Hygge House Pillow

Have you heard about hygge? It is a Danish word that roughly translates as staying in, being cosy and relaxed, and hanging out with friends and family. It's been all over the media these last few months.

I first heard it referred to on Radio 4 back in July/August and wondered whether I could use it as a theme for a patchwork project for a magazine.

Of course, because of the extensive lead times with magazines it has taken till now for the project to be published! But this one also ties in nicely for Valentine's Day next week so that's handy.

You can find it in issue 19 of Today's Quilter magazine. Love that tulip cover quilt!

Here is the beautifully styled photo from the magazine.

And here are some lovely photos taken by my hubby in front of his Tiny House, which seemed very appropriate!

 But how do you go about designing a hygge inspired patchwork project?

Well first of all it had to have a Scandi feel and also it had to feel 'cosy' so I chose warm reds and natural linens, and then trimmed with pom-poms for some extra 'snuggliness'.

To represent the staying in and being cosy further, I chose to depict a typical Scandinavian 'folk' house (within the limitations of patchwork) in  traditional 'Swedish Red' (as is our Tiny House).

And to be even more Scandi I added some Scandinavian style embroidery, in red, on to a dotty linen. 

The backing (and house fabric) is a red patterned linen that I had left over from my Dala Horse. The three wooden buttons add a little more natural texture.

The patchwork roof makes the house a little more challenging (in a good way).

The last detail is the embroidered heart on the door (a typical detail from Scandinavian folk art and furniture) and a reminder of all the love inside your home, and in the world at large (if you only look for it!).

New Patterns and New Classes!

I have had a VERY busy weekend! In fact I have had a very busy couple of months! And tomorrow I will be lying beside a pool in the sun as I am off on my hols to Tenerife!! I can't wait!

But before I go, I just have time to tell you about our new pattern release and our new 2017 prospectus!

Karen, Lynne and I have just released three new patterns under our The Thread House brand. Above is Karen's Painted Village quilt, which I absolutely love! It's my favourite of Karen's TTH quilts so far. 

Then there is Lynne's Cube Quilt. As usual with Lynne you get fantastic value with two versions of the same pattern, the new one above or the original version below - both absolutely stunning!

And then there is my Starlight's Quilt. I posted about this here, and if you would like to buy any of our patterns new or old, please visit our payhip store, or you can also find us on Etsy or Craftsy.

The Starlight's Quilt isn't only a new pattern, it is also a new myBearpaw evening course!

We launched our 2017 Prospectus this weekend with 8 new classes! And I thought it would be good to have a look at them all in more details here.

These cute little amigurumi critters below were made by my colleague Jane Wilson (who is taking over teaching some of my classes now). Jane will be showing you how to use simple double crochet to create adorable little friends. She designed that cat herself, look at that cute outfit!

Do you remember my Embellishing Patchwork Tech piece for Love Patchwork and Quilting earlier this year? Some of my regular students have been hassling me to turn this into a class so it will now become a 5 week evening course starting in January.

Another new make (as of two days ago!) this sweet flower taggy (or maybe sunshine taggy? I'm still in two minds) is a great beginner project for new machine sewers.

My Christmas Patchwork Dresden Centrepiece workshop went so well this term that I have made an all year round version (which is now a lovely cushion, with no photo as yet - it was all a bit last minute as usual!). As Nicky said on IG this is very much a 'pimp my Dresden' project, what with patchwork, a porthole ring and priarie point edges!

The centre was a sad neglected class sample from a very old embellishment workshop that I found at the bottom of a basket. It works perfectly with the Hotel Frederiksted (by Jennifer Paganelli) Dresden fabric. Using stuff up which makes me so happy!!

I think the quilt of mine that made the most impact this year was definitely my New York Beauty Parade which featured in Today's Quilter. So I am offering this as a one day workshop too.

My new applique class is yet another TQ project. We will be learning needle-turn applique by making my Spring Garland cushion.

Next term I will offer my Summer Garland cushion, and in the Autumn the Autumn Garland cushion (you are getting the idea now!), so that eventually you can make all four.

Our bag making tutor Naomi Crowley will be teaching a new bag, the Boston Bag, which looks like a cute diddy weekender bag!

