Liberty's Bloomsbury Gardens Pillow

I finished up my Liberty Bloomsbury Gardens pillow over the weekend, after much deliberation I decided upon this checkered Darlene Zimmerman brown binding, which I think finishes it really well with the bright florals :) the HST design and quilting effect is completely inspired by the amazing Jeni B's 'fall pillow'. I was so in love when she made it last year I knew I had to re-create one myself! So I thought the liberty florals would be a perfect excuse ;)

I also carried on the theme to the back of the pillow with a row of HST's. I used my simple envelope pillow tutorial to complete the back panels. 

It's now found it's way on my sofa with the other growing collection of pillows! Perfect for cosying up to in the chilly evenings :)

Jessie, xo

p.s. my Mama Said Sew fabric giveaway on Verykerryberry's blog is ending tomorrow morning GMT enter here for your chance to win!!

1930's Doll Quilt

This last week has been crazy busy! The shop is in full swing, lots of research and future plans/fabric collections to stock, attending a graduate start-up business open day (to hopefully get onto the scheme and have help with my business! eek!), sorting out material for publications I'm going to be featured in soon, and a BOOK I will be in next year! ahhh so excited! and all at the same time, balancing a new part-time job and squeezing some precious sewing time in ;) it's a juggle, but I love it.

    During some of my sewing time recently I made this mini doll quilt, if you have hopped over to the Sew and Quilt shop you might recognise it as part of the homepage images :)

The pattern is by Darlene Zimmerman and you can find it for free here! I have grand plans of creating a whole wall of mini quilts, similar to this one I've seen on Pinterest - I just love them :) The fabrics are a mix of 1930s reproduction prints from the shop, and some from my own personal collection. 

I'm also happy to announce that I will be attending next year's Fat Quarterly retreat in London! A whole extended weekend of sewing!! I'm so excited! I missed out last year as I couldn't afford it and wasn't able to travel to London but this year I've asked for it as my Christmas present :) and I really didn't want to miss out on all the fun this time round. 

Looking forward to meeting bloggers I've been following and admiring for some time, as well as making new friends - that I can actually talk to in 'real-life' about quilting! Yesss! haha. Are you going? If so, please let me know I'd love to say hi! 

p.s. the lovely verykerryberry is hosting a giveaway for me - hop over here to enter the competition to win two Mama Said Sew texty printed fat quarters!

Jessie, xo

Pyrosil and Bloomsbury Gardens Project

Hi friends, I wanted to share couple of fun things with you today. Firstly is this little project I'm working on with the Bloomsbury Gardens collection, oh the fabrics are so pretty! I was playing around with some simple HST designs and came out with this :) I like it when 'making it up as you go along' sometimes works :) 

    Although I'm currently undecided if it should be a new pillow for my living room (yes, another one!) or a mini quilt to hang? 

Also, I recently managed to finally complete my full set of Pyrosil! yay! I'm so happy! My local antique shop had the 1 1/2-pt saucemaker for a nice thrifty price of £4 so I snapped it up without any hesitation :) I've been collecting the others for a couple of years at various car-boot sales and charity shops. 
    If you haven't seen it before Pyrosil is the British equivalent to the well known American Corning Ware glass and ceramic cookware. It was produced in the Netherlands during the 1960's but sold in the U.K. and features a distinctive blue cornflower emblem and 'lock-on handles' - which fixes on and off with a simple twist! Perfect storage space saver.

Look, the whole set! :D minus the stand for the casserole dish - but I'm always on the lookout ;)

I hope you all have a lovely weekend, and as a final note I've got some new text prints from the Mama Said Sew collection in the shop this week, take a peek! ;)

Jessie, xo

Fratelli Bassetti Tessuti - Rome Fabric Store!

So before heading out to Rome to soak up the history and sights of the city, I couldn't help but do a quick google search for a fabric shop I could visit while on my travels - hey, it's normal for fabric obsessed people like us, right!? My online quest brought me to a place called Fratelli Bassetti Tessuti, so I wrote down the address and en route for our day trip to the Vatican City we found it! and yep, it was certainly well worth the visit!! 

The place was PACKED! with fabric, I couldn't even take in how much was there! We walked through what felt like endless rooms of fabric with bolts and rolls of fabric packed from the floor to the ceiling - double height ceilings ok! Everything from a *room* of shirting fabrics, to another *room* for wools, suiting fabrics, cottons, stretch, silk, beautiful wedding lace - you name it they had it! They also carried designer fabrics such as Versace and Roberto Cavalli to name a couple, they looked amazing! It was such an interesting place to people watch too! all sorts of people eyeing up the fabric for their next tailoring project. 

After shopping with my jaw to the ground for about fifteen minutes, the lights went out and we were hurried out to pay (if you look at the clock in the picture above you will notice it was lunchtime, ha! oh and that's me in the pic too!). I had to go through a series of kiosks like a drive-through to pay for my fabric - which was of course great fun when you don't speak Italian, and they don't speak english!

I eventually came away with a fun floral cotton that I found nestled away in a small corner by the window; that now as I'm writing this post - I have forgotten to photograph it! another time ;) it's quite 1960's reminiscent (probably is from the 60's!?). I plan to turn it into a dress at some point to forever remind me of my beautiful time in Rome :)

Jessie, xo

P.S. don't forget to enter my free fabric bundle giveaway here, in celebration for my Sew and Quilt fabric shop opening, the competition closes tonight!

