Jennie's Threads

I'm dropping by today to tick of my second finish for Quarter 4 of the Finish Along. On my original list I had 10 zippy pouches. This was one of them! It started with this embroidery. And it became this: the front... The embroidery is a line drawing I found on Pinterest  - it links through to a French blog. ...And the back I've been having a go at graffiti quilting this weekend - taking different quilting motifs and joining them together with pebbles: feathers, spirals, random loopy bits... lots of pebbles. The fabrics are from my [diminishing] stash: a red Robert Kaufman blender on the outside and the lining is one of those great texty fabrics that come in bundles from Sew Me A Song. I mostly used this tutoria l to make the zippy pouch, but cut the front and back and linings to 11.5" x 8.5" and boxed the corners at 1.5" Come the beginning of next year (!) I'll be linking up!

What started as a "I'll just try one block" has now ended as a full lap quilt that will hopefully bring comfort to a young lady waiting for a new heart. Today I finished it. That one block, quickly became two and ended up as 15. I was making them because I liked them. Until my sister-in-law told me about Chloe. It will be her who gifts this quilt. I originally thought I wouldn't be able to make this many blocks because I would be limited by my stash of text prints. In the end I had enough text but struggled to find fabrics that worked as the reels. Some of them are better than others! I had absolutely not intended the F to be visible! For the front I added a Kona Black border to the mixtapes and then brought it up to size with the quilters' favourite Ikea print! For the back I decided to piece a mega-sized mix tape - I upsized the original pattern and then rounded the numbers up and down so I wasn't cutting too many eighths of inches. It made my ...

I made a zippy pouch! You may have noticed on my Finish Along list that there were a fair few zippy pouches to complete. I've been making good progress on the embroidery that will be on each of them, but I couldn't find a perfect tutorial online for the right size pouch, so having made approximately three zippy pouches I decided have a go on my own... but no way I was jumping in and ruining some hand embroidery by getting my measurements wrong, so today I had a play. I mostly used this tutorial by Very Berry Hand Made , but I cut rectangles measuring 11.5" x 8.5" instead of using the pattern pieces and just boxed the corners by 1.5". The fabrics are all Color Me Retro by Jeni Baker - I really love these fabrics, but they don't often feature in my quilts, so this was a great opportunity to use them in a way that I will enjoy them regularly. I also used this project as an opportunity to practice my graffitti quilting . I'm hoping to use this type of qu...

Did you see the post on Sew Mama Sew today ? It was by Cheryl Arkison and was about why it's good to have a long list of WIPs. It's like she read my mind - this is exactly my mentality and why I have so many different projects on the go - and I love it! I haven't counted my WIPs recently but ther are 35 on my Finish Along List so I'm pretty sure I have more than her...they will all be finished one day. Probably. But for today I've been working on three WIPs: advent calendars for the bairns - the embroidery is done - now I'm turning the pockets through...an horrifically boring job! A mini quilt for a friend's birthday And some mini Mix Tapes for #IGMiniSwap Also this week I basted the regular sized mix tapes ready for quilting: the front... ...and the back. Linking up with WIP Wednesday

As I mentioned in my Quarter 4 Finish Along list, everyone we know seems to be having babies... so I need to be making some baby quilts. I have a couple in the works which are slightly more complex than they probably needed to be, but today I knocked out a whole quilt! It helped that a teething little madam slept for 4 hours! I picked the fabrics on Saturday, drafted the block, made up a test block and did the cutting yesterday, and pieced the rest of the quilt today. I'm pretty chuffed with myself. The central fabrics are from Makower, and the rest are Kona solids. In hindsight the colours maybe have too high a contrast, but contrasts are good for babies, so I'm not going to dwell on it for long. And to finish up the post, Mia playing peekaboo with her quilt!

In September this project finally found a cause. I'm finishing it off as a large-ish lap quilt for my sister-in-law to gift to a 13 year old girl who has just been put on the list for a heart transplant. What was originally a single mix-tape block from Love Patchwork and Quilting magazine has become a 60" x 60" quilt! I've sized up the front with Kona black and Ikea Britten... I convinced hubby to help with the holding up! ...And the back is a giant mix tape! I've appliqued "Chloe" and the reels and this morning I've added more Ikea Britten to bring it up to size. But I decided to crop him out of this one! I'm hoping to baste and quilt it this week! I'm still tagging this as a "mini quilt" because that was how it started...may need to review that!

After the success of "Sleep Deprived Stupidity" I've got to follow it with an even more ridiculous list! I've taken off some of the really unrealistic goals and these will reappear next year. In theory, every single one of the projects in the list below is achievable....ha ha! Loads of people we know are expecting, or have just had babies, so there are a few baby quilts on my list: first up one with butterflies... ...And one with boats... ...these fabrics will become a quilt I've designed myself... I hope I've worked out the cutting instructions correctly! The royal blue is my background fabric - yummy! ...and these fabrics will become a Preppy the Whale quilt - I love this rainbow of colours. And then there's these fabrics - I'm hoping to make the prints the star of the show and I'm planning on risking some fussy cutting! There are a couple of full size quilts I want to finish: The Aspen Glow quilt is part of a quilt along a...