Jennie's Threads

Early on in lock-down, Berene Campbell of Happy Sew Lucky released a new pattern - Hello Friend. She originally released it through a select number of fabric shops, as a way for them to raise some money in lock-down. Our guild, North East Modern Quilt Guild, decided to support this and arranged a swap - each member who wanted to join in had to buy the pattern and then make the block in colours and fabrics they felt reflected them as a quilter. We then swapped the finished blocks amongst the participants and each recipient chose to finish their block in their own way. This is the version I made - it had to be a rainbow didn't it, really? And I loved the black rainbow sprinkle fabric for the background. My finished block went to Jules @juleskerry_s And I received this beautiful block from Dona @creativeaccountant - I love it and it's a totally different colour scheme to what I would pick for myself - a really citrussy yellow and turquoise. I decided to hand quilt it and added a ...

Last October I went away on retreat with my guild mates We hired a cottage in the wilds of Northumberland and spent the weekend sewing. You can read more about that weekend here. As part of that weekend, we swapped Sisterhood blocks - each of us made eight girls in a single colourway and then we swapped so we each came home with a rainbow of girls. I made aqua girls. One retreater, who shall remain nameless... was making her girls on retreat. Ad she kept on singing "All the Single Ladies"... so when it came to turning my girls into a tote bag, I knew exactly what I wanted to put on the reverse... I purchased a foundation pieced alphabet pattern from From Blank Pages and started piecing. In a rainbow of course! With a scrappy low volume background. It's becoming my go to fabric pull! I honestly don't know which is my favourite side of this tote! This time, I used the heavy weight interfacing  attached to the back of the outside panels between the panel and ...

A promised in my Finish Along Q4 plan post, the wee braw bag is my first finish of the quarter. It was made as a swap for our North East Modern Quilt Guild Retreat, which took place last weekend. We spent the weekend in a beautiful cottage in the Northumberland countryside, sewing and eating cake. The cottage kitchen/diner was perfect for sewing with a big table, space for a few extra tables, a sofa for hand sewing and tonnes of floor space for laying out blocks. And there was a separate living room for Strictly! Everyone was very productive and the projects we were all working on were gorgeous. We won't discuss the spiders at length, suffice to say they were HUUUUUUGE! Picture stolen from @lupilotty cause I forgot to take any photos of the cottage But back to the Wee Braw Bag....I was making for Tina, who I know very well, but that didn't make it any easier to pick out fabrics. Until I remembered I had this sugar skulls fabric (it's from Michael Miller, but there was...

It's been well over a year since I last joined in a swap on Instagram. I think I burnt myself out in 2015. But I decided to join in the Very Berry Mini Hoop Swap: a 2" embroidery hoop is not a huge commitment! My partner expressed a love of sea and mountains, and I've been enjoying embroidery at the moment, so here's what I made. I received this pretty little hoop in return from @quiltessential And I may have bought a couple of extra hoops to have a play with too!

One of the best things about the #365 challenge has been the community that has grown up on Facebook. It's a UK based group - with some overseas friends too, and I've never experienced anything like it. Everyone seems to have really got to know everyone. There has been cheerleading when people have fallen behind; mutual moaning when a block had eleventy-billion tiny half square triangles; and shared success as members have completed their quilt tops. To celebrate these friendships we had a little swap - 3" blocks, quilted and bound, whizzed around the globe! I signed up for three blocks - so I sent three and received three. The idea was that the blocks you sent should represent the quilt you made/were making. Here are the three I recieved from Kirsty, Jackie and Fiona: It took me a while to find the block I wanted to use. I needed one I could use as a colour wheel to reflect my entire quilt. Eventually I found the block for 7th September called 4 Corners. A l...

Just a week into Q2 of the 2016 Finish Aling and I have a finish! And it's not the baby... not yet. I've made this quilt twice now: Firstly as a mini quilt to swap in the UK Mini Swap on Instagram - that quilt now lives in Sweden with @Birchandbirdsong. But as I was cutting it, I knew I would struggle to give it away if I didn't make myself one too. I raided my scraps for the slivers, but couldn't quite squeeze the low volumes from what I had in my scrap boxes, so they came from stash! The layout of the two quilts is slightly different as I didn't reference the first when piecing the second and there was the odd fabric I only had enough of for one sliver. The quilting is dense matchstick quilting, echoing the direction of the sliver. I quilted a lap quilt yesterday in an all over stipple (just add binding and it's another finish....) and used nearly as much thread to quilt the lap quilt as this cushion. At the moment the cushion cover definitely...

Let's be honest, my list for Q4 was a little ambitious, wasn't it? Even I'm surprised with how much I achieved! My final finish for the quarter is a towel for Mia - one of those projects I have put off and put off for absolutely no reason! It probably took me about 30 minutes start to finish! But I have loads of the flannel left, so there will probably be a few more in some nice garish colours if I can find some in the sales! The flannel is from Riley Blake. Here is a round up of the progress made on the rest of the list.... Schnitzel and Boo mini swap : I finished this and got it posted in time. Tracking tells me it was delivered. Pity my partner hasn't seen fit to acknowledge its arrival. I still plan on making the same quilt for myself in the future - all the fabric is cut, but I'm all curved out for a while! I finished the UK Easy Swap Sew Together Bag . By a whisker I finished Mia's advent calendar before the start of December! It was a...

When I received a beautiful parcel from New Zealand in July with my hand-pieced mini quilt swap goodies, Donna included a couple of Lecien fat quarters. After Mia had stolen the notebook I received, eaten the chocolate that was included and tried to wander off with MY zippy pouch, her eyes fell on the fabric. She likes fabric just like her mummy, so I decided to use them to make some things for her. With a huge long list of things I wanted to make before our holiday, these fat quarters quickly rose to the top of the pile. Dolly needed a quilt. So Mia "helped" pick some coordinating solids. Despite pinning lots of more complex dolly-quilt ideas (on my new Pinterest board ), I ended up with just straight forward squares but I ran out of time/inclination to get it finished before our holiday... that was back in August. It has lain on my sewing table since then but I was reminded of it this morning when Mia tried to tuck dolly in with her own, somewhat larger quilt. It took ...

I had been planning to post this once my partner received this parcel. According to tracking, it was delivered 10 days ago, and I haven't heard a word from my partner, so I'm assuming she has a good excuse and I'm sharing this anyway.... This is it. My last swap commitment. I am absolutely not signing up for anything more until Baby is here and we are settled into some kind of routine - so maybe 10 years time if I'm lucky (I haven't said what sort of routine). Even if I am very, very tempted. My partner, gave me a really clear list of likes - designs and colours. This made it so easy for me to put together a quilt for her. The design is by Julianna @sewingunderrainbow and appeared in an old issue of Love Patchwork of Quilting. I knew way back when I first saw it that I wanted to make the quilt, so when I was cutting the fabrics for this swap quilt, I cut double, so hopefully in the not too distant future, I'll have a matching quilt/cushion cover. However, li...