Jennie's Threads

In the past I have made the kids decorations to go on the tree. For Mia for her first Christmas, for Jess for her first Christmas (and one for Mia at the same time). I had planned to make them one every year, but last year it just didn't happen and they had shop bought decorations in their Christmas Eve boxes. When we first decorated the Christmas Tree this year, Mia pulled out the handmade ones from previous years and gave them a kiss and excitedly hung them on the tree.  When the shop bought ones came out, they showed no interest in them whatsoever: a pretty good indication that Mummy needs to make handmade ornaments! So this December some handmade felt ornaments were definitely on the to-do list. I picked a pattern that I'd saved on Pinterest ages ago: penguins - pattern by Casa Magubako I took inspiration from the colour ways in the pattern and made one in pink with a purple scarf for Jess And a grey one with a red scarf for Mia. That was me done - tick...

You all know I love a quilt along, and you probably are also aware by now that I have developed quite the enthusiasm for Tula Pink fabrics over the last 10 months. So when the Hidden Agenda pattern was released by Angela Pingle , I did think how good Tula fabrics would be for it. And then she announced a quilt-along and I was sold. This was absolutely the most fun quilt to put together. Obviously with Tula Pink, and obviously in a rainbow. There was quite a lot of laying out and rearranging to get the rainbow effect, but it was definitely good fun. I tweaked the pattern a bit and decided not to include the quarter-square triangle units, so I could display more fussy cutting, but this was one of the easiest quilts to create and I love the finished quilt top. But why isn't it already quilted? Well. While I was making it, I happened to be rummaging through my low volume stash and I though wouldn't it be great to make a low volume version. And then rather than upset th...

Back in September I started piecing a Bjorn Bear quilt for a little boy. It took me a while - not helped by forgetting to cut some pieces to take on retreat with me, but once I'd finished, I really didn't like it. And because of who it was for, I knew it had to be special. It was definitely not special. I sat on it for a month, hoping it would grow on me but it never did. I couldn't even think of a way to salvage what I had done and improve it...So in the end I resigned myself to starting again. The little boy who will get the quilt is half Japanese, so I wanted to be careful that I didn't pick colours or items that would be inappropriate - I'd already sussed out the bears, so stuck with them. Research on number told me that nine was unlucky, so I'd already planned 12 bears, and so I stuck with that. Further research told me red was lucky and white wasn't, so I give you 12 red bears! And I couldn't be happier with it - I love it so much more th...