Back in the summer of 2021 I launched a series of block designs in collaboration with Crafter’s Companion. I wrote all about it here. These were packs of die sets that worked with their Gemini die cutting machines. Since then we have been planning a further collaboration to produce template sets for applique designs. It’s taken a long time but they are finally here! Working together we created 3 new versions of classic applique designs from my back catalogue. I updated and improved these designs and made them work with their template sets. I actually made my sample pieces nearly 2 years ago ..read more

The Dream Bird patterns have finally flown into view and can now be purchased as PDFs from my website here! Four years ago I launched my first PDF patterns with my first 4 bird applique patterns. Somehow these real life birds have now evolved into imaginary ‘dream birds’! I first started creating these back in September with Dovely above. I was just playing around really. Following on from my initial experiments with organic applique with embroidery (detailed in this post) I began creating dream flowers and made a fabric book with them. They also inspired my new Aurifil collection (drea ..read more

It’s that odd time of year between Christmas and New Year when time seems to be more elastic and when I traditionally post a review of all the quilts I’ve made in the last 12 months. Every year my quilt total gets less and less! In many ways I think this is a good thing. A few years back I made a conscious decision to make less quilts, to make quilts more sustainably and to slow down my crafting with much more hand work.  I’ve definitely achieved that this year with only 6 finished quilts. 3 of these quilts were made to use up class samples (Poplars, Fruit Salad and Eye Catcher) and one ..read more

Before I had even finished the recent 100 Days of Organic Applique project I was already planning something very similar. In fact I had already created the first ‘page’ for a new book of Organic Applique with Embroidery. And now the Dream Flowers fabric book is complete and ready to share!  Here is the first page or block I stitched a few months back as a starting point for Dream Flowers. At the time I was discussing a new thread box with Aurifil. I wanted to produce a mixed weight collection which included the threads I use for my Organic Applique with Embroidery. I also wanted a more ..read more

After a 100 days of stitching little 4″ studies I have completed my first ever 100 Day Project and have turned them all into a big fat fabric book! I first wrote about this project in this post when I was about 3 weeks in so it tells you a lot about how I started and what I was planning. I’m so pleased I kept going and finished the full 100 days! TBH it wasn’t hard to keep going as it was such a fun thing to do, but it did end up being way more time consuming than I planned as most of the blocks took at least an hour to complete.  I just kept getting more and more elaborate with the embr ..read more

At the beginning of the year I told you all about my new online teaching academy which I am hosting along with my two pals Karen and Lynne, better known collectively as The Thread House. You can read the post here. After a very successful launch with a free taster weekend the academy is now in full swing but I was last to get a teaching slot so I have been waiting patiently while Lynne and the Karen took a month to teach their classes. Finally, my first class went live last Monday! Intertwined Improv Flowers is a new version of the Improv Flowers class I have been teaching for years. Last ye ..read more

I few weeks back I started this year’s The 100 Day Project. I have been planning to join in for the last few years but never got my act together in time. This is the 10th anniversary and I had an idea ready to go so I jumped in. And I am having so much fun! For those of you unfamiliar with this concept The 100 Day Project is a free, global art project. Every year, thousands of people all around the world commit to 100 days of exploring their creativity. Anyone can join. The idea is simple: choose a project, do it every day for 100 days, and share your process on Instagram with the hashta ..read more

I’m a little later than usual for my annual ‘quilts of the year’ round-up post so this one will also include exciting news for 2023. A restrained amount of quilts for me in 2022 which include 4 charity quilts and 3 quilts made for The Thread House Club BOMs (one of which was also a charity quilt).  The top row are orphan block charity quilts that I made at the beginning of the year. The Flower Pot Tumbler quilt was made for Today’s Quilter and both Watermelon Eyelashes and Intertwined were mainly made to use up my class samples. However this strategy seems to have worked well for me with ..read more

My teaching travelling trips have now slowed down (after a big post-covid catch up) and I am enjoying being at home this summer and getting on with some new projects. Some of which are still too secret to share much about, but read on for a sneak peek or two… One thing I can shout about right now is the new Thread House Club BOM for 2022/23! Karen, Lynne and I are so thrilled with this year’s BOM quilt design, Summer Breeze! This will be our third Club BOM and it’s turned into a wonderful and rewarding online community with friends all over the world. I’m now busy making my version of the qu ..read more

Today I’m delighted to share a new finished quilt! This is Intertwined and it’s made from all my Improv Flowers Workshop class samples, plus some extra details. I’ve been teaching this class since 2017 when it was a workshop choice at that year’s Stitch Gathering retreat. The initial spark was a class I took with Anna Maria Horner at QuiltCon in 2015. That became my Improv Meadow quilt as seen in this post.  I took some simplified elements from this and turned it into a workshop where we made three improv flowers and added some of my tendrils technique. I’ve taught this many times sinc ..read more