Jennie's Threads

It had to be this quilt for the Bloggers Quilt Festival hosted by Amy . This is my finished 365 quilt.  Eighteen months from first stitch to last, and a baby along the way - this was most definitely a challenge! A block a day for a year - it totally took over my life! I started piecing tiny, deceptively straightforward, 3" blocks in January 2016 - that first inner dark border. The blocks became increasingly complex through January and into February as Kathy, the designer, walked us through new techniques each week/10 days. By the end of March, we had the centre and the first dark border complete. Then I gave birth to Jessica. And fell behind. It was most inopportune timing, as the blocks for May and June were the 6" blocks that made up that first light border. They combined all the skills we'd learned to far with some of the smallest pieces of fabric I've ever worked with! But each individual block was a stunner. At one point I was over 80 blocks behind...

I couldn't decide which quilt to enter in the Bloggers Quilt Festival this time round, so luckily we can enter two. You can read all about my Pixelated Heart Quilt here , but the second quilt I'm entering is Jessica's quilt: Our second daughter, Jessica, was born in April this year, and I was determined she would have a quilt when she arrived. She kept us waiting - I was 12 days overdue when she finally make an appearance, but she came home to her very own quilt. The idea for this came from a quilt by Lee from Freshly Pieced, but as I live in the EU (for now, at least) I was unable to purchase the pattern at the time, and so drafted my own paper piecing template. I'd been inspired by the colours of a sunrise for months, and it seemed appropriate for a baby quilt so I put the two together and came up with this. Apart from the background fabric, all of the fabrics were straight from my stash and there are a few fabrics which appear not only in this quilt, b...

It's Bloggers Quilt Festival time again. I love looking at all of the pretties and finding new people to follow and inspiration to pin. This year I'm entering a quilt in the rainbow category . This is my pixelated heart quilt. I signed up to a workshop with Katy "I'm a Ginger Monkey" Jones in summer 2015 to make the pixelated heart pattern that had appeared in one of the early (maybe the first) issues of Quilt Now. The pattern calls for, I think, seven fabrics and a background and in some cases more than a fat quarter. Unfortunately my stash consists mostly of fat quarters, so I was struggling to find fabric for this quilt without buying more. Then I had one of those stupid brainwaves: one week before the class, I decided to go rainbow scrappy and cut from all of my fat quarters: a rainbow heart and a low volume background. I multi-tasked and cut the sky for My Small world quilt at the same time - I haven't finished that yet! Piecing this q...

I nearly didn't enter a second quilt in this Autumn's Blogger's Quilt Festival, but then I remembered this one. This is my entry in the applique category. At the start of the summer I signed up for the Harry Potter Mini Quilt Swap and spent a long time thinking about what to make... there are so many fantastic quilts and inspirational artwork on Pinterest, that I didn't really know where to start ( these are just some of the pins I collected ). I was re-reading the books at the time, and at the start of Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, Harry visits Ron's house, the Burrow: "It's not much, but it's home". Well, that was the inspiration I needed. Originally I had planed to foundation piece my vision, but that was a stupid idea. Instead, I sketched out my idea, and then layer at a time, created the background hills, the trees and hedges, and finally the Burrow, nestled in the little valley. I used free motion applique for this quilt: ev...

Do you know I haven't finished a single quilt this year larger than a baby quilt? I know I have loads of excuses, but it doesn't feel right, not making a bigger quilt. And it means that I've had to go back to last year for this Blogger's Quilt Festival entry. My entry is Michael's hangover blanky, made using last year's Block of the Month series from Gen X Quilters. This was a little out of my comfort zone, made from all solids, picked by his Lordship at the start of the year. Although he knew I was making it for him, with a small baby in the house, I had fallen behind in early summer and as far as he was concerned, I hadn't touched it since about May. So I caught up in secret and then had to quilt it in secret. This is not a small quilt, and once it was layered up it wasn't easy to hide, but I caught snippets here and there, and embroidered the label while he was sat in the next room.. I think he was genuinely surprised I had got it finished. I ...

I can't believe how quickly the Bloggers' Quilt Festval has come around again - I was totally unprepared with no idea what to enter. And then I remembered this quilt. Not only do I love this quilt, but it's story is an important one. This is my Mix Tapes Quilt. Or rather, Chloe's Mix Tape Quilt. This foundation pieced tape block design was in issue of 10 of Love Patchwork and Quilting magazine and I made one because I liked it and thought maybe I'd make a mug rug with a single block. And then I made another. And another. And another until I had 15 in total. And it was about then that the purpose for this quilt became apparent. A good friend of my sister-in-law has a daughter called Chloe. When she was little, she survived cancer. And now, aged 13, her heart was failing her. Very quickly she went from a normal teenager to the transplant waiting list, spending each day in hospital. Steph asked me to make this quilt for her. I surrounded the 15 mix tapes wit...

Whilst my first entry in the Blogger's Quilt Festival was an easy choice, the second wasn't and it came down to two quilts - the one I've picked here, and the Mix Tapes quilt I finished last week. In the end I went for my cushion because you've seen the Mix Tapes pretty recently if you're a regular reader. If you aren't a regular reader, you can find the Mix Tapes quilt here and let me know if I picked the right one! :) So squeezing into the mini quilts category by measuring exactly 80" all the way round, is another of my favourite finishes this year and another one that we use all the time: my City Sampler cushion. The background to this project was that I've pieced the full 100 blocks of Tula Pink's City Sampler and I want to quilt it a la Angela Walters. I can dream, right? So this was a practice before I hit the real thing. It also served two other purposes: getting the colour scheme of mint green, peach and grey out of my system and lea...

It's Quilt Market time - that means two things: lots of time spent on Instagram drooling over pretty fabrics and patterns (I've seen three projects so far that I'd like to be spending some time on next year...); and the Blogger's Quilt Festival. My first entry for the Festival this year was a no-brainer. It's my favourite quilt I've made this year: my Nested Churn Dash Quilt. This was a tutorial from Quilt Jane , that I wasn't in love with until I saw some settings of different sized blocks. As soon as I saw that, I knew I had to make one. I started at the end of June and the quilt was finished within a month! I decided to used a long-hoarded half-yard bundle of Happy Mochi Yum Yum in the warm colour-way and supplement it with fabrics from my stash and order some Kona solids so that the end result looked quite scrappy. I also threw in a couple of greens and blues. The part I enjoyed most about this project was the quilting. I did lots of...