Houses, Trees, Birds and Friends
The title of this post turns out to be a very accurate description of my life in lockdown so far! It’s actually been surprisingly busy and productive, with lots of wonderful wildlife and nature, and increased (though virtual) contact with friends, especially my Thread House buddies. And that leads me to my first bit of news…
Lynne is back!!
photo taken during pre-covid times 😉
We are so excited to welcome our friend and quilting legend Lynne Goldsworthy back into the fold after a 3 year absense! Lynne has decided it’s time to rejoin The Thread House and our original gang is finally reunited! To celebrate we are hosting a month long photo prompt challenge on Instagram!
Join us on our Instagram feed during June for a month of photo prompts designed to get us all chatting, finding out more about each other and seeing what everyone’s been up to. Tag and name check your friends, your favourite shops, your favourite designers and patterns and fabrics and spread the love! Let’s keep this fabulous quilting community of ours alive and well through these weird and difficult times.
To help you get organised ahead of Monday’s start you can download and print a PDF version of the schedule by clicking on this link
As an extra special treat we’ll be hosting a fabulous GIVEAWAY on our Instagram feed EVERY SATURDAY during June!! Look out for some amazing prizes!! We do hope you will join us and don’t forget to use the hashtag on all your posts #thethreadhouseandfriends
Meanwhile I’ve been busy with other Thread House business… getting ready for another Virtual Retreat. Our first one went really well and the second one starts on Saturday. It’s sold out, but there will be another one along soon!
Karen and I are teaching various techniques to create mini modern houses and trees, which can be used for a variety of projects. Karen has made a cushion and I’ve made this cute mini quilt, complete with both round and oval trees. I will be teaching the tree block part of the day using both curved and improv piecing.
On Sunday we’ll be making these adorable Japanese Flower Bags with different embellishments. Karen will be teaching boro and wabi sabi stitching in the morning and I’ll be teaching a range of embroidery stitches in the afternoon. The last retreat was wonderful and made me feel like I was really in the same room as a hundrend students from all over the world, and I am sure the second one will be just as good.
I was sent a bundle of Sally Kelly’s gorgeous new Windham fabric line ‘Solstice’ last week, and I just couldn’t wait to start using it!
For the last retreat we’d made my Tendril Project Pouch and I’d had the genius idea to stitch one of my bird appliques to the pouch so that the bird appeared perched on the tendril. It turned out so well I made two! And I also sold a lot of bird applique patterns to retreaters as an added bonus 😉
Here are all the class samples I made at the last retreat (on the right above). Karen also made 3 and we decided to raffle them for charity and raised £650 for Refuge! We’ll be doing the same with the next batch of class samples. For more news on this and any of our Thread House Retreats and activity sign up for our newsletter at the top of our news page on the Thread House website here.
But back to my genius ideas…
I was wondering how I could incorporate birds into class samples for this second retreat (and sell some more patterns, bwahaha!) when another genius idea struck me (I amaze myself sometimes!), the little houses could be turned into birdhouses with the simple addition of an applique circle!
So that’s what I spent last weekend doing, and I got to play with the Solstice Fabric at the same time.
First I made a blue tit panel and then I made a robin. At first I thought they would become a new Project Pouch, but then my TTH partner Karen launched a brand new Project Bag pattern and kindly sent me a copy. Straight away I wanted to make it and decided that I would use the birdhouse panels even if I had to cut them down a little.
I matchstick quilted them using Aurifil variegated 50wt thread, adding hand quilting details with Aurifil 12wt wool.
And I got to use more of the stunning Sally Kelly fabric for the side panels. I am so delighted with my new project bag!
It has all these useful inner pockets for storing your tools and notions and it was such a quick make, taking me around an hour once I had the panels quilted and ready. It features a really nifty way to make the straps which was new to me and which I will be using again.
If you want to purchase the pattern go to Karen’s Etsy store here. And if you’d like to add your very own bird then head to my Payhip store here. Unfortunately this bag won’t be included in the next class sample raffle, it’s a keeper for sure!
Meanwhile don’t forget to join in with our Thread House and Friends month starting Monday!
Oh my this bag is gorgeous. x
I have found your blog recently and just love the style of your work! I just downloaded the PDF for the photos on instagram, I have never done one of these before. In fact the other day I uploaded my first ever instagram photo and most of it was cropped off because it was not square. This sounds like a fun way to interact with other quilters. I also am a bird lover and your little bird on the bag is adorable! Well the bag is cute too but the little bird is just adorable!