A couple weeks ago, The Threadhouse, a UK Retreat and Pattern company, offered a free Taster’s Choice weekend as part of the launch of their online programs for this year. They are offering three units over the course of the year—Using Scraps, Color (or actually that would be Colour), and Repurposing/Recycling Fabrics.

There were a number of tutorials offered over the weekend. I chose to do four projects The supplies didn’t arrive in time for one of them (still waiting!) so that will appear at some later point.

Karen Lewis, maybe best known for her hand screen printed fabrics and the commercially printed Blueberry Park from Kaufman Fabrics, gave a tutorial on making a fold-over pouch. She had a panel of flying geese in her version but mentioned that this could also be a good use for “orphan blocks”—those left-over blocks from a quilt when too many got made, or practice blocks for a project. I have a small bin full of orphan blocks. Brilliant…this suggestion made my day. Above are 2 of my orphan block fold over pouches. Below you can see the whole blocks for one of them unfolded.

Lynne Goldsworthy sells “Super Speedy” templates for making 8 perfect half-square triangles (HST) at the same time. (Her website is under constructions but check out the beautiful Schoolhouse Quilt pattern she also has available at the moment).

For the Threadhouse weekend, she offered a pincushion project using her 1 inch square half square triangle templates. She made her samples out of Liberty Lawn which is a perfect choice for these tiny blocks. Her HSQ template is amazing…my fabric choice, not so much! I knew I needed a little print. But little was too big—it needed to be tiny. My origami storks looked great next to the red solid but they didn’t work in these tiny blocks. So I outlined the star design I chose with Shashiko thread to give the pattern a little bit of definition. Not great, but hey, it’s pincushion! And now I know how awesome her printed HST templates are!

The third project, offered by Jo Avery, was a felt floral broach which I made into a name tag. Because of my peg doll projects I have a lovely stash of wool felt. So this project was right up my alley. What wasn’t, was embroidering my name! I’ve always struggled with that—there are just too many curves in the letters. This time I got tripped up on the D. I drew the letter with a vanishing fabric marker but it didn’t translate into thread as I hoped. Oh well, it’s “organic” and “homemade”… aren’t those supposed to be prized assets?

Do check out Jo’s website in the link above, especially the patterns she has for sale.

I have to say, all of the instructors comments on the weekend’s Show and Tell page were positive, appreciative, and kind. I found that so encouraging and refreshing. None of them said “That’s great, but…”

Anyhow, I had a great weekend sewing in-between dog-walking and doing errands.