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Old friends return and new ones are made!

 

Lynne has returned!!

Guess who’s back!! We are so excited to welcome our friend and quilting legend Lynne Goldsworthy back into the fold after a 3 year absense! Yes Lynne has decided it’s time to rejoin The Thread House and our original gang is finally reunited!


pre-covid photo 😉

To celebrate we are hosting a month long photo challenge over 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

Download pdf schedule here

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

RAFFLE

A HUGE thanks to everyone that took part in our latest charity raffle. We rasied £650 for Refuge!!

Look out for another of these coming very soon with the class samples from our second Virtual Retreat this weekend. News of our third Virtual Retreat coming soon too!!

Hoping you are all staying safe and well

Karen, Jo and Lynne xx

New Online Classes and Virtual Retreats coming soon!

Online Classes

We have been working away since January to produce a number of The Thread House online classes. We’ve already filmed 4 with plans to film another 4 at the beginning of April. However the corona virus pandemic has overtaken our plans. And now, more than ever, we all need these online classes! We hope they will help keep a nation of crafters going and we plan to launch the first 4 very soon, hopefully within the next couple of weeks.

We wanted these to be not only informative and inspiring but also fun, and with a flavour of our retreats. So we filmed these together, one of us teaching and the other watching and sometimes taking part. As you can imagine there’s plenty of banter and giggles! But we also pass on many skills and much wisdom.

The first four classes will be Dandelion Clock Block and Tiny Improv Streetscape from Jo, and Screen Printing and HST Tips and Tricks from Karen. We’ll send more info as soon as these are ready to purchase.

We’re so excited to share these with you!


Our First Virtual Retreat

Obviously things have been moving very fast in the last few days and we are all running to catch up. But we’ve had a few ideas up our sleeves that we think are perfect for our changed circumstances. We’ve been planning to launch Virtual Retreats for a while now and after the events of this week we’ve decided now is the perfect time to start!

Our first Virtual retreat will take place over the weekend of 18th and 19th of April. We’ll both be on hand throughout both days live broadcasting from home and sharing pre-recorded tutorial videos for two special projects.  Tickets will cost £25 and will be available to buy next Friday 27th through our Big Cartel store.  More info on the projects we’ll be making and how everything will work will be available from next Monday. Please bear with us while we put together a fun and educational package for you! We hope that community events like this will be a way for us to not just survive the next few months but also thrive!

The Thread House Summer Retreat 2019 Report Post

Written by Jo and first published on her myBearpaw blog

Last weekend I headed down to Yorkshire for the first ever Thread House Summer Retreat.

This was held at the wonderful High Trenhouse centre which is set in the most amazing countryside, close to Malham Tarn.

As I said to the slightly shaken attendees, who arrived after quite an alarming drive up steep slopes, hairpin bends and across miles of moors, that we take our retreating very seriously at the Thread House! We certainly were getting away from it all at this location!

25 of us arrived on the Friday afternoon and were greeted with tea/coffee and amazing home baked flap jacks.

After a relaxed meet and greet session and the handing out of goody bags we settled ourselves in to two separate sewing spaces.  Karen and I had divided everyone in to two groups and rather than call them group A and group B we decided to have a little fun and call the groups ‘Log Cabins’ and ‘Flying Geese’, however this only served to confuse some people (including Karen!) who thought these were the classes they would be attending and wanted to know the supplies lists!

Let’ s have a look at the amazing goody bag!

We tried to include items that would be especially useful for the classes offered. So we had a rotary cutter from Fiskars, scissors from Warm Crochet, 80wt thread from Aurifil, a Michael Miller FQ and a June Tailor mini ruler and pattern from EQS and a wadding sample piece from Hobbs Batting!

Karen and I also included a couple of things, I put in that cute Fat 16th stack of ‘Make a Mark’ fabrics and a packet of my favourite applique needles, Millwards Straw/Milliners number 10. Karen included 2 FQs and that awesome exclusive screen printed tote bag that she printed for everyone!

And if that wasn’t enough Grace from Beyond Measure gave her own lovely drawstring bag full of woollen fabrics, a leather purse kit and Made in Sheffield embroidery scissors!

Thanks so much to all our sponsors!!

