Jennie's Threads

This is the quilt I was going to finish when I finished my Tula Nova. Luckily I had a day off a week later and this was top of the pile! Two years after I started it, my Fancy Forest quilt is now a finish! I started this quilt as part of the Elizabeth Hartman All The Animals Sew Along hosted by @gnomeangel in 2018, but I only got as far as the foxes and the rabbits. In Autumn last year, I picked it up again and pushed it over the finish line - a finished quilt top. I love the rainbow effect - which I wasn't sure was working at the half way point. I love the owls - I've made loads of these blocks now, yet I still managed to sew one together wrong. I was away at the Sewing Shindig Retreat that weekend, so I couldn't just recut the pieces I messed up. We had such a laugh about my little mistake, which I didn't realise until I'd finished piecing my owl, that I decided to leave him and not redo. So I have 7 mean owls and one slightly sheepish one! I think he's...

I recently did a bit of pattern testing for Laurel at Porcupine Stew Threads . Laurel designs EPP patches, which are just a bit more challenging than your average EPP pattern! I'd been looking at her patterns for a while, but postage from the States made it very expensive, so when she announced she was looking for pattern testers for her new PDF patterns I volunteered straight away! And this is the result: Isn't he lovely? I used some Ruby Star Society, Lizzy House and Giucy Giuce for the tans in his mane, then a Moda spot and a random cream for the lighter sections. He's appliqued to a Libs Elliot background. The design is fantastic and I love the result, but this isn't a pattern for the beginner. I adored making it because it was more challenging than a regular EPP design, and I would definitely make more of Laurel's pattern for exactly that reason. The biggest struggle I had was making those fine EPP points crisp and accurate - there may have been a small ...

I can't believe it's been nearly two years since an epic day out in Huddersfield with the amazing Tula Pink. That day at Simply Solids was pretty close to the best day ever: a morning lecture by Tula where we got to see some of her quilts - and the amazing quilting by Angela Walters - and then an afternoon workshop with her starting work on the Tula Nova pattern. The centre that I made that day became a cushion, but I redid my centre and kept going with a rainbow or stars around it to create my final Tula Nova. All of the print fabrics are Tula All Stars with Pompoms and Stripes. The solids are all Kona. This was my first real time working with Tula Pink fabrics. I'd long been a fan of her patterns, but not her fabric. After this day I was a convert. We won't discuss how much Tula fabric I now have, nor how many of my current WIPs are Tula WIPs! But this was the start. The medallion is all hand pieced using English Paper Piecing. I learned about fussy cutting to...