Jennie's Threads

This is a quilt that came out of my love of all things sew-along. I made the blocks - armchair, sofa, side table with lamp and pot plant last November along with a fair few others, and then wondered what on earth I was going to with them! The pattern for the pieced strip is by Pen and Paper Patterns (who also created the snail pattern I've been sewing up each week) and is a dream to follow. There's nothing tricky - it's all rotary cut and it goes together like a dream. I had just received some of the Les Fleurs fabrics from Cotton and Steel, and I just knew I had to have a Les Fleurs sofa! The original pattern is completed with a quilt ladder, but that is something I will likely never ever have room for, so I replaced it with the just as unlikely, pot plant (I can't keep plants alive). The pot is pieced, but the leaves were free motioned on as I quilted. I had a sudden brainwave that I could add some of the large floral print from Les Fleurs to complete is as a ...

Time for the final rush of finishes for the quarter! This is just one of the many baby quilts I'll be making this year and it's for a friend who had her second child, a boy, back in March. I made Preppy the Whale for his older sister, so it felt right to return to an Elizabeth Hartman pattern for him. As I said in my earlier posts about quilts, using this pattern - I'm getting my money out of it - I think this is just the first such baby quilt! I used a grey with stars on for the background - it's from To the Moon and Back by Lewis and Irene and I need to buy more! All of the animals are made from solids, mostly Kona. I quilted a 3" cross hatch in pale grey. I showed the girls this quilt yesterday morning. Mia loved it and gave it a hug, and Jess kept saying "Wow". It's just as well I've picked up some fabric to make us the full size quilt very soon! This is a Finish Along finish. You can find my original list here .

I can't believe I've just typed that heading! When I made the block for January 1st 2016 I could not have imagined the journey this quilt would have taken me on. So make yourselves comfortable and grab a cup of tea, because this blog post may get lengthy! I'd seen the 365 Quilt Challenge on Facebook. I think every quilter on Facebook must have been aware of it. Loads of my friends had signed up and it kept popping up as a "Page you might like" thing. In the end, in November 2015, I joined the group, had a poke round. Decided it wasn't for me. One of the things that really put me off were the fabric requirements: you needed x amount of dark dark fabric, x amount of medium dark fabric, x amount of dark medium, medium, light medium, light, background.... I just couldn't get my head round those requirements. I'd looked at the mock ups on the wesbite and couldn't bring myself to pick a colour. I put it to the back of my mind. But I had obvious...

Well this week was the week. The Pineapple log cabin blocks. When I first got this pattern, and was contemplating joining in the sew along, this was the week that scared me. Sixteen, foundation-pieced, five-inch-finished pinapple log cabins. These are the last real blocks - just some checquerboards next week and then constructing the complete top. I knew that if I wanted to have a finished quilt by the deadline of the end of the quilt along, some forward planning would be required. So as I was cutting the many many many pieces of fabric for the other blocks in the qquilt, I made sure to cut strips to use for these blocks too. I've then been piecing them here and there throughout the project so I didn't have 16 to do all at once. By last weekend I had 8 done - less than I had hoped. But I've ploughed through the final 8 and I'm pretty pleased with how they look! I can see the end now!

This week is equilateral triangles. In the pattern, this unit (all 30 odd of them) is designed to be template pieced. I do not like templates. I find my accuracy, which is normally pretty hot, goes totally out of the window when I use templates. So I created my own foundation pattern, and these units went together remarkably quickly. They create two "blocks" for the final quilt and I am starting to think about putting this beast together....

Whoops! I may have fallen behind on sharing these blocks with you (we're up to block 38 today!). I'm following along with the Tula Pink City Sampler quilt along again this year, and I'm using Garland by Cotton and Steel, along with of the C&S basics, and the coordinating Kona solids. Here are blocks 11- 15 And 16 -20 I think it's going to be quite a bright quilt, don't you?

Week 12 was all about flying geese - 64 of them..... Made up into 3 blocks. There's just a few more weeks to go of this quilt along, and I am amazed I am still on track - but. There are some tough weeks ahead...

Another week and I am becoming more and more certain that this will be a 6-month hoop. The space is filling up, and I think I'm ready to move on. So I'm now working on "finishing" it - that may mean it becomes a six-months-and-two-weeks project, but I want to enjoy looking at the hoop once it's done, and not regret not"finishing" it. This week I started filling the gaps. Monday 5th June: Butterfly chain stitch in yellow and orange at the bottom of the hoop. This was my second time using this stitch and I really like it! Tuesday, 6th June: zig-zag chain stitch in dark pink, just above the butterfly chain. I found I had to add in some extra stitches to preserve the shape of the zig zag. Wednesday, 7th June: Scroll stitch was a new one for me - in aqua, just below the butterfly chain. Thursday, 8th June: Another new stitch was plaited fly stitch - this filled up the bottom box nicely. Friday, 9th June: So I moved onto the box on the far right. ...

