Dear John....

According to Wikipedia, a Dear John letter is a letter written to a man by his wife or romantic partner to inform him that their relationship is over.  

I've called this quilt Dear John because my relationship with the Dear Jen pattern is over.  Although the fully finished quilt looks beautiful, (see below) I just don't have the energy or dedication to make all the templates required and then hand piece all the blocks.    

link to the pattern at Amitie Textiles

So I've turned my blocks into a cute wall hanging, table mat, sampler quilt.  

Next weekend I'm going to Dunedin for a cross stitch retreat.  So I'm going to take this quilt with me and let my friends at Stitch Witches display it in their shop.  I always think it's nice to see finished quilts on the walls at quilt shops I visit, so I'll help them out and lend them one of mine. 

The finished quilt is 30" x 30". There's more photos here in my previous post. 

the back with cute Tula Pink fabric

The binding - it's gold, but works really well with the orange narrow border and floral border print

Now it's time for the Peacock Party.  Feel free to link up a recent blog post below.

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Dear Jen revisited

On Sunday I went digging in my quilting cupboard to find a WIP I wanted to work on.  But before I could find that WIP, I came across my Dear Jen blocks from the quilt along in 2019.  

Jen Kingwell ran the Dear Jen programme and she issued patterns for 6" hand pieced or hand appliqued blocks each week or month.  The blocks were very intricate and making my own templates for every block added to time each block took too.  

In a sign of how my thinking has changed, I went from, "I'll make some more of those one day", straight to, "Why don't I just sew these blocks together and call it quits". 

So I laid out my measly 11 hand pieced blocks and thought about what I could do with them.  Two of them needed a bit of fixing up, so I was a radical and just threw them in the bin!!!

Then I was left with 9 blocks which is a good number for a quilt, so I set to and hand sewed them together while I watched the tennis from Indian Wells.  

A few days later I went searching in my stash for some borders to make my mini quilt a bit bigger.  I must have tried about 20 fabrics before I settled on my final choices, but I'm very happy with them. The orange really works.  

The whole quilt is 30" x 30", so I looked for a yard/metre of fabric in my stash and found In a Finch by Tula Pink:

 

Then I pulled out my Jacqui Gering Walk books 1 and 2 and made a short list of possible machine quilting designs.  In the end I chose the above design which works really well because the quilt is square.  

I'll be sure to show you the finished quilt once I get the binding on.  

Now it's time for the Peacock Party.  Feel free to link up a recent blog post below:

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Dear Jen and the Peacock Party

I've finally made a few more blocks for my Dear Jen quilt.  This is a mystery quilt being run by Jen Kingwell from Amitie Textiles.

  

Very wonky, I know.  

A total of 18 blocks have been released so far.  I made the first 6 quite quickly, but fell behind on month 2.  However, I decided that I'm probably not going to make every block anyway, so I picked my favourites from months 2 and 3 and made these blocks.

I'm hand piecing my blocks.  Some people are machine piecing, some are English Paper Piecing, but I'm using Jen's method of hand piecing.  I really want to improve my hand piecing, so this is good practice. However, that final one above looks pretty bad, so I may yet try it again with English Paper Piecing. 

Now it's time for the Peacock Party.  Feel free to link up a recent blog post below:

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A Quilting Retreat and the Peacock Party

What a great response to last week's post about Sashiko.  So many of you have been in touch to say you either have a panel in your cupboard, or you've always wanted to try it.  Give it a go!! It's lots of fun and quite quick too.

my iPhone for scale

a 6" block

I'm at a quilting retreat this weekend.  Our guild runs 3 retreats each year.  Two are at the Silverstream Retreat in Upper Hutt, and one is at the Island Bay, Home of Compassion.  This will be the fifth year in a row that I've attended the Island Bay retreat.

We have a lot of fun at retreat, and get so much sewing done without having to stop to cook meals etc.  Each person has their own bedroom and bathroom, and the staff at the venue do all the cooking for us.  We sew in a lovely big meeting which gets lots of natural light.  It's also nice and warm because it's winter here, and we definitely need good heating.

We are all guilty of taking too many quilts to work on, but it's better to have too many than to run out of things to do.  I'm going to take my Dear Jen blocks along.  This is a mystery hand piecing programme being run by Jen Kingwell from Amitie Textiles.

