Jennie's Threads

Just after Joshua was born, I was scrolling through Instagram and happened upon this year's Mini Dresden Party #minidresdenparty2019 and as Michael was holding the baby, and it looked pretty quick, I decided to make one up. An hour or so later I had a little Dresden, all appliqued to some background. I obviously had my normal Dresden issue... there are not the same number of blades in this as there were in the pattern... this always happens to me! I used scraps from my Mandolin Quilt so they are mostly Spirit Animal by Tula Pink but with the odd added extra! Then I got distracted by other pretty things and Baby Joshua...Fast forward to writing my Quarter 2 Finish Along list. The Dresden was still lurking on my sewing table, waiting to be finished as... something. I added it to the list. And then last week, I was looking for a piece of fabric and stumbled across it. I thought it would be a quick finish as a pincushion. Just whack on a back and stitch up the opening. Easy. I c

A quarter of the way through the year already. Back in January I posted a very ambitious list of things I wanted to achieve.... I didn't do very well in finishing, but I did move some projects along... Pac Mania: is finished. And I have sent it to it's new home with a friend who has recently lost her husband. There were times when I wasn't sure about this quilt, but once it was completed and washed I was really please with how it had turned out - nice and crinkly. I'm linking this post up for this finish, but you can fid more information here . My only other finish this quarter was my Pembrokeshire English Paper Piecing mini quilt. This is also now living in its new home with my Mum. You can find all the information about the finish here : Rhubarb and Custard: Isn't finished. But I have made huge progress in the sashing. This project will go back on the list for Q2. Steph's Quilt: Isn't finished. But I do have a completed quilt top afte

Having established that no-one in the UK had Kona Snow in stock in the yardage I needed, I went to my LQS yesterday and picked a slightly pricier alternative. It's a cream on cream print with a small floral-like print that you can only just see if the light hits it at the right angle. And this afternoon I finished the twenty outside blocks for the Sew Intertwined QAL. These are really pretty and when you lay them out they create a lovely pattern on their own - I will bear that in mind for the future, as they were really straightforward to put together too. The fabrics are Cats Amore from Benartex, except the background and the pink, which is Basic Grey Eva for Moda. Although purple and green are generally cool colours, these ones are actually very warm. I haven't appliqued on the central Dresden yet - I'm trying to decide whether to do it by hand so you can't see the stitching, or use a blanket stitch on my sewing machine, and if I do that, what colour threa

It's 1st August. And that means that it's nearly time for Sidmouth !!!!!! But before we head off on holiday, I have time to wrap up July, which was a bumper sewing month! I'm linking up to Lily's Quilts for this post: I have finished three quilts: Swoon and Oh My Stars (which I still haven't fully revealed - hopefully tomorrow). I free motion quilted both and attached the binding by hand - that was a lot of meters of binding! And Joshua's quilt  - a rather large baby quilt, which I grid quilted. All of these three count towards my 3rd Quarter finish-along . I started a fair few projects too: I started a Jelly Roll hexagon quilt from Papillon by Moda I started the Sew Intertwined QAL in greens and purples. I started a jelly roll Dresden quilt in Ruby by Moda And I made the fantastic Desperate House Wives block for Stash Bee - I am totally in love with this block! For August I've prepared some embroidery - two quilt labels for Swoon and

I finished three quilts last week. That means I can start three more. Right? This weekend was about Dresdens. Not something I've done a lot of before. I started on Saturday witha  new Jelly Roll quilt. It's from the Jelly Roll Dreams book and is called Pac Mania. Here are my first four blocks all together (the background is cream, not grey). In the finished quilt there won't be any full circles only three quarter circles (which look like the things from Pac Man - hence the name). I'm using a Ruby Jelly Roll, and those are curved seams! So far I'm 11 blocks in and no pleats in my seams! I need 36 blocks in total so there is still time! And then yesterday I started the Sew Intertwined QAL with the centre Dresden. Check out the tutorial because this technique took away all of the Dresden issues I've had in the past. I haven't bought my background fabric yet, so I've just sat it on some cream fabric from the jelly roll quilt. The fabrics are par