Jennie's Threads

Do you know I haven't finished a single quilt this year larger than a baby quilt? I know I have loads of excuses, but it doesn't feel right, not making a bigger quilt. And it means that I've had to go back to last year for this Blogger's Quilt Festival entry. My entry is Michael's hangover blanky, made using last year's Block of the Month series from Gen X Quilters. This was a little out of my comfort zone, made from all solids, picked by his Lordship at the start of the year. Although he knew I was making it for him, with a small baby in the house, I had fallen behind in early summer and as far as he was concerned, I hadn't touched it since about May. So I caught up in secret and then had to quilt it in secret. This is not a small quilt, and once it was layered up it wasn't easy to hide, but I caught snippets here and there, and embroidered the label while he was sat in the next room.. I think he was genuinely surprised I had got it finished. I ...

Done in time for Christmas: Michael's Hangover Blankie. This was a bit of a slog, if I'm honest. There are some things about this quilt that I love, but there have been moments when I didn't love it: I love the setting - it's so fresh and modern and the negative space invites interesting quilting; I really struggled with the fabrics I chose and there were a lot of challenges to get it finished. So, the fabric. From day one this was a quilt for Michael. I started by pulling fabrics from my stash. But I wasn't convinced. The pattern called for five colours, and having seen some of the finishes popping up in the Flickr quilt, I could have selected a slightly more refined colour pallette whilst still maintained 5 "colours" and the necessary contrast. But I didn't. I picked red, yellow, green, blue and purple. It also didn't feel very masculine. So we swapped it for solids. Michael used my Kona colour card and we picked Canary, Lime,...

Totally unintentionally I have found myself doing a lot of foundation piecing the last few days: I've been making more mini mix-tape blocks for the #IGMiniSwap. I need to add some white to bring it up to size and then decide on some quilting. I've made the remaining two butterfly blocks for a baby quilt. This is a pattern by Tartan Kiwi and is definitely the best butterfly block I've seen. I've been catching up on the Vice Versa BOM and rather than use templates, I foundation pieced the funny shaped triangles in these final blocks. I had a little helper And today I started some Maltese Cross blocks (also foundation pieced) to finish off the boats baby quilt. The theory is they look a little bit like wind turbines! Linking up with WIP Wednesday

October has been a busy month. It feels like it has lasted forever. I have some finishes: the post card quilt ... A second Arabella Hexagon Quilt ... My Mixtape quilt ... Three zippy pouches... a red one a Botanics one And a Color Me Retro one A Halloween quilt. ... And a gift for my husband And one finish which was a total disaster  - you can read about it in yesterday's post - a quilt for the bin I think! I didn't do as much starting this month - only a baby quilt I continued to make progress with Michael's hangover blankie... And the advent calendars for my niece and nephew And there are one or two projects I can't share this side of Christmas! Linking up with Lily's Quilts for Fresh Sewing Day

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...