I need to get out of. But I'm not sure how, right now. I daren't get on the scales! Sewing is definitely my sanity right now! And April saw a lot of sewing: mostly in short bursts, while the girls were playing happily, or Daddy was in charge, or in the evenings. I joined in with the #100dayproject in April with the goal of spending a little t...