After a delicious three course dinner (all the food all weekend was fantastic!) we held our pin cushion swap. And here they all are – such ingenious, beautiful, colourful creations!

Karen and I swapped with each other, and you can probably guess looking at the photos which one I made and which one Karen made! I used this excellent tutorial by Sarah Ashford on the Polka Dot Chair blog to make my Moda Grunge pocket pinnie on the left. I absolutely love my chunky Wabi Sabi mini brick which is filled with crushed walnut shells 🙂   Thanks Karen!


Some of us even managed a lovely country walk after dinner! Here we are looking very colourful. From left to right: Nicky, Alison, me, Bridget, Jane (my sister!) and Di, with Karen on photographer duties.

Saturday was teaching day with classes starting at 10 (giving us time for a lovely leisurely breakfast). Karen taught her FPP Teacup block to the Log Cabins and I taught my applique flowers to the Flying Geese. In the afternoon we swapped around.

Here’s a reminder of the combined block, you can read more about it here.

At  lunchtime the amazing Beyond Measure came and set up a pop-up shop! I absolutely love everything Grace sells and so a few pennies were spent be myself (and everyone else as her stock is irresistible!). Plus Karen and I also brought pop-up shops which we set up in adjoining rooms to Grace (the space at the centre worked so perfectly for these little extra attractions). Unfortunately I forgot to take any photos of the shops!

However I do have something shopping related to share as we launched a special Aurifil Thread House Retreat collection box at the Summer Retreat!

This is a Tailor Made box, something new Aurifil are doing where you can curate your own collection.  This box has everything you need for a weekend retreat (thread wise that is!).

We selected some of our favourite Go To threads for this box. It includes the following:

50wt – 2784 and 2311 –  off white and navy, perfect for every piecing option
40wt – 4670 – our favourite variegated in grey
12wt cotton – 4668 – pretty variegated red for hand quilting
12wt wool – 8965 – exquisite Lana Wool in pickle

All in it’s own cute box! These cost £16 and are available to buy from our store here, whether you are coming to one of our retreats or not!  They are limited edition though so get one while you can.

I will also have them in stock at our Edinburgh store from Wednesday.

The weather was pretty perfect for the whole weekend, overcast but warm and dry (you don’t want to be in sewing when it is too sunny!), and plenty of tea and coffee breaks were taken outside at the various picnic table spaces.

After dinner on Saturday evening we had a lovely Show and Tell session, this is just an edited selection as I couldn’t fit in all the wonderful quilts.   Karen started everybody off with her stunning new quilt Stars Abound, pattern available here.

And her finished Courthouse Steps BOM from Love Patchwork and Quilting magazine (on the left below).

It was so lovely to have my sister Jane at the retreat. She did come to a couple of the first Stitch Gathering retreats but this is the first time she has attended one of the weekend Thread House events.

Jane brought a few quilts along to show including her finished Up and Away SAL quilt, following on from Sarah’s recent IG sew along.

Bridget brought along this incredible quilt that she created for her step daughter. This is quite a special quilt for me as it contains the Suitcase pattern from my Vintage Home BOM quilt from Todays’ Quilter!

Sara is a regular at our retreats and brought along this lovely piece that she had made for a QAL with another retreat regular The Crafty Nomad.

Sara’s other quilt is this beautiful snowball design that was made as a group quilt during the recent exhibition of Siblings Together quilts.

On Sunday Jenni and Kay of Jenni Smith Studios came along to film some interviews for their wonderful Just One Quilt project. They filmed 4 in total including Bridget, with her lovely quilt above and Sara, who talked about the Siblings Together Quilt Drive. Jenni has this one up on the website already and you can enjoy watching it here (and you will enjoy it as Sara is so lovely and engaging!).

Sunday was also for ‘free sewing time’ with some retreaters working on long running projects like Di’s amazing Jen Kingwell quilt (sorry pattern name escapes me!).

Others carried on with their Flower Teacup blocks and this is how far they all got by the home time! Applique is slow! However in the week since we got back I have been sent quite a few photos of gorgeous finished blocks. And don’t our lovely retreaters look proud as punch holding up their wee blocks?!

We had time for one last photo of us all together (taken by Jenni and don’t ask why Karen and I are standing so weirdly -I think we were trying not to block those behind!!) before it was time to take that (slightly scary) road home again!