Lastly I will be teaching my new Passionflower embroidery (see top of the page) over three half days (one in Jan, one in Feb and one in March). I have tried to incorporate a lot of crewel work type stitches such as coral, buttonhole, long and short, plus some laid work. I am really in love with this piece, it turned out even better than I expected (but I was up till 1am for a couple of evenings last week to get it finished in time!).

So that's a wee run down of our new classes but there are plenty more on offer, check the whole lot out here, and hopefully I will see you in the New Year!

Meanwhile normal service will resume here in a week or so...

A Journey of Some Scraps

I'm not the sort of quilter who keeps every last little scrap, in fact I'm pretty brutal with the sizes of scraps I throw away (otherwise I would be drowning in them even more than I actually am!), but when I finished making this 3D Improv Dresden block the fabrics were so pretty and looked so good together that I couldn't bear to bin them.

The block was made as a class sample for my Stitch Gathering workshop in September and I used mainly fabrics from our goody bag, including beautiful Cloud 9, Michael Miller and Lotta Jansdotta fabrics. The background is from Euclid, the gorgeous range of printed Essex linen designed by Carolyn Friedlander.

I was feeling a little frazzled and over stimulated the day after the Stitch Gathering, so I turned my phone off and went to my sewing room for a little relaxing play time.

First of all I sewed the big scraps together, these were the off-cuts from the strips. I made a nice scrappy panel. Then I sewed the little scraps together, these were off-cuts from the Dresden wedges and I had enough to make two pieces, one big and one small, which I bordered with strips of Euclid.

We were very lucky to have Carina Envoldsen-Harris visit us to teach workshops at both myBearpaw Studio and the Stitch Gathering and I was so inspired by her work. Carina is a fabulous embroiderer with a few excellent books of motifs to her name. She taught a class about embellishing patchwork with her beautiful embroidered flowers. So I decided to have a go.

I've been a bit obsessed by teasels recently, there is big patch of them that I can see from my sewing room window and I love their shape and their 'spikyness'.  So I drew up a design and (because I had left the lead to my light box at the shop) free-hand drew it on to the scrappy panel.

I then spent some lovely relaxing hours embroidering the teasels.

I totally love the way this turned out! 

I had intended all along to turn it into a zippy pouch but put it aside until my next workshop which was a week or so ago. 

I used it as my class sample (loving the fact that the fabric had started off as another class sample!) and made this rather fetching pouch using the other scrappy panel for the back.

I may not have mentioned it yet but I am going to QuiltCon in Savannah next year and this little beauty will be coming with me so I can show it off in the workshops I am taking!

But what about that other scrappy panel I mentioned? The small one? Yes I still had a little more life to squeeze out of those scraps yet!

This one got the matchstick quilting treatment with a variegated pink Aurifil 50, together with a few rows of hand quilting with DMC Perle 8.

And then it became a cute little needlebook!

Which of course goes perfectly with my pouch (those QuiltCon ladies are going to be SO impressed!).

So there you go, a journey of some scraps. Instead of binning them I turned them into two (excuse my bragging) beautiful handmade items and had lots of fun along the way!

So next time you go to bin your little scraps - think again!

Linking up with Scraptastic Tuesdays!

Embellishing Patchwork

I felt very honoured to be asked to take over the Technical Feature in Love Patchwork and Quilting for this issue. 

Sarah their Tech Editor is on maternity leave so they invited some 'guests' to fill the gap and asked me to do a feature on embellishing quilts, which or course is right up my street!

This feature needs to include not only the techniques but full instructions to make a project with them. I decided on this wonky curve mini after making this little quilt above in the Blueberry Park swap on Instagram earlier this year. 

I've just realised I never actually shared the finished quilt on the blog, so here it is!

The tech feature project is a bit of a mash up between that mini and this one above that I made for my Scrappy Improv workshop and which I finished with a range of embroidery stitches alongside the hand quilting.

The project includes full instructions to achieve your wonky curves, and then I show you how to do seed, chain, fly, cross and blanket stitch, as well as French knots. We also look at using beads and buttons to embellish your quilt and adding a little felt applique too. 

So lots of embellishment to choose from then!! As usual I used DMC perle cotton #8 or #12 throughout. The border fabric is a charcoal crosshatch from Architextures by Carolyn Friedlander.

