Jennie's Threads

 This is one of those patterns that as soon as I saw it, I knew I would be making it, and I knew I would be making it more than once! Josh loves this pattern - he has been excited by every block and thrilled with the finished quilt. And pretty disappointed when he realised it wasn't for him. The pattern is Dinosaurs by Elizabeth Hartman - her patterns are just the best - they are fun, stunning, perfect for all family members, incredibly well-written and a joy to make. Yes, they are at the more expensive end of the pattern spectrum, but I honestly believe they are worth every penny - so far I've used each pattern at least twice in various guises! This quilt was gifted within an hour of it being finished to the newest addition in the family - Baby Rory.  And Rory's big brother needed a Triceratops cushion to match so he didn't feel left out.  The fabrics are all from my stash - mostly blenders, lots of solids. The background is Kona Juniper which is a lovely rich dark gr...

When Mia and Jess were born, they both had quilt waiting for them. Joshua wasn't so lucky. Part of the reason was that we didn't find out for certain that we were expecting a boy until very late in the pregnancy, and then I couldn't find a pattern I liked or fabric I liked. Eventually I hit on a quit kit on Craftsy in one of their own brand fabric ranges. I took a risk. It's easy to take a risk when you can buy all the fabric for a quilt, including backing and binding, and postage from the US for under £50! I just didn't ever get to making it. A few weeks back I dug out the fabric. The kit came with a fat quarter bundle and I was suprised to see that it included 18 fat quarters when I only needed 15. So the three lowest volume ones ended up in my stash - less practical with a vommy baby! But even more surprisingly, it also came with a cheater panel. The pattern was great - I layered up the fat quarters and cut them four at a time. It took me just two days w...

Back in September I started piecing a Bjorn Bear quilt for a little boy. It took me a while - not helped by forgetting to cut some pieces to take on retreat with me, but once I'd finished, I really didn't like it. And because of who it was for, I knew it had to be special. It was definitely not special. I sat on it for a month, hoping it would grow on me but it never did. I couldn't even think of a way to salvage what I had done and improve it...So in the end I resigned myself to starting again. The little boy who will get the quilt is half Japanese, so I wanted to be careful that I didn't pick colours or items that would be inappropriate - I'd already sussed out the bears, so stuck with them. Research on number told me that nine was unlucky, so I'd already planned 12 bears, and so I stuck with that. Further research told me red was lucky and white wasn't, so I give you 12 red bears! And I couldn't be happier with it - I love it so much more th...

Back in April this year, a sewing friend had a baby boy. Four of us decided that this called for a quilt! We settled on the Bjorn Bear pattern, and started by selecting a backing fabric and working with the colours from there - duck egg blue, orange and grey (to match his nursery). We split the piecing of the bears between us, Jules sashed it, I quilted it (just a cross hatch), Rose bound it, and Dona created the label! It so happened that the backing fabric we picked also comes in peach, so we bough a half meter of this colour-way and made his big sister a matching cushion! This is such a good pattern and I love the bear's glasses! I'm making a rainbow version for a different baby and I have to say, even as a rainbow lover, this quilt definitely looks better in a limited colour palette... I need to do something about the other quilt, but I haven't decided what yet... so no photo!

This was my second Allie Owl baby quilt of the year and my final finish for 2017. I pieced the owls back in October, quilted it in November and finally bound it on Christmas Eve! No idea why it took quite that long. The background fabric, which is also the backing fabric, was a destash bargain - 3 metres for a snip. I matched the fabrics for the owls to this fabric and then bought the bright yellow binding to set it all off. This is a baby quilt for friends - the baby arrived in the summer, so I'm my normal six-months late! This is a finish from my Quarter 4 Finish Along list .

This is the last of the finishes I've been saving up and waiting to share with you. It's a baby quilt I made for a friend's little boy, Toby, and although it's really a "welcome to the world" present, the delay in getting it finished, meant that I only gave it to the family this weekend, when he was christened (and Mum and Dad got married!). The pattern is the fox block from Elizabeth Hartman's Fancy Forest quilt - I told you I was getting my money's worth out of this quilt. I picked a fun rainbow of colours and a navy background that I already had in my stash. The backing had to be foxy too, though I ended up buying two foxy backings, so now I need to make another one! Quilting this was a challenge. I'd always planned to do a cross hatch but what colour thread: navy would blend well on the background but be stark on the fix faces, grey would show everywhere, but not be as stark on the foxes... in the end I picked a mid grey and it...