I wasn't going to join in... but you know me and a quilt along. The first blocks started being posted on Instagram, and I'd had a rough day, after a terrible night (thanks, Jess), and making the first block, immediately, without planning, was just the pick-me-up I needed. I confess I didn't have the book at the time - I'd ordered it, but was still waiting on the post, so I was working a little bit blind. But here it is. Of course the lack of planning, and working without the full picture in front of me (i.e. the book and how things would develop), whilst enjoyable at the time, has downsides. I just grabbed a few pieces of fabric that had been lying around from other projects. It wasn't until I had the pieces cut that I suddenly thought of the perfect fabric. Which was of course upstairs. And after the previous night, there was no way I was risking waking the girls by going on a fabric rummage. The book arrived a few days later, and I unburied the bundle o...

I know! Another one! I often find that I pair quilts up, and work on them side by side and finish them very close to each other. This one is the partner of the Owls quilt I shared earlier. And it's appropriate, because this quilt is for the sister of the little boy who is getting the owls quilt. Sadly, she has had to wait a little longer to get hers - 2 years. Better late than never? This is another quilt made using the Fancy Forest pattern by Elizabeth Hartman and I picked out just the firefly block and set 6 of them in a column. The background is Kona aqua and the corals are all from my stash: Figures by Zen Chic, Fossil Ferns, Architextures Cross Hatch and a random polka dot. I really struggled with the quilting on this one. To start with I stitched in the ditch around the fireflies, then I did a stipple in all the background using a variegated aqua thread. It looked dreadful. I unpicked it all. I decided to quilt it like the owls and did a 3" cross hatch in the...

Yep - you read that right - a finish! 2017 is turning in to the year of the baby around here and that means a lot of quilts need to be made. I tend to work in arrears, so the recipient of this quilt was born in January. So only 6 months late - which is about average for me! A few months ago I bought the Fancy Forest pattern by Elizabeth Hartman. At £22 it was about the limit of what I would pay for a pattern to be honest. But I am going to make sure I use it. This quilt uses just the owl block, and I picked the layout myself. My next finish will show you just the fireflies. I have another quilt in the works which is just the foxes. Then I decided to actually follow the pattern, and I'm making a baby quilt as shown, using all the animals. I know there will be another baby owl quilt in the summer, my mother-in-law has already requested a full size owl one (and I've found the perfect fabric for the negative space), and my eldest daughter has made it very clear that she does...

The weeks just seem to fly by, don't they. And I'm starting to think that my hoop may not last the year - will this be a six-month hoop? I'll let you know in a couple of weeks... Monday, 29th May: Blue twisted chain stitch - just a short line towards the bottom of the hoop. Tuesday, 30th May: Tacked Herringbone stitch. This was a new stitch for me and I love it. I started with herringbone stitch in orange, then at each intersection I used yellow thread to do two small tacking stitches in the form of a cross. the end result was fab! It's on the far right of the hoop. Wednesday, 31st May: Another new stitch: butterfly chain stitch. I did this with dark purple for the "wings" - that is the straight stitches, and then added a pinkier, lighter purple for the wrapping - it's right at the top of the hoop. Thursday, 1st June: And another new stitch: laid work tacked with cross stitch. Using long stitch I laid out a simple grid, then at each intersectio...

This year is going so fast - how is it June already??? May was a fun month - we had loads of family time with some great days out, and some plodging on the beach. The girls are growing up so fast and Jessica has such a mischievous streak to her! These are two of my favourite pictures from last weekend! Mia on the left and her cousin, Ellie-Jo, on the right. They are BFF! As for the sewing, it's been about blocks this month - 123 of them to be exact. I'm hoping that some of them at least will start to become quilts in June - lots and lots of baby quilts. The #100days100blocks2017 has started again, and mine has a Christmas vibe, with Garland by Cotton and Steel. I've joined in a new quilt along - the Fussy Cut Sampler quilt along - I'm only a couple of blocks in, but it's easy and quick so far and I get to use a bundle of fabric I got last year and have been impatiently waiting for a project. And I've started the Summer Sampler 2017....