Jennie's Threads

Here she is at the end of another week. Monday, 22nd May: Guilloche stitch in aqua on the left of the hoop running horizontally. Tuesday, 23rd May: A new stitch tonight, woven cross stitch in pink, a row of four on the left of the hoop. Wednesday, 24th May: Algerian stitch in green - close to the centre, this was another new stitch. Thursday, 25th May: twisted chain stitch in pink, near the top of the hoop. Friday, 26th May: another new addition: L'Abeille stitch - the blue triangle near the top of the hoop. Saturday, 27th May: a single double cross stitch in burnt orange - can you spot it? Sunday, 28th May: I unpicked the green heart around the two flowers at the top of the hoop and replaced it with a back-stitch box, and now I'm much happier! #1yearofstitches # embroidery # jenniesthreads1yearofstitches

Back in March or February I shared the first block in the Delilah quilt. This is my first foray into templates and hand piecing - properly, not English Paper Piecing. It's proving to be a challenge, not helped by the fact that months 1 and 2 were all about the curves! My plan for this quilt is bright and scrappy with dark backgrounds. Here are my month 1 blocks. And my month 2 blocks. And I've just finished the first month 3 block. Now to pick out fabrics for the second of these blocks and hope that the next monthly installment doesn't drop through my letterbox just yet!

Things got a bit hectic round here the last few weeks so I'm a bit behind in sharing things here on my blog. We're now up to week 11 on the Long Time Gone sew along and I need to show you weeks 9 and 10 as well. So here is week 9: log cabin quarters. Week 10 saw the start of the half square triangles. And week 11 is more of the same. And even more in week 12 I laid out all of my blocks so far this week. This is definitely a scrappy quilt in the making!

At a snails pace my snail quilt is coming along. And I realise I haven't shared any snaily updates recently. This week I took the opportunity of open floor space to lay out all the snails so far. Except the 2 I couldn't find. I'm hopeful that the chequerboard effect of black and white background will pull together what is otherwise a rather haphazard and Mia-driven colour scheme! The plan from here is to continue making snails until I have 42 blocks. Once together in a quilt top, I have bought a very lovely shower curtain for the backing, and this will become a picnic blanket for our summer holidays. I have until the end of July to make this happen! Any tips on sewing with shower curtain greatly received!

I'm getting later and later in the week with these posts, aren't I! Well here is the hoop as of Sunday evening. We're 20 weeks in and the hoop has 51 different stitches on it! Some very successful, some less so! Monday, 15th May 2017: my 50th stitch tonight was Rhodes stitch - the pink square right in the middle. Tuesday, 16th May 2017: For my 51st stitch I added double cross stitch, which is also known as Smyrna stitch in lime green on the right hand side of the hoop. Wednesday, 17th May 2017: I attacked the laced arrow head stitch I did way back in march tonight. I've never liked the colour combination of green and pink - it just looked brown from a distance, so I unpicked the pink and replaced it with yellow and it's lifted the whole bottom left section of the hoop. Thursday, 18th May 2017: Four little orange cross stitches in a vertical line at the top of the hoop. Friday, 19th May 2017: I returned to the whipped back stitch tonight for another back...

Angie @Gnomeangel is at it again. Another fabulous quilt along. Another 100 blocks in 100 days from Tula Pink's City Sampler book. Let's not talk about the unfinished version I already have of this quilt, shall we!  Instead, let's start about the new one! My plan for #100days100blocks2017 is a Christmas quilt using the Garland collection from Cotton and Steel. I'm not much of a fan of traditional Christmas colours of red and green, but Cotton and Steel have added aqua, blue, pink and coral to the mix and I love it. Here are my first ten blocks: #100days100blocks2017 #garlandcityquilt

I had an idea about my hoop this week. And I decided to run with it. I think it's totally changed the look of the hoop and I'm really pleased with this new direction. Monday, 15th May: I realised last week, that I hadn't actually used running stitch anywhere in the hoop. So I did. Red running stitch! Tuesday, 16th May: Pink whipped backstitch - this was the start of the change. I added whipped backstitch in pink in the corner near the blue whipped back stitch - just to the right of the three yellow satin stitch boxes. Wednesday, 17th May: And this was the day I saw the way forward - I continued the whipped back stitch to create a box in pink on the left of the hoop. Thursday, 18th May: I continued the theme and took the existing blue whipped stitch and carried it round into another box, weaving under existing stitches. When I got to the line of existing chain stitch, I threaded it with the same navy I had used for the whipping. You can barely see it, but it ties...