We know so many people who have had, or are expecting, babies this year. Friends from university had a baby girl called Alba back in February and she needed a quilt! I picked a pattern from Make Modern magazine - a foundation pieced star design by @quietplay. The original design resulted in a 10" blocks, but when I cut the fabric for the first block, I realised just how much fabric it would take, and because it was foundation pieced, how much I would waste. Back to the drawing board. Instead of twelve or sixteen 10" blocks I decided to make sixty-three 5" blocks. Obviously. I printed out the pattern at 50% and started piecing. The fabrics I picked started with a random selection of fat quarters sitting on my sewing desk - thrown together from other projects. I started with the original six and added in a few more. No star is the same - every fabric is different. With an off-white solid pulling it all together. I made a conscious effort not to go all rainbowy, ...

This is a quilt that came out of my love of all things sew-along. I made the blocks - armchair, sofa, side table with lamp and pot plant last November along with a fair few others, and then wondered what on earth I was going to with them! The pattern for the pieced strip is by Pen and Paper Patterns (who also created the snail pattern I've been sewing up each week) and is a dream to follow. There's nothing tricky - it's all rotary cut and it goes together like a dream. I had just received some of the Les Fleurs fabrics from Cotton and Steel, and I just knew I had to have a Les Fleurs sofa! The original pattern is completed with a quilt ladder, but that is something I will likely never ever have room for, so I replaced it with the just as unlikely, pot plant (I can't keep plants alive). The pot is pieced, but the leaves were free motioned on as I quilted. I had a sudden brainwave that I could add some of the large floral print from Les Fleurs to complete is as a ...

Time for the final rush of finishes for the quarter! This is just one of the many baby quilts I'll be making this year and it's for a friend who had her second child, a boy, back in March. I made Preppy the Whale for his older sister, so it felt right to return to an Elizabeth Hartman pattern for him. As I said in my earlier posts about quilts, using this pattern - I'm getting my money out of it - I think this is just the first such baby quilt! I used a grey with stars on for the background - it's from To the Moon and Back by Lewis and Irene and I need to buy more! All of the animals are made from solids, mostly Kona. I quilted a 3" cross hatch in pale grey. I showed the girls this quilt yesterday morning. Mia loved it and gave it a hug, and Jess kept saying "Wow". It's just as well I've picked up some fabric to make us the full size quilt very soon! This is a Finish Along finish. You can find my original list here .

I know! Another one! I often find that I pair quilts up, and work on them side by side and finish them very close to each other. This one is the partner of the Owls quilt I shared earlier. And it's appropriate, because this quilt is for the sister of the little boy who is getting the owls quilt. Sadly, she has had to wait a little longer to get hers - 2 years. Better late than never? This is another quilt made using the Fancy Forest pattern by Elizabeth Hartman and I picked out just the firefly block and set 6 of them in a column. The background is Kona aqua and the corals are all from my stash: Figures by Zen Chic, Fossil Ferns, Architextures Cross Hatch and a random polka dot. I really struggled with the quilting on this one. To start with I stitched in the ditch around the fireflies, then I did a stipple in all the background using a variegated aqua thread. It looked dreadful. I unpicked it all. I decided to quilt it like the owls and did a 3" cross hatch in the...

Yep - you read that right - a finish! 2017 is turning in to the year of the baby around here and that means a lot of quilts need to be made. I tend to work in arrears, so the recipient of this quilt was born in January. So only 6 months late - which is about average for me! A few months ago I bought the Fancy Forest pattern by Elizabeth Hartman. At £22 it was about the limit of what I would pay for a pattern to be honest. But I am going to make sure I use it. This quilt uses just the owl block, and I picked the layout myself. My next finish will show you just the fireflies. I have another quilt in the works which is just the foxes. Then I decided to actually follow the pattern, and I'm making a baby quilt as shown, using all the animals. I know there will be another baby owl quilt in the summer, my mother-in-law has already requested a full size owl one (and I've found the perfect fabric for the negative space), and my eldest daughter has made it very clear that she does...