I've only made the first 6 blocks so far, so I could spend the weekend catching up on blocks 7-18, although I don't think I'll get them all made in one weekend.

I'll also take some hand quilting, because it's easy to hand quilt while talking to friends.  I might start hand quilting my Cartwheel quilt by Kaffe Fassett.  It's all basted and ready to go.  Don't ask how I'm going to quilt it yet, because I'll figure that out once I've got the needle in my hand!

Or I could do a bit more hand quilting on my Shuttles quilt.  I do love that yellow Aurifil 12wt I've chosen for the quilting. 

So many options - and only 3 days of retreat.  Perhaps I need a week long retreat!

If you want to see what everyone else is up to at retreat, you can follow Capital Quilters on Instagram and Facebook, or look for the #homeofcompassionretreat hashtag on social media.  That's our logo above.

Now it's time for the Peacock Party. What have you been up to lately? Feel free to link up a recent post below.

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Dear Jen - the first 6 blocks - plus the Peacock Party

Here are my first six blocks of Dear Jen by Jen Kingwell.  Each one is 6" finished - so quite small.  There's going to be six released every month for 12 months.

At first I thought, "Oh, there's only six, and they're small.  This won't take long".  Then I spent a couple of hours just cutting out the pieces and thought, "Wow!!! There's a lot more to these than meets the eye".

I'm hand piecing my blocks.  I wouldn't call myself a master hand piecer, but mine are satisfactory.  Some people are trying to foundation paper piece and it's taking them as long as it's taking the hand piecers in some cases.  I do think it's worth learning to hand piece.  Jen says, "if you can hand sew the binding down, you can learn to hand piece".

Here's a link to a video by Becky Goldsmith on how to hand piece.  The technique she demonstrates is the same method as I was taught to hand piece by Jen Kingwell.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pNpSCsz-pzM
I know it looks painfully slow, but I think that's just because she's demonstrating.  I certainly stitch faster than that!

This weekend I'm off to Tote and Gloat at Rose City Quilters at Palmerston North.  People come from far and wide to take part in this event.  There's huge show and tell, merchants, a guest speaker, raffles, etc.  Everything to keep quilters busy for a day.  The guest speaker this year is my good friend, Rachaeldaisy from Australia.  I'm staying on to take a class with her on Sunday.

I'll be the one with the colourful bag.

Now to the Peacock Party.  What's everyone else been up to? Feel free to link up below and perhaps meet some new online friends.

I'll report back next week with everything I learnt at Tote and Gloat and the class.

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The start of Dear Jen - and the Peacock Party

Well, thank you for all the kind comments about my Suffrage in Stitches panel.  I delivered them yesterday, and now I won't see them again until the exhibition opens.

A few weeks ago I warned (confessed?) that I'd signed up for an online block of the month through Amitie Textiles called Dear Jen.  It's Jen Kingwell's version of a Dear Jane quilt, and probably as close as I'm going to come to making a Dear Jane quilt.

Of course a new quilt calls for a new fabric pull.  I'm thinking of using this bundle of Libs Elliott Mix Tape above, with a few bright Liberty fabrics thrown in for good measure.  I don't like making a whole quilt from just one fabric line - I like to mix it up.

The patterns for the first 6 blocks were released this week.  I resisted the temptation to dive right in, because I really want to get my Shuttles quilt top finished first.  It's so close to done, and should be finished this weekend.

A reminder of what the pattern in the book looks like:

I'm loving all the snippets of Kaffe fabrics in my Shuttles quilt.  It's going to be bright and crazy, but hey, we all need a bit of that at times.

If you're in the lower North Island of NZ, remember the Kapiti Quilters Exhibition at Southwards Car Museum this weekend.  The list of merchants is very impressive.
And Tote and Gloat at Palmerston North the following Saturday, 11May.  I'm going to be at Tote and Gloat and I'm taking something for show and tell.  I'm not quite sure what yet, but it will be colourful. I'm really looking forward to my friend RachaelDaisy's presentation as the guest speaker.

Now it's time for the Peacock Party.  What's everyone else been up to?

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PS - Michelle has been leaving lovely comments, but you're a No Reply Blogger Michelle, so I can't reply.  If you send me an email at wendysquiltsandmore@gmail.com I'll be able to add your address to my address book and get back to you.  Thanks.