Jennie's Threads

I had planned to work on my Mod Pop quilt last night. I did for a bit and I sewed all of the curves. I still haven't pressed them all. Half way through the evening I took the dogs out for a walk and had a thought.... I love my earrings..... big ones....lots of them (and hats and scarves and shoes but this isn't that blog post). My earrings live on my dressing table in a tin: As you can see, they are very rarely actually in the tin because I can't find the ones I want. I have a plan for an earring tidy, but for the next two weeks I will be away in Budapest for work (so things may go a bit quiet round here for a while) - so what I needed was some kind of earring travel tidy thingy. By the time I got home with the boys I had a plan. It was a plan that involved fabric I knew my local quilt shop still had in stock in case it went totally wrong! Ambrosia (it's really the leftovers from this quilt ). And just three hours later I had a finished earring tidy. ...

as promised, here is my finished Swoon quilt in my parents garden (Dad on the right is shorter than my hubby on the left!): Early in January I was reading Camille's blog and saw the link through to the Swoon Along on Flickr. I read the posts, and the fabric requirements - 18 fat quarters, then took the dogs for a walk and tried to justify starting another new project. About half way through the walk inspiration struck - the 18 fat quarters of Happy Mochi Yum Yum I had got for Christmas from Linda. It was fate. Justified! I joined when there were about 130 members. There's now over 1000 members! I had eighteen fat quarters of Happy Mochi Yum Yum by Monica Solario Snow in blues, greens, yellows and whites. I needed a background fabric and fortuitously had also got some fabric vouchers for Christmas... I went to my LQS looking for a navy background fabric. Until we pulled the red fabric.... sold! It's a solid red from Aunt Grace. There were some great tips on ...

It's Fresh Sewing Day at Lilly's Quilts, so I'm linking up! But I forgot at the end of May, so there are some pictures here from May too. 1. Farmer's Wife: I reached the 111 blocks total at the end of May - Wohoo! And I took the opportunity of a large carpeted area on holiday to decide on my layout . 2. Noah's quilt : Noah was born 16 June to Natasja and Ruben. 3. End of May I sent off my swap item for the Modern She Made Swap - a sewing machine cover with someembroidery. 4. Just last week I started sashing the Farmer's Wife blocks 5. June blocks for Stash Bee 6. Owl cushion (applique) 7. Amelia Jelly Roll Quilt - I finished stitching the binding on this just last night (just in time for the Finish Along) and I'll show you some more photos tomorrow. 8. Oh My Stars quilt - I know I showed this a few months ago, but I've now added borders and been able to photograph it in daylight. This morning we basted it ready for quilting. 9. Lots of ...

Perfect for a wet June day! Every day seems to be wet at the moment! Weeks ago Jennifer at Ellison Lane Quilts announced a Summer Sewing Contest. I thought I might make a bag for my summer holidays. My "summer" holiday was last week. No bag. A brolly would have been more useful. At the beginning of the year Rhonda at Quilter in the Gap announced a 2012 Finish Along. Last Summer I chose to make a quilt with Ambrosia fabrics. Last night was Friday Night Sew In. Today all those fourthings come together! I signed up to the Finish Along at the start of the second quarter (for the first quarter I was having my own personal start-along!), and I picked three quilts I wanted finished. At that time my sewing machine was misbehaving when I was free motion quilting, so I picked three quilts that I planned to straight line quilt. This was one of them. This is how far I'd got at the start of April April passed May passed June started passing very quickly. I ha...

rI've just stepped on a plug. My God it hurts! Anyhoos Nothing says 1st May like Morris Dancers! 1st of May is the start of the dancing season. I have a calendar on my desk at work full of photographs - Michael gave it to me for Christmas, and this weeks picture is morris dancers. My colleagues wanted to know why, so I explained it's in the family (you can't quite see my Dad in this photo) - the same colleague bought a spinning wheel from us two weeks ago so he then announced that my family was "cool". Funny - my family has never been called "cool" before! Eccentric - yes, cool - not really. :) Back to the sewing....   My April completions April feels like a fairly unproductive month. I haven't really finished a lot! Or that's how it feels. Farmer's Wife: I bought some more batiks, including the gorgeous turquoise in the Spider Web Block. I have 81 blocks complete now, and I really want to push on with this project. I...