Just after Jessica was born, we learned that Michael's cousin was expecting her first baby. She was one of the cooperative ones - those who share the sex of their baby in advance, so allowing us quilters to plan and start work! I decided to use the Moda Modern Building Blocks pattern for a baby quilt. It's a pattern I've been thinking about doing since I first saw it, and I just needed a good excuse really. However, it's not really a baby sized quilt. Easily solved: I shrunk every block by 50%. In the original quilt, the largest block is 36" and the smallest 6". In my version, the largest is 18" - which feels enormous as far as I'm concerned, and the smallest is 3" - which feels quite normal after working on the #365 quilt all last year. I have to confess, some of the maths made my brain hurt, but in every case, I got there. I have to admit, there was the odd 16th of an inch thrown in. I joined in with a quilt along on Instagram for the...

Catching up on some finishes that were Christmas presents now: this was a gift for my Mum. Back in May I offered to make a quilt for her to gift to a colleague who was having a baby. She was involved in picking out the design and the colours and it resulted in the first Quasar Quilt. But had her colleague been expecting a girl, there was one design that Mum just kept going back to. It's a pin on Pinterest that links to an Etsy shop. In a separate conversation, she also said how nice it would be to have a baby/toddler quilt at her house for when she has tiny visitors. I stored this away and when she visited in August I had her pick out the fabrics for this quilt, telling her it was for a friend. In fact this was such a perfect present that on Christmas Eve when we were preparing food, she asked me how much sewing I had on and whether she could a add a quilt for her to the list! So here it is. I bought the background, an Alison Glass print, specifically with my Mum in mind....

A finished baby quilt to share with you today. This one is rather special as it is for my new nephew. The design and colours were picked out by his mother, my sister-in-law and I strongly resisted the urge to add orange... The equilateral triangles were cut from 5.5" strips and I needed 192 of them to make the complete quilt, which measures 41" x 57". The edges were made using full triangles and then trimmed after quilting. I quilted simply by echoing each seam line a quarter inch on both sides. The backing is Ikea Nummer - appropriate as the baby is half-Swedish, don't you think! I have to confess that this isn't one of my favourite quilts. It feels like it's lacking something to make it pop - orange might have been the answer. But I was limited by the specifications I had been given, and my mother. But then, it's not really about whether I like it - I hope that my nephew will love it for many years to come - and maybe once he's older I can ...

This is a Finish Along repeat offender! But finally I can tick it off the list. I started these blocks last summer (as in summer 2015) on a whim. I had very little plan other than each block had a warm colour and cool colour - with purple muddying the water a little! I had originally thought a cushion would be a good idea, then I realised they could make a baby quilt, then I realised just how many blocks I would need to make a baby quilt, then I added in the blank alternate squares. At no point in that whole process did I love it. And at times I hated it. I finished the quilt top this summer, and hated it. So it sat on a shelf. Then my husband said two things in different conversations: firstly, two of his work colleagues were expecting babies, and secondly that he quite liked the quilt. Sorted. I found a backing in my stash, layered it up, quilted a cross hatch, bought some aqua for the binding and it was finished in just a few days. And I have to confess that now it is ...

Lots has happened this month! Notably I think I have blogged more. And that's down to planning: at the start of the month, I sat down and planned some blog posts, and in the most part I have stuck to that plan! I'll try it again for August and see if I can keep it up. So what was I actually sewing? Well, for starters, my monthly block count is 70! A total mix of projects! Zippy pouches. Lots of zippy pouches. I shared two here : a boxy zippy for my perle threads, and an open wide pouch for taking stuff when I go out and sew. Followed by a C&S black and white pouch for my black and white EPP project, and a blue and pink number for a travel play set for Mia. A bit of a thing for black, white, grey and bright pink going on. I finished two quilts: a baby quilt - Quasar II And a whopper - Jane Austen Family Album I had a ball at a workshop with Sarah Fielke I did a bit of charity stitching And I made good progress on both the Splendid Sampler and...