What a fabulous, energising, creative and joyful weekend! Thanks so much to everyone at High Trenhouse – who really couldn’t do enough for us – and to everyone that came along and joined in so wholeheartedly.

Look out for news on next year’s summer retreat in December. Meanwhile you can still nab one of the last places left for our winter retreat 2020 here!

 

Winter Retreat Report Post

(This post first appeared on Jo’s myBearpaw blog)

Last weekend I hosted the third Thread House Winter Retreat alongside my dear friend and partner Karen Lewis.

This is a residential weekend of sewing, fun and friendship held in the middle of beautiful countryside near Bristol, England. You can visit the retreat page on our website here and read about last year’s retreat here, and our first retreat here.

The retreat started as usual on the Friday afternoon with a session of meet and greet which also included a name tag swap and the giving out of our wonderful goody bags! Our sponsors came up trumps this year with all this fabulous booty!

This included fabrics from Moda, Art Gallery, Karen Lewis Textiles and a whole Dream Big panel from Hoffman fabrics!  There was thread from Aurifil (and a tote bag) and Mettler, a copy of Love Patchwork and Quilting mag, a Sew Tites magnet, Sew Fine Thread Gloss and an amazing Yo Yo Magnifier from the Daylight Company!  Photo courtesy of Kerry Green.

And speaking of Kerry here she is on the right, teaching her Dresden Plate class.  We had two guest tutors this year Kerry and Sari Thomas, also known as Sariditty  (Sari, rhymes with cherry) who came all the way from the USA to teach with us! This is her FPP geese workshop on the right.

I taught my EPP Mini Sea Urchin workshop on Friday afternoon. Here’s my class looking pretty happy!

We were super lucky this year to secure a sponsorship from Bernina to supply machines for the retreat. Most people bring their own but we always need a few extra for those flying from further away (this year we had folks from USA, Denmark and Germany!).

These beautiful Bernina B 335 machines came straight out of the box and were wonderful to use! And not only that but Bernina also provided a Q24 long arm quilting machine for us to play with!

And the gorgeous Sari knew exactly how to use it and was happy to demo her gorgeous quilting on Friday night.


With much excitement we also swapped our mug rugs on Friday night, and even I took part swapping with the lovely Kerry.

I think you can guess here which one I made and which one I received!

It’s ages since I’ve swapped anything and I completely forgot about ‘extras’! Kerry didn’t though and gave me all those fabby extras (there was chocolate too but that didn’t survive the journey home!). That little button magnet was made by a fellow Retreater Sara, who kindly made these during the retreat for anyone who asked!

The Mug Rugs were all so amazing that we had to get them together for a little exhibition, check out the photo at the top of the page to see them all.

Saturday brought more classes like Karen’s fabric printing classes on the left. At lunch break it was time for the Eternal Maker’s pop-up shop! Anna brings this over every year and it’s extremely popular.

The other lovely surprise we provided this year was a visit by a proper sew-lebrity – the uber talented Nicholas Ball, aka Quilts from the Attic! Nick works for Bernina and was able to give amazing demos and help everyone have a go on the Q24. Thanks so much for coming over Nick!

In the afternoon I taught my Freehand Curves Landscape class and discovered that sticking my class samples to a window gives an impression of stained glass. Somebody called this a ‘Church of Quilts’ on IG!

My hard working students did so well in this class! This technique can be a bit of a brain ache but I think they all enjoyed it in the end and just look at some of the amazing results…

Special congrats to Jo who went a little off piste and created a yacht sailing on the sea with a large sun! Fabulous work Jo!

On Saturday night my favourite bit of the whole weekend takes place – the Lucky Dip! This is like a raffle but EVERYONE gets a prize! Again our wonderful sponsors were so generous and much excitement occurred when a big prize went to a lucky recipient.  This year we remembered to get photos of all the big winners…

Clockwise from top left: Robert Kaufman, Daylight Company USA, Oakshott and Aurifil.  Thanks you so much to all our super Sponsors!

Next up was Show and Tell (the excitement never ends!) and this year we had so many stunning quilts, including many for Siblings Together, that I’ve put a selection in a mosaic (or we’d be here all day).

What a talented bunch of quilters!

