Jennie's Threads

Back in 2016 I was in our local quilt shop when I cam across a Moda printed panel for a Little Red Riding Hood doll. I bought it, and then ignored it, despite it appearing on my Finish Along list several times. By the time I actually got it out of the packaging in March this year, I realised that one dolly wasn't going to cut it, because two daughters means two dollies! A bit of online hunting and I found Coral Queen of the Sea - you can read about her in my next post! With two dollies in hand, I set about making Little Red. It took about an hour of cutting out, an hour of sewing up on the machine and and half an hour to stuff and slip stitch closed. Why did I wait so long? I gave Little Red to Jessica when we went on holiday. She came in her own little suitcase, with her accessories and a dolly bottle, and certainly kept her entertained in the tent! This is a Finish Along finish. You can find my original list here .

Back at the start of the year I came across #1yearofstitches on Instagram and Facebook. The idea was that you stitched every day for a year. The rules were pretty loose - onestitch, one type of stitch, any project, anything goes. I love embroidery, and last year I started expanding my repertoire of stitches, so I jumped on board with the aim of further extending my abilities.      I set up a hoop, with a random white-ish solid, backed with my trusty interfacing (I use a lightweight woven fusible interfacing behind all of my embroidery which stabilises the fabric and prevents puckers - it's called SF101). Each day from January to June, I added a stitch: by that I mean that I added a type of stitch and did as much of that stitch as I wanted to. So one day I did a row of chain stitch, the next day, I added a row of blanket stitch, the next day I did a bullion knot wheel and so on. I repeated stitches. I fell in love with chain stitch, so my hoop contains a fair ...

I started this quilt on a bit of a whim. I'd been watching the build up to the quilt along for the Fussy Cut Sampler Quilt book on Instagram, and I'd had a look at the book on Amazon a few times and just not committed. Then, on 31st May,  the day it started, I'd had a long day at work and just needed to relax. I saw the first block pop up and I liked it. I made it, without the book, based on the knowledge that the blocks were 9" finished and the good fortune that the block was very straightforward. I ordered the book as soon as I'd finished. I had to make blocks 2 and 3 the same way because my book hadn't arrived... The book arrived in time for block 4, and it was beautiful. A really lovely book - detailed information on techniques and beautiful photos. It made me look at fabric in a different way - fabric I thought was not a fussy-cuttable fabric, suddenly was... My favourite block! And the last one in the book. I am not a fussy-cutter. I don...

You may remember that at the start of the year, Mia and I were making Snail blocks. One block every Sunday. The original plan was 42 weeks and 42 snails as part of a quilt along with @gnomeangel. Well half way through, the plan changed and the quilt along was shortened to end in July. Which was perfect: I had a brainwave. How about I finish all 42 blocks by July and turn them into a picnic blanket for our holiday? So that's what I did. Scattered through the post are some of our favourite snails. Mia picked the feature fabric for most of the snails. I snuck in a few of my favourite fabrics. My niece, Ellie-Jo picked a few when she was visiting on a Sunday, and even Jess picked a couple. The block was designed by Pen and Paper Patterns and is all rotary cut. I framed each of my blocks and alternated a black or a white background to give me a chequerboard finish to the quilt. My next brainwave was to use a shower curtain as the backing to make it slightly more water-r...

This quilt came about after a friend asked me to make a quilt for her to gift. The remit was purple, pink, orange, yellow and green, and it had to include the names of the children in the family. This is the best photo I have of the finished quilt! I was piecing blocks from Tula Pink's City Sampler book at the time, and decided to use them, but to go a a bit crazy, with some of the originally-6"-blocks up-sized to 12" or 9", and a fair few in the original 6" size and then set in random fashion with filler squares and strips. The names are raw-edge appliqued using a machine blanket stitch. I started by picking out the Kona fabrics for orange, yellow, green, pink and purple, and adding in a couple of extra shades of each. From there I raided my stash for prints. I designed the layout in five sections, each name, surrounded by blocks and fillers, and avoiding Y-seams and partial seams. And whereas I normally hate sashing, I really enjoyed putting this on...

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, ...

Now for some finishes - as promised, I've got quite a few to share with you! First up is the Long Time Gone quilt. Back at the start of the year, Angie @gnomeangel announced her next round of quilt alongs and this was one of them. Classy modelling from my husband!  The pattern is by Jen Kingwell. And I bought the pattern without really committing. I know that these things have a habit of selling out. Last year I made the My Small World quilt to one of Jen's patterns, and if you've followed me for a while, you'll know that I had a bit of a love hate relationship with it. This was why I was hesitant. But in the end I love the finished quilt. So I decided to join in this one. Plus, the fear of missing out on one of Angie's quilt alongs is real! Unlike My Small World, Long Time Gone is entirely machine pieced. But that did not mean it was easy. This quilt along stepped up the game from a block a month (as this quilt was originally run) to a block a week. And...