Jennie's Threads

The thing about hand sewing, is that it is a slow process... there are no milestones, like finishing a quilt top, quilting a quilt top etc. At least not any time soon. I'll pop some photos on Instagram, but often I don't blog about them because I don't have those milestones to share with you. So here's a bit of an update on my favourites. My La Passacaglia is coming along beautifully. This is my second rosette and the colour scheme is one of my current favourites - I'd love to make a whole quilt from these aquas, peaches and pinks! I've pulled out lots of combinations for my next rosettes and even though I love working on one and seeing grow, it might be worth making up a few centres and seeing which ones I love as a way to decide on the which will be the big rosettes and which the small. Picking the fabrics for these rosettes is really what takes the time! My other EPP love is the New Hexagon Millefiori quilt. The pieces in this quilt are far bigg...

Shhhh! It's all about low volume over here today. I pulled it all out of the cupboard and I've been cutting like a mad woman. I have three projects in mind: one massive, one complex and one small and achievable. On Saturday I'm going to a class with Katy Jones: we're making the pixelated heart from one of the early issues of Quilt Now. It requires over 200 squares of background fabric, and rather than follow the pattern and cut the background from one fabric and the feature fabrics from a further seven, I'm going rainbow scrappy. And bigger than the original. So I need over 400 squares of low volume. I reckon I'm cutting from about 150 different fabrics  that's a lot of re-folding, never mind the cutting. I'm looking forward to Saturday and hopefully I'll have a fair chunk of quilt top finished by the evening to share with you. If I finish the cutting, that is. And whilst I have all that fabric out and unfolded, I might as well cut all the low ...

I haven't played with scraps since we  moved house, as the box was well and truly buried, but after some scrap swapping at the first meet up of the North East Modern Quilt Guild I vowed to make some time and find the box. Well it turned out to be two boxes... so I set up with my machine and a plan to make a dent. And a one-hour basket. It will be my second - I made my first a few weeks ago and I love it. By the end of Sunday I had one of the two panels I needed. It took far longer than planned - I think I over-thought it a bit... hopefully I can learn to let go a bit more and just grab the next scrap... And here is half of panel two. Not quite a basket yet.... The plan is lots of these baskets, but all in one colour way. I'm more likely to use my scraps (I think) if they are sorted by colour, so I want a basket for each colour to replace the carrier bag system currently in place. This multi-coloured one will be the basket next to my sewing machine for everyda...

After so much chaos in the first five months of the year with packing, clearing out houses, moving houses, decorating houses, it was lovely last week to get away for a holiday. If you're a long-time reader of my blog, then you'll know that my favourite place to go on holiday is Tenby in south-west Wales. We last went back in May 2012 (and if you compare those blog posts to this, some of the photos are pretty similar - but I promise I did take new ones!) and I can confirm that it hasn't changed much - still as lovely as ever! There were some important differences this time round: the weather was better, and we took Mia with us. Having a 15-month-old with us meant that some places just weren't feasible - there are a few too many steps on some of the coast path, but it did mean some time at the zoo/farm. She now identifies "horsey" as well as "cat", "doggy", "duck". You'd be amazed at how many ducks we saw, as it ...

It's been a while since I did any machine quilting. And it turns out it's been a while since I cleaned my machine too...it was revolting! I'm quilting out of necessity. It turns out that the deadline for shipping in the Cotton & Steel mini quilt swap is only just over a week away. There's still a 3" section to quilt but I don't think I've ruined it... Quilting time has been limited recently due to these two fruitcakes... But I wouldn't have it any other way! Linking up with WIP Wednesday

My Finish Along list this quarter is looking a little bit sad... no sewing machine for a month, followed by the urge to do lots of hand sewing last month, means that a lot of those goals are no longer achievable - so far I have just two finishes out of an optimistic 18. So I've had a look down the list and picked out the most important and likely finish... Mia's cat quilt. All of the fabric for the cats is cut and the first 10 kitties are pieced. It takes literally 10 minutes to piece each block, and I'm planning on quilting a cross hatch on this quilt to keep it soft and drapey. The only unknown is whether the cats alone will be a big enough quilt, or whether I'll need to add a few borders. This is totally do-able! Linking up with ALYoF!

I love May. Everywhere suddenly turns green and the evenings are lighter. We'll pretend hay-fever isn't a thing! And even better, I got my sewing machine and sewing space unpacked and started sewing. The problem is that I haven't used it very much because I've been diverted by some hand sewing projects... I started my own version of La Passacaglia - this is my second rosette which isn't finished yet. Does everyone else take photos of their patchwork in the middle of the road? I also started the New Hexagon Millefiori quilt - this fells much bigger in scale to La Pass but I'm loving it just as much. This is my first rosette so far... one more round of hexies to finish it. And an off-shoot from this project... I'm using the pattern of rosette 1 to make a mini for my partner in the #handpiecedminiswap on Instagram. This time the hexagons are 2" finished rather than the original 3" I did use my sewing machine a bit. Michael goes a...