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:

You are invited to the Inlinkz link party!

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Raindrops are Falling on my Head

Firstly - You may have heard about some strong earthquakes off New Zealand, and associated tsunami risks.  Fortunately I didn't even feel the earthquakes, and I don't live in the risk area for the possible tsunamis.  Many people have spent the morning on high ground, but the risk of tsunami has now passed thankfully. I don't think any buildings have been damaged.

Back to quilting.  

I've made a small start on Raindrops are Falling on my Head from Millefiori Quilts Book 4 by Willyne Hammerstein.  

I bought this beautiful Art Gallery fabric from Material Obsession in Sydney back in June 2019 - almost two years ago.  I've been waiting for the right project to come along, and now it has.   

When I start a new quilt I just cut a few pieces of the feature fabric to see what I think.  When I'm happy with how it's developing, I cut a few more.  

I squeeze as many pieces out of my fabric as possible. My template is hollow because I'm going to hand piece this quilt.  

I plan to incorporate some of these fabrics above into the quilt too.  

So, I'm continuing my plan of making a number of quilts from Millefiori Quilts Book 4.  Hand piecing really has become my preferred method of quilting.  I enjoy it even more than machine piecing.  

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

You are invited to the Inlinkz link party!

Click here to enter

Hand Piecing 102 video - making your own templates

Well, I never expected that my video on hand piecing would be so popular!  Thank you for all the positive feedback on my last post and my Hand Piecing 101 video.

I thought that most hand piecers purchased acrylic templates, but there clearly are a lot of people who make their own templates, and many of you wanted tips on how to make accurate templates.

So, my next video, Hand Piecing 102, is all about how to make your own hand piecing templates from template plastic.

You can watch it here:

Hand Piecing 102 explains how to get straight edges on templates, which pens and scissors to use, and how to use the Simple Seam Wheel by Jen Kingwell.

some hand piecing in progress - Jen Kingwell's Marshal Mystery quilt

the ring above turned into this - the purple centre isn't appliqued on yet.

Note that my block isn't perfect - there's a bit of extra fabric in there, but it will OK

As I mention in the video, my block doesn't sit perfectly flat, but it will be OK when I applique it onto the background.  It's hand made so there's bound to be some imperfections.  I can live with that and know for certain that it's better than I could have managed on my sewing machine.


Just like last time, if you have questions or comments, just leave a comment below or on the video, or send me an email via the box on the right hand side of my blog.  Thanks for watching!

And yes, my next video will be about 8 or 10 pointed stars.  I've got all the pieces ready and I just need to convince my cameraman that it's time to start filming!

Now it's time for the Peacock Party.  This is where you get to share what you've been working on lately.  Feel free to link up a recent blog post below:

You are invited to the Inlinkz link party!

Click here to enter