Jennie's Threads

This is one finish I really did not expect to be sharing with you this week! This was my first photo shoot on our brand new fake grass - I never need to use a lawn mower ever again! But I think the lovely bright green threw my camera off, as the colours, especially the background fabric, are a bit out, and it really is more brown in real life! Marsala is the Pantone colour of 2015 and thus the subject of the Pantone quilt challenge. As someone who doesn't mind brown (I love the richness it gave to my Rhubarb and Custard quilt ) Marsala is still a little out of my comfort zone. A hunt through my stash led me to pick Kona Burgundy as my Marsala of choice (I'm not a wine drinker so I can't tell the difference!). To this I added a fat quarter of Annali from Dashwood Studios - my only other "marsala-ish" fabric. Then I added coral/peach, lime green and some text prints. And by chance my recently acquired Karen Lewis Textiles scrap bundle also included some ...

For the last couple of years I have taken part in the Pantone quilt challenge: A Tangerine Tango mini quilt from 2012 and an Emerald Green block keeper from 2013. This year the colour is radiant orchid. Reading the comments on this colour, it isn't universally popular, but I like purple, and often find that when I ask people what colours they would like in a quilt, they say purple, yet it's such a hard colour to find when fabric shopping. Hopefully a year of Radiant Orchid will result in some more fabric collections which include purple. Last year I made a cushion cover for a swap in purple, pink and turquoise and at the time I knew it was a colour scheme I wanted to revisit (and keep), so I raided my stash. I decided to use the challenge as a way of solving two quilting requirements: last September we went to the quilt show at Harrogate with some friends and Liz was on the look out for a new project. She saw this quilt on display (I've found the blog  - scroll to J...

I think - because now it's finished I'm not really sure if it fits in any category because of it's size... but even if I'm disqualified on the grounds of being a funny size, I am thrilled with my finished entry for the Emerald Challenge.   It was a bit hit and miss whether I would get it finished time as before I went away all I had was two blocks with a border,  and by the time we had dinner I had my finished project. I'm following a lot of BOMs this year and that results in a lot of block sitting round for a long time. So I've made myself a block keeper. The quilt-y part of this project is 36" x 17" but it will always be folded up as you can see in the above photo, so finished it is 18" x 17". I made two blocks: ET Phone Home from Lynne at Lily's Quilt s and Lone Starburst block by Anna at Six White Horses . I've been admiring these blocks for ages, just waiting for the opportunity to used them. I had a lot of fun q...

Back in January I decided to take part in the Tango Challenge. I decided on a beautifully garish colour combination of orange and pink. The "design process" has been a little haphazard and has changed every ten minutes, right up until I finally attached the binding this morning. At one point I had decided to do an applique flower with a border made up of 1" squares in all different orange fabrics. It turns out I have a remarkably large collection of oranges in my stash. So I started making nine-patches. I fell in love with nine-patches, so gave up on the idea of applique and borders. I was always going to use black as my neutral colour, so had an idea of orange nine patches and another-colour nine patches in a lap quilt. But I've really fallen in love with nine-patches and have an idea in my head of a rainbow quilt (not in the rules of the Tango challenge). So I reduced my plans again. I wanted a table topper for the glass table in our living room. Orange an...