Chevron Patchwork Pillow Tutorial

Hi everyone! Today I'm going to share with you a tutorial to make this chevron patchwork pillow, using the half square triangle method. I made this cushion for my friends birthday, and she loved it! So I'm sure you will too, it's also super simple to make. I used a collection of fabrics from Darleene Zimmerman's Mother's Melodies and Aunt Grace Keepsakes collections. The background fabric is Kona Pearl Pink, which is a beautiful pastel pink colour - all of which is of course available in my new quilting fabric shop Sew and Quilt! ;)

Materials

x18 squares 3 7/8" in assorted prints

x18 squares 3 7/8" in solid fabric

x2 back panels 18" x 14"

x1 18" x 18" piece of wadding (if choosing to quilt the pillow)

x1 18" x 18" piece of muslin or scrap backing (if choosing to quilt the pillow)

1. Cut your squares for the pillow top; 18 in printed fabric and 18 in solid colour. Separate into piles.

2. Now we are going to make our half-squares triangles. Firstly, lay a printed fabric, and solid fabric right-sides together. Line up your ruler and mark a light pencil line through the diagonal. Now sew a 1/4" seam allowance from both sides of the diagonal line, I recommend using a 1/4" sewing foot for true accuracy. 

3. Cut your square in half to create two half square triangles!

4. Press your seams open to allow the blocks to lay flat. Trim your HST's if necessary using a rotary cutter to measure 3 1/2" and place into piles for easy choosing.

5. Lay your design out following a simple zig-zag chevron pattern. I avoided having different printed fabrics next to each other, but you can change it up how you wish!

6. Once you have decided on your layout you can start sewing it together. Begin by sewing it row by row, once these are done you can sew them together to create your pillow top. 

7. If you wish to quilt your pillow, simply lay your muslin or scrap-backing fabric (remember you don't see this part) with your wadding and pillow top together in a sandwich as shown. I should advise you to baste, but I didn't bother with this! eek, I'm bad! So I just used my curved quilting pins to hold in place. 

8. I used a straight line quilting effect for this, which I think looks really effective, but you can quilt however you'd like!

9. Trim the excess wadding and backing fabric to square up your pillow top.

10. To make the envelope back, fold over the edges of the two back panels by 2" and sew. With right sides together place your backing panels on top of the pillow top, pin in place and sew 1/4" from edge. If you need more help with this part, I have a simple envelope closure pillow tutorial for you to follow in closer detail.

I hope you enjoy your new pillows! if you have any questions, please ask away :) and if you haven't already, don't forget to enter my fabric giveaway in celebration for the launch of my new shop!

Sew and Quilt Launch! & Fabric Giveaway!!

Hi friends! I wanted to let you all know my new online quilting fabric shop Sew and Quilt is now officially open!! It's been a long time in the making and it's been quite a roller-coaster to get this far, but I'm super proud of it and I hope you will all enjoy shopping here soon. 

Sew and Quilt is a fabric shop for all quilters and crafters who appreciate beautiful fabrics! I have a small selection to start, but I already have others on order including a large order of Pam Kitty Love collection!! I'm so excited for that to arrive! I hoping to build up my selection of 1930's reproduction prints, as I felt there wasn't a wide variety of these prints available online in the UK when I decided to set up Sew and Quilt. I also have the stunning Bloomsbury Gardens collection by Liberty in the pastel colour-way in stock, I'm dying to cut into these! They have the most gorgeous feel to them, so soft. 

I also have a great selection of Christmas prints in stock such as Cherry Christmas by Aneela Hoey, Dear Mr Claus collection by Moda, as well as some sweet scandinavian themed Christmas fabric I managed to source from the UK. So you will see lots of fun projects I'll be creating with these over the coming festive season. 
   So I've decided to start the shop with a celebration by giving away this lovely stack of six Christmas printed fat quarters to one very lucky reader!

All you have to do to win this bundle of joy is do one of the following, or more! for additional chances of winning:

1. Visit Sew and Quilt, and comment on this blog post telling me what's your favourite fabric in the shop!

2. Become a follower of this blog and comment on this blog post to let me know.

3. 'LIKE' my Sew and Quilt Facebook page and comment on this blog post to let me know.

4. Tweet about my Sew and Quilt store and comment on this blog post to let me know.

The competition is open until Monday 15th October, and the winner will be chosen on Tuesday 16th October at random.

OK, now time for my Oscar winning thank you's!
   I couldn't have even started all of this without the help of Robin, my now - fiancé (as of last week!! - he proposed in Rome, so perfect!). He's been doing all the figures for me and keeping me in check when I've wanted to go overboard with the buying! I also want to say a HUGE thank you to my friend Alastair Sopp, a super talented photographer / designer  - who created the website for me, as well as my logo etc. He's a clever boy ;)

I hope you all enjoy shopping! xoxo

Hi! from Italy!

I hope you all had a great weekend everyone? I'm sending you this blog post all the way from Italy today! We've left rainy England and hopped on a plane to Rome as a very special early birthday treat from Robin, the boy done good ;) 

         

I just wanted to send out this quick post with some new projects I've been up to recently for the soon to be lauched, Sew & Quilt shop (if you missed my big announcement last week, you can read more about it here). Just a sneaky peek for now, mind you ;) full reveal coming next week! Right, I've got more piazza's to be milling about in! 

Ciao for now!! Jessie, xo