By 6pm yesterday I hade made up all of the individual blocks for the stained quilt. And by 12.30 today I had a completed quilt top. It is very very bright, and it makes me smile every time I look at it. The plan is to add a black border (maybe 4-5"), then quilt it and bind it, possibly in the pink stripe fabric. I'm not sure about the quilting - maybe wavy lines - what do you think? That would create a nice lap quilt, but it does look fabulous up on the wall above the sofa in our living room, so do you think my husband would let me hand it there when it's finished? No, me neither. I also need to stop sticking things to this wall with masking tape, as I've started taking the paint off...ooops.... luckily it's a pale yellow wall going down to a white undercoat, so it's not blindingly obvious :) Last week I signed up for the Finish A Long. Since then I've started more than I've finished.... but one of the projects I listed to get done this quarter was my ...

Back at the start of January I saw Rhonda from Quilter in Gap announce her finish-along. I wasn't in the mood for finishing, I was in the mood for starting. And I did start: Chasing Chevrons , Oh My Stars , Swoon .... But I've done well, and completed one quilt and finished the piecing on the other two. Finishing these quilts will have to wait for a bit, as my machine is playing up when I try to FMQ, and that is the plan for these two giants. Three months on, and I have some projects I need to be finishing.... so this time I am signing up for quarter two of the 2012 Finish Along. Here are the projects I need to be working on.... .... Ambrosia : I started this quilt last summer when I saw the fabric and fell in love. I had also just borrowed a book called Fast Quilts from Fat Quarters , where you stack your fat quarters, cut them all exactly the same to give a mixture of squares, triangles and rectangles, then piece them back together to create 8" blocks. In jus...

2011 was the year that my quiting habit really took on a life of it's own! For years I had done Cross Stitch. This year I have barely touched it. Back in January I started an Essential Sampler Quilt - this taught me so much and got me hooked. It seems customary to create a collage of the year's successes, so here are mine: 1. Count Down to Christmas Jelly Roll Sampler Quilt : my first ever quilt 2. Ambrosia Quilt (a WIP for 2012) 3. Medallion Log Cabin block - the centre of my Essential Sampler Qui lt (another WIP for 2012) 4. Vignette block 1 (a third WIP for 2012) 5. Apple Mug Rug 6. Farmer's Wife Mug Rugs for Mum's Christmas present 7. Farmer's Wife block (the Farmer's Wife Quilt is another WIP) 8. Wilding Angels Quilt : my first ever quilt - completed 9. Farmer's Wife block 10. Michael's Kindle Case made from his favourite, but awful, hoodie. 11. Christmas Table topper 12. Calendar Girlie : Miss October 13....

This summer is the summer of finishing projects (and if the last few weeks are anything to go by, also the the summer of buying fabric). The first project I decided to concentrate on is now finished! This is my finished Wilding Angels Quilt. The colour hasn't come out very well, but it's a dark, rich red and the thread matches this. I bought all the patterns and materials on my 25th birthday. 18 months later and the quilt is now hanging in our dining room. I had a few issues on route - I was so enjoying the stitcheries that I didn't want to do them too quickly, so I took a break, then when I cam to stitch the central panel, the calico I had bought to stitch it on had faded in the sun, so I had tobuy some new fabric - luckily it's fairly standard. Lesson learnt: store things away from direct sunlight. Then I cam to make up the final quilt and there was a problem with the pieces I have cut - I don't know what happened, but I ended up needing some more...

No - not custard! You know when you just see fabric and think " I just have to have that" and "I have to do something with that straight away". Well, it happened last weekend. I'm busy making my sewing machine cover, when Nicola goes "have you seen the new fabric round the back - I think you'll like it". The fatal mistake was going and having a look, cause she was right. I posted a photo of the fabric on my blog last week. It's Ambrosia from Westminster Fabrics in really summery reds and greens. I added in an extra green and bought six fat quarters. Already a project was in mind.... Linda bought a new book a few weeks back called "Fast Quilts from Fat Quarters" by Barbara Chainey. The idea of the book is that you cut each fat quarter to the same standard cutting pattern that is designed to get the greatest yield from one fat quarter. You then reorganise the pieces into blocks. The design I chose was the first one in the book. ...