Jennie's Threads

Every year since 2016 I've joined in with @gnomeangel and her sew along to sew 100 blocks in 100 days and each time it has been great fun. The first three years we used the Tula Pink City Sampler pattern. Some of the blocks I made are now finished quilts, but not all of them. That did not stop me joining in again this year. A new pattern, designed by @gnomeangel and @skyberries called the Kinship Fusion Sampler: a mix of 8"x 8" and 8" x 4" blocks. I started with plans to make two quilts: one rainbow one using my stash and one batik one. The batik one is still very much in progress and I wasn't able to keep up with a block a day for this quilt. But the rainbow one is now all together as a quilt top. Now I need to decide on a backing and get it basted, quilted and finished!

My Trinket Quilt is finished. I joined in the #trinketsal over on Instagram and I loved it. You can find more information about the quilt in my previous blog post where I showed you the finished quilt top. But now it is quilted and bound as well. We took it out and about for some photos and found some beautiful rhododendrons/azaleas at Belsay Castle! The backing is an Asda Duvet of fossilised Dinos. Except when I came to baste it, it wasn't big enough. I used the pillow cases in the contrast print to add a section and broke it up with the four left-over Trinket blocks. This is the best photo we got... This was one of those quilts which I knew exactly how I was going to quilt as soon as I had decided on the layout. In the past I've had issues with the backing shifting when I do spiral quilting, and I've never done it on anything this big, but this time, with one teeny exception, it went off without a hitch! The binding is the charcoal text print from Alison Gl...

I am absolutely loving this year's Block of the Month from Sarah Fielke. There's so much variety of techniques, the instruction are so good and it's a wonderful challenge every month. I'm even enjoying the applique, which is just well because I think next month will be all about the applique! And because I'm enjoying it so much, I am 100% up to date! This is the status at the end of month four. The tulip appliqued corners were last month, which I failed to blog about. I found the inny corners tricky and I may have to go back and embroider some strategically placed ladybirds... I made all the houses in the outer border this month using a mix of rotary cutting and foundation piecing, with appliques doors and windows. This quilt will be for Mum and Dad when it's finished and I find myself taking Mum's taste into account far more than Dad's. He's a musician so I was pleased to get the red musical notation print in (it's an old Basic Grey print...

Well I'm still on track and I've completed month 2 of Sarah Fielke's Coming Home quilt . This month was the star points and the appliqued star in a circle. I broke out the applique paper again and thoroughly enjoyed the applique process. I'm also really pleased with how neat it looks. And all that practice will hopefully pay off next month as it's going to be all about the applique when we fill in those corners!

At the end of January I finished my Alison Glass rainbow triangles cushion . It was much admired, as I mentioned at the time. And it just so happens that both my mum and my mother-in-law have February birthdays, so I pulled out all my Alison Glass fabrics. It turns out I have quite a collection... I may have added a few as well. I started cutting triangles for two more cushions. Rather than hand piece, this time the cushions are machine pieced. Machine quilted. Machine finished. As these cushions were rather unplanned, the backs are a bit of a scratch job. I used the grey Diatom print for my Mum's - it's lighter, and she likes light. For Linda's, I pulled out all the dark Stitch fabric I had left - in multiple pieces. It would appear it has come from two different sources as they are slightly different colours.... I decided to use the leftover triangles (all of which were pink and orange), to make a definitive break between the two fabrics and you can't tell t...

I love to make gifts for people at Christmas. At least for the people who I know will appreciate them. Having made a quilt for our childminder as a commission in the summer (it was a quilt she gifted), I was determined to make her one as a Christmas present. We are so lucky that we found Alison - it was pure chance - she had just set up as a childminder, and I had just decided to go back to work. We hadn't planned anything in advance, and she was new so had spaces available. She was the best decision we ever made for our kids. They love her and she loves them. She has two children who are a bit older, and it's like our girls have older siblings. The quilt is for all of them, so I picked a design that was fun and colourful. And I'd been looking for an excuse to try out Elizabeth Hartman's Pineapple Farm pattern! I made the first block back in October. My normal way of working is to cut blocks in advance, then piece them later - I have cutting sessions and piecin...

So looking back through my blog history, it would seem that I haven't mentioned this project here before, so let me explain. Ever since I saw this quilt, I've wanted to make it, but getting hold of the pattern in the UK seemed impossible. Earlier this year I won a $25 voucher to a Canadian fabric shop, and they had it in stock. They were able to do me a good deal on the postage and so it seemed like a very good use of my voucher. And then @Gnomeangel announced that it would be a quilt along starting in August and ending in December. I decided that this would be the perfect quilt for an Alison Glass rainbow so I started stock-piling fat quarters - such a pretty rainbow! You can just about see the background print at the bottom there, too. The quilt along started just before a number of other quilt alongs finished, and just a day before we went on our summer holiday. I worked really hard before the holidays getting a couple of quilts finished, and I came back with a lul...