Jennie's Threads

I know that I haven't finished my Ice Cream Soda quilt yet. And I know that I haven't finished my Mandolin Quilt yet. But I'm making good progress on both. So when Jodie @ Tales of Cloth announced her latest block of the month, I didn't feel too guilty about ordering the free taster pack. This year's quilt is a medallion quilt, so the taster pack is the very centre section. I'm always really impressed with how quickly these packages arrive from Australia. I had already decided to use my Zuma fabric for this tester piece at least.... but when I opened the packet I was quite surprised at how small the pieces were. Luckily Zuma has quite small scale prints! I spent a while deciding on prints and placement. At the same time, Jodie shared an updated picture of where the quilt was heading.... not a finished version but enough to make me think. And I have to confess that I'm not sure. Looking at it, I don't think Zuma will work well for the whole quilt. ...

It's the start of the year and there's loads of temptation out there in the shape of new blocks of the month, and there's no point in denying the fact that I love a good block of the month or sew along. But will you believe me if I say I didn't intend to do this one? No? Didn't think so. But I was struggling to pick a colour palette. Fabric Fox had a Christmas/New Years sale and I picked up a fat quarter of a Cotton and Steel floral print in pink, orange, red, cream.... and happened to also buy a couple of matching fat quarters totally by chance. They sat together on my sewing desk and answered the call! January was a two-block month: block 1 And block 2: I'm going to applique these blocks on to a black solid and hand quilt them individually with perle cotton. Just need to pick up the black. You can find all the details for these blocks over at Shark's Dinner.

I started this quilt five years ago. My plan was a sampler quilt of 6" blocks from a variety of sources using fat quarter bundles of Architextures and Botanics, the first two fabric lines from Carolyn Friedlander, along with coordinating Kona solids.  I made 20 blocks then moved on to other projects. Fast forward to 2018 and I was looking for a fabric plan for the final instalment of 100 days 100 blocks quilt-along hosted by @gnomeangle using Tula Pink's City Sampler book. Having made it a few times I was out of ideas for new colour palettes. It was a logical step, therefore, to pick up the Architextures and Botanics blocks and finally make enough for a finished quilt. In the intervening years, Carolyn had released a few more fabric ranges so I added in what I had from Doe, Carkai, Friedlander and Gleaned, as well as the newly released colours of some of her classic Architextures prints. I found out that I was pregnant with Joshua just before the quilt-along kicke...

This is very possibly my favourite ever finish - I know I've said that in the past, but this one is going to be hard to beat. This time last year, I attended a day long lecture/workshop with Tula Pink and it was inspiring. Having not really loved her fabrics in the past (but loved her patterns), I suddenly saw them in a new light, linked with my 2018 new year's resolution to try more fussy cutting). Fast forward 8 months and I confess that my Tula stash has expanded quite a lot. I found some UK shops with older ranges of fabric, splurged on a few destashes and found the odd piece of her fabric already in my stash. The plan was always (and remains) to make a Smitten quilt, but I'm well aware that I have plenty of fabric to make other projects as well! So when I saw the Hidden Agenda quilt pattern by Angela Pingle, this fabric sprung instantly to mind.... and we all know I love a rainbow! And what could be better than rainbowfied Tula? I was ably assisted by my friend Ti...

You may remember towards the end of last year I pieced a quilt top using the Hidden Agenda quilt pattern by Angela Pingle using my Tula Pink fabic stash in what I christened my Rainbowfied Tulafest. You can find my post about that top here . I was thinking how good the same pattern would look made up entirely in low volume fabrics, but given my 124 (ish) works in progress, I didn't think that The Committee would appreciate another start. Of course, that doesn't normally stop me! Would it be crazy to piece it again in low volume and use it as the quilt back? Yes... but not quite as crazy as reversing the pattern too! But that's what I did! I made the square in square blocks back in November, and then ran out of energy. I cut the rest of the fabric for the second side over Christmas, but the last few weeks of my pregnancy were spent on the sofa not moving, so it wasn't until after Joshua's birth that I sat back at my machine and finally started piecing it. One ...

It's my second finish of the quarter! I actually did all the hard work a couple of weeks ago before Joshua was born but it's taken me a couple of weeks to buy the hoop I needed to mount it. This started life as a printed panel designed by Aimee who trades on Etsy as Little Dear . I've long-admired her embroideries but she is based in the States, so postage was always an issue...so when my sister-in-law travelled there 18 months ago, I took the opportunity to order a couple of panels - a mermaid and a moon moth - one each for the girls. I prepped the mermaid, and then I lost it... pretty special. So when a friend travelled to the States last November, I replaced the mermaid and ordered this owl for the new baby. The embroidery is straight-forward outlining in a variety of stitches and while the pattern called for a lot of split stitch, I find my stem stitch is much neater so did mostly stem stitch. It's then finished off with some French knots and lazy daisy stitc...

Archie The Wonder Dog is kicking off a new link up this month to give those of us who still blog a place to share a monthly overview, and those who don't blog any more to get back to it. A little furtle through the month! My sewing month looked a bit like this... Heavy on the EPP as for half the month I was too huge and uncomfortable to sit at my sewing machine. I made massive progress on my Ice Cream Soda quilt. I finished the last few block, laid it out and put together the first five columns. I made three Mandolin blocks, two blocks for Shark's Dinner block of the month, and the centre of the Alexandria quilt. Watch out for some blog posts on these in the next few days! I also jumped on the Tiny Dresden Party bandwagon and made a tiny Dresden block using scraps from my Mandolin quilt. But now it's made, I'm not quite sure what to do with it... once I've decided I'll blog about that too! After Joshua arrived, I managed to get back to ...

Last Spring I signed up to a swap: baste forty 2" triangles with a pretty Alison Glass fabric, send them off and patiently wait for forty different triangles to come back. I signed up twice so I would have enough triangles for pouch panel. Note to self... always check the requirements carefully signing up for things. I signed up because the swap was being run by friends... those same friends (I'm looking at you Maria @stitchy.stitchy) decided all basting should be thread basting... there is a very good reason I glue baste and this reinforced all my reasons. It. Takes. So. Long! And it is so dull... if I am going to spend time sewing, I want it to be productive. And thread basting does not feel productive. The 43 glue refills I used last year seem like a bargain! Anyway, once I'd got over the thread-basting, I received a package of pretty little rainbow triangles. Which I then ignored for 8 months. I had vague plans of adding more triangles from my stash of fabrics n...