Jennie's Threads

Last night I reacquainted myself with my sewing machine who has felt distinctly unloved during my two weeks in Budapest. We started off with a little friendly foundation piecing: This is block three in the Lucky Stars BOM from Don't Call Me Betsy and I love it. I wasn't sure to start with but having seen lots of these blocks pop up on Flickr over the past two weeks I've started to see colour placements that I really loved and I put all of these together in my own version of the block. The fabrics are some of my favourites: the background is a text print from Mama Said Sew by Sweetwater, the blue (it looks very light in my photographs, but it is blue) is from Noteworthy (also by Sweetwater), the plum is from Architextures and the green is a solid I have picked up somewhere and is my favourite kind of green. The centre isn't quite perfect, but it's better than my first attempt which was ripped out - I don't often rip, but this was necessary. In the...

I'm back in the UK. For now at least. Two weeks and then I'm back in Budapest for two weeks - at least that's the plan. I missed Sew Thinky Thursday again, so this will be another late contribution... maybe next week I'll get back on track!   With a little help I've even managed to add the button! This week's question is: Describe your quilting style: Who or what influences you? How do you see your style changing over time? I'm not sure I can think of one word to describe my style, and I think descriptions like that can be very personal - what I describe as modern may not be modern to you. The one thing I  do know about my style is that I love anything which is fiddly - tiny, complicated, lots of pieces, hand and machine. I do love modern, but I haven't yet quite got as far as improvisational piecing. I also like traditional... I come from an embroidery background This was my embroidery design as part of the first ever swap I took part i...

Today's post very nearly didn't happen - it is well past Jennie o'clock and I am shattered. We 've just got back to the hotel from an African restaurant - it wouldn't be my first choice of restaurant, but the food was ok - unfortunately it was the worst service and took forever, and half of us had finished our meal before the other half were served - but it's good to try new things! It means no sewing tonight, but I can share some of the other things I've been working on this week while I've been here in Budapest. Here is my first, new project. It's using the ferris wheel pattern and English paper Piecing and I'm using Mama Said Sew range of fabric from Sweetwater. In this photo, the black centre ring is stitched and the rest is just basted and laid out. Since I took this photo I've stitched two of the grey rings. The plan is to add red rings beyond the grey, so watch this space! I's also worked on my hexie table runner...

I'm still here - in Budapest I mean. I arrived a week ago and I have another five days working in the local office. I'm kept sane by some colleagues, driven mad by others... but I love them all! We are eating a LOT of nice food, though I'm pretty certain there is some kind of law preventing vegetables from being served in resturants! Yesterday we went to a place called Va Piano: you enter the restaurant and are given a card, like a credit card, then you pick either pizza or pasta and queue at one of the desks. When you get to the front, the guy on the other side cooks your pasta while you wait and watch - it was amazing! Everything organized perfectly, and the food was delicious. I'm not sure it would work too well in the UK - we're too impatient and it took a bit longer than other fast food chains, but I would go! We were all so tired after the week at work, that we didn't organize anything for the weekend. And on top of that it has spent most of the weeke...

What is the most meaningful thing you've ever made? That's this weeks question... I think it has to be the incubator quilts I've made over the last year. Regular readers have heard this story before... This time last year two of the regulars at our local quilt shop lost grand children within a few days of their due dates. It was a horrible coincidence and we wanted to do something to help. Kim, the owner of the shop, worked with local neonatal units and we started making incubator quilts. They are given to the parents of premature babies and babies born asleep and measures just 16"x20".  This was the first one I made And another And two using some flannel scraps I had left from a baby quilt I made. Then in November last year I was contacted by a lady in Birmingham who told me about her twin premature daughters and how she was desperately looking for quilts because the quilts in the hospital were so tatty. She asked if I knew anyone who could help....

So I arrived on Sunday night and despite running through Amsterdam airport to catch the second plane it all went quite smoothly. I am now sitting in my very swanky hotel room with a view over the Danube! Despite long hours at work followed by some very nice dinners (roast goose tonight) I am still fitting in some sewing. Back in October I came to Budapest with work for the first time and I started working on a paper pieced project with colours inspired by last year's holiday to Pembrokeshire.  When I came again in November I finished the piecing. Over Christmas I finished the embroidery and it felt right that I should bring it back with me to finish off the quilting and the binding in Budapest. I decided to do the binding before the quilting and I finished sewing that down last night. I have had to wait for the quilting as I forgot to bring a thimble. Hopefully my hungarian colleague will be bringing me one tomorrow. For now I will work on a new paper piecing project that I...

I'm heading for the airport in just over an hour, as soon as I've worked out how to close my suitcase! It's really frustrating because I am in the middle of so many exciting projects at the moment and so close to finishing some: Pac Mania just needs quilting and yesterday I finally got the needles I need for that; Daniela's quilt feels really really close to being fully pieced (though I may be underestimating the number of hours left) and yesterday I got the backing and batting; I have pieced half the blocks of Steph's quilt and have the backing and the batting; my hexie table runner is basted to the background and needs to be appliqued, and yesterday I got the backing and binding (more beautiful Art Gallery) - this project may yet fall into my suitcase..... and there are new BOM patterns which came out in the last few days which I really want to play with, and on Thursday Alyssa talked us through the FMQ on our first blocks and I'm dying to try this out.... tha...