Jennie's Threads

It's done! 13 months after I started piecing in August 2017, I have a finished quilt. And I love it! We took it to Blyth Beach yesterday to get some photos of it! This was an English Paper Piecing block of the month design from Sue Daley: each month over the course of a year, I received the papers to piece 4 circular blocks, all the same. 12 different blocks, four per month equals 48 blocks total. My colour inspiration was a washi tape I own and I had originally intended to use royal blue as my background colour. But whilst rummaging in my stash for a different project I found a huge piece of Art Gallery Pure Elements in a deep wine-purple - I think it's called Cabernet, and it just made the blocks sing. The royal blue went back in the stash! My plan was to applique the blocks as I went along, as I knew I would hate myself if I left it all to the end. And then to quilt each block individually, using the quilt as you go method. This plan would have been fine if I had...

I don't know whether to celebrate, or to heave a huge sigh of relief... Apparently I started this quilt on 21st January 2011. I've just read through some old blog posts about it and read that I hoped to finish it by January 21st 2012 - a year after I started it. Excuse me a moment while I laugh hysterically. We are now three years on from that, and four years on from when I first started it and I can finally tell you that it is FINISHED! As in done. I managed to get a couple of photos outside in between the  flurries of rather pathetic snow #notquitejuno Finished. This was my first foray into quilting, and was started as a monthly class at my local quilt shop and we used the book "Essential Sampler Quilt" by Nikki Tinkler. I pulled fabrics from my "stash" - again I must laugh hysterically - at that point my stash took up one 9 litre Really Useful box. Oh how times have changed. The first block I made for the quilt didn't make it into the f...

So it's the start of the new year, and as with last year, I'm going to try and link up weekly with WIP Wednesday - it's a really useful way of blogging at least weekly and keeping track of what I'm up to. This week I've been up to a fair few bits and pieces, but I've spent quite a lot of hours on the Essential Sampler quilt. If you've followed me for a while, I declared this quilt as unloved in September, as it had been lying around since early 2011 and untouched for most of that time. Having declared it unloved, I spent a week working on it and falling back in love with it. Progress by the end of September I made such good progress that I optimistically added it to my Finish Along list for Q4. And then Christmas happened, and Christmas sewing took over, and I didn't touch it for three months. With the end of the quarter drawing near, I pulled it out again. With just a few days left, there was no way I would it in time for the link up. So it will re...

Remember the Moustache cushion front I showed you? Well now it's a cushion cover. And it's wrapped! I trimmed down the piece I showed a couple of weeks ago, then added what I'm calling a peeped binding. I'm not sure what it's actually called... I took 1" strips of red yardage and folded them in half length-ways. I then basted them onto the cushion front within the seam allowance. I also basted the pieces of the envelope back to the front, as I didn't trust the fabric not to move about with that many layers! Once in place I added the binding, made from the same fabric as the cushion body (so thicker to work with than regular binding), then brought it to the front and top-stitched it in place with a small amount of the red still showing. I love how this adds interest without being piping! This is my second scrappy cushion made in a similar manner and I'm planning a quilt in the same techniques in the new year (along with a few other things!).

Last week I [re]introduced you to an old WIP / UFO . The idea was to tell you all about it and then challenge myself to spend some time on the project for the week, then report back. And I have good things to report. Though I very nearly didn't - the sampler quilt is 25 blocks and when I pulled them all out I only found 24. Some frantic hunting yesterday and I can put your minds at rest - I have found the awol block. In the past week I have reduced the amount of hand quilting required to just 2 and a half blocks. Some of this was accepting that the quilting already done was enough - it was my view of what the block needed at the time I did it. But I've also done quite a lot of quilting. Worryingly, some of my hand quilting from two years ago is neater than my hand quilting today.... And the biggest achievement was adding some of the quilted blocks to the centre of the quilt. At the start of the week I had nine blocks pieced together, and needed to put another row of...

I have a number of "long-term" sampler quilts. By "long-term" I mean either slowly in progress or totally ignored. Over the next few weeks I want to blog about these projects - I'll start the week with a review of the project, so I can see where I'm up to and what is left to do. Then hopefully I can spend some time during the week working on that project. At the end of the week I'll then look at where I've got to and what my future plans for the project are. I'm going to start off today with my oldest such project. Back in January 2011 I started a series of patchwork classes to make the Nikki Tinkler Sampler quilt. I first blogged about it here - you can see my first four blocks. As I continued the project I focussed my fabric choices considerably and all of the four blocks in the original post have been remade since then! The quilt is 25 patchwork blocks, each different, introducing lots of different techniques. This was perfect for me as ...

... and I've finished work today. Not just for Christmas but for maternity leave. I don't think it has really sunk in yet - maybe when I don't have to go back to work after Christmas it will feel more real.... In the meantime I have finished some hand made Christmas decorations. These will be winging their way to some Bee mates who have had to wait rather a long time for their blocks... a couple of them will get this hopefully just in time for Christmas, the other possibly not.... I got some Christmassy scraps and started with some crazy patchwork with a piece of calico in the middle. I quilted as I went and crossed my fingers, as crazy / improv patchwork isn't my forte. Once it was pieced I drew a Christmas motif and got out the perle thread. The holly is backstitch and the berries are lots of French knots - I nearly regretted this half way through as it was a lot of French knots but I love the texture it created. The Christmas tree is chain stitch, backstitc...

This is one of my longest running WIPs - I started it in Summer 2010. Unfortunately I did it in a class very early in my quilting career and we weren't given the instructions on how to put it together - it was my first attempt at quilt as you go and I didn't have a clue. Roll forward to the beginning of this year and I found the tutorial by Leah Day for joining QAYG blocks with narrow sashing - a little light bulb popped on and since then I have moved this project from barely-touched-since-leaving-the-class, to finished quilt which I love. The fabrics are a bit of a mixture but most of the heart/flower fabrics are from a Benartex range called Sweethearts. The layers were all joined together with some really poor (hindsight is a wonderful thing) hand quilting - I did it like I did embroidery, so the front is fine but the back not so great. Speaking of the back... the plan was a chequerboard effect. Oh well! This is a wall hanging - there is too much hand sewing fo...

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...