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This was such a fun project to do and I love the result (even though my husband says it looks a bit like a scary eye!). The whole thing is very 'me'!

Issue 36 of LPQ is packed with amazing projects as usual including that absolutely stunning Ombre cover quilt by Emily Dennis, which I just can't take my eyes off!

Sunshine Applique

We've had some funny old weather in the UK these past few weeks, even for us! Today it's sunshine and showers all the way.

So hears a nice 'sunshine' slogan and a fun project! 

Last year I made a small wall hanging to go with this House Quilt for Love Patchwork and Quilting magazine. It said Home Sweet Home, the letters of HOME were appliqued and SWEET was embroidered.

Alice, the LPQ editor, asked me to do something similar but weather themed. I searched for various weather related slogans that could work and decided on 'Some days you just have to make your own sunshine'. I like an uplifting slogan!

The project is in the latest issue of the mag, number 34 which was out last week.

Usually I take some photos of my finished items before they get sent off, but as it was made during a VERY dark January all I have are some sneak peeks I took for instagram.

This project really inspired my new class Text Embroidery (still places left on this!). I've re-discovered my love of adding writing to things I make, it's a double whammy of communication and story telling!

Regular readers will know how much I love hand applique and also how much I love using up my class samples!

I've just finished four days of workshops at the first Knitting and Stitching Show in Edinburgh! I had such a lovely time re-connecting with old pals and meeting new ones! Thanks to everyone who stopped by to say hello to me!

I taught a workshop to make these mini yo-yo flower hoops.

I now have 6 of these. I've decided to take them out of the hoops, sew them together and make them into class samples for my Zippy Pouch class this Saturday (also places left on this one!!)!

I'm doing the same with samples from my Scrappy Improv workshop a week ago.

And I  am sure that there are more than a few of you out there that understand how happy it makes me to turn samples from one class into samples for another!!

Text Embroidery and some more Matchstick Quilting

I've been busy launching our new myBearpaw prospectus over the last week. These are my workshops and evening courses from mid April till mid June. There are 5 new classes, four of them are for quilts and projects that I have made previously like this House Quilt and the Snowball Craft Bag. But I did make one sample for a new class - the text embroidery hoop above.

The idea is to learn some basic outline and filler stitches while embroidering your favourite slogan or just playing around with letters and text. 

I am very happy with this piece above and am already working on at least one more. I will try to publish some patterns of these soon too. The quote is by David Bowie. I am still pretty heart broken about his untimely passing so this was a nice way of sewing a personal tribute.

If you'd like to join me for this class you can check out the details here, and view the whole prospectus here.

Last weekend I taught my Dishes Quilt class for the first time. I made some extra blocks as class samples using Jennifer Paganelli's stunning upcoming collection 'Color Brigade' (which she has very kindly sent me for a commission). 

I made these into two panels and then finished them with matchstick and hand quilting as I'd done with the original Dishes Wallhanging below

This time I used Manchester Linen in Pepper (instead of Stone) and so managed to use my original test block (made with Jen's earlier line 'Circa') in one of the panels. The 'shelf fabric' is from the amazing 'Carkai' line by Carolyn Friedlander.

I turned the two panels into this pretty tote bag! The lining is by Heather Bailey, a fabric we had in our sale, but then I realised I loved it too much to sell it and took the rest of the bolt home with me!!

Despite being somewhat in love with this bag I am actually giving it away! 

Apologies right now for those of you not on Instagram as you won't be able to take part in this giveaway (but hopefully you have still enjoyed looking at the pretty bag!).

I just passed 5000 followers on IG and to celebrate and as a thank you I am giving away the bag, a fat eighth bundle (24 fabric) of the complete new Joel Dewberry collection 'Wander' (not out for a few months actually - another kind donation from the lovely folks at Coats UK!), plus...

...I will also be knitting a pair of socks for one lucky winner!! 

I recently took a ball of our new Arne and Carlos sock yarn (by Regia) for a spin and made this pair for my son. I may have mentioned before that sock knitting is crazily addictive and now I just want to make more! But I am running out of people to make them for - hence my very generous giveaway!

If you do have an IG account why not pop over and enter - you have till tomorrow evening?!

Or if you don't already then maybe you should consider joining? There is so much fun and inspiration to be found over there!!