Sunday morning brought more workshops including my Tiny House Streetscape class. This is one of my favourite classes and a nice easy way to end the retreat. This is the result – a whole Tiny house village complete with Coach House and Alms House!!

Meanwhile Karen was teaching her Hawaiian Applique class and I love this photo of everyone with their colourful panels outside one of the buildings. Thanks so much to all our wonderful Retreaters for coming along and making this such a successful weekend!

Karen and I both feel this was the best retreat yet (we do say this every year but it seems to be true!).  And Monday saw us launch our new Summer Retreat, which will be held in July in the Yorkshire Dales.  A smaller more intimate affair, I was hoping to ‘sell’ you this in this report post, however it sold out within hours of the ticket launch! So sorry about that…

You can read about it here and if you think you might be interested in attending future Thread House Retreats, both Summer and Winter, sign up to our newsletter here.

The 2018 Retreat Medallion Quilt!

For this year’s Thread House Retreat we thought it would be fun to make a quilt using all the workshops and techniques we would be doing over the weekend and offer it as an exclusive pattern to all our Retreaters.   And here is the finished result – the Thread House Retreat Medallion Quilt!

This year’s Thread House Retreat was organised by myself, Jo Avery and Karen Lewis and also starred Kerry Green. It was the second TTH retreat and was held at Folly Farm near Bristol over the last weekend in January. You can read a retreat report post here.

I taught my Improv Flower Workshop so the panel from this class became the centre of  the Medallion. Karen taught ‘Techniques and Tips’ and her Y-seam samples became the first patchwork border alongside Porthole corners which act as a frame around motifs printed in Karen’s two printing classes, Screen and Lino.

The Flying Geese and HSTs were also from Karen’s Techniques and Tips class and form the next patchwork border, along with Kerry’s four different ‘Small Piecing’ blocks as cornerstones.  This left a last wide border for me to cover with leafs using my Tendril technique (which was of course another class).

We used Karen’s new Blueberry Park 3 Fabric throughout (available in stores from May, including myBearpaw!) and it was a real treat to have this to play with before everyone else, and the colours work so well together!

This is only the second quilt that I have finished on my new Janome 9400 sewing machine and I think I really got to grips with it this time.

I think I took a big leap forward in my FMQ with this quilt and I am delighted with the finished result!  I actually think I like the back as much as the front! As always I used Aurifil 50wt for quilting, this time in the variegated green that’s included in my Sherbert Dip thread collection.

We did plan on having the quilt and  pattern ready in time for the retreat but unfortunately life got in the way a bit for both Karen and I (Kerry was her usually efficient self!), and so I only finished the quilting a couple of weeks ago and we finally finished the pattern yesterday!

At present the pattern is only available to this year’s attendees but that may change in the future.

Meanwhile I am happy to announce the date of next year’s retreat!

We have changed the weekend from the last weekend to the one before, 18th – 20th January, but are sticking with the wonderful Folly Farm for the venue.
We have some really exciting things planned for next year.  Tickets will go on sale in June, more details to follow nearer the time. In the meantime mark your calendars!

Check out The Thread House website for details of past events, to view and buy our patterns, and to sign up for our newsletter so that you are the first to hear when the next Retreat tickets go one sale!

The Thread House Retreat 2018 Report

And so our second Thread House Retreat has come and gone!

We returned to Folly Farm in Bristol with another 45 Retreaters from around the world for a jam packed weekend of workshops, fabric, frolicking and fun!

We started things off on Friday afternoon with a fabulous goody bag  (thank you to all our amazing sponsors!) and a name tag swap before heading to one of three workshops. I was teaching Improv Flowers, which was great fun and my students produced some amazing panels, including Cath’s on the left and Jen’s on the right (I love how happy they both look!). Karen taught Screen Printing and Kerry taught her FPP Kitchen Trio blocks at the same time.

The evening was spent swapping fabric (left) and storage pots, and enjoying the delicious food provided at the venue.

On Saturday Karen taught Lino Printing, Kerry Small Piecing and I taught a workshop for Overall FMQ patterns.

We were so pleased that Anna from the Eternal Maker brought along her pop-up shop again on Saturday!

After lunch Karen repeated the Screen Printing, Kerry taught her Japanese-style Cross-back Apron and I taught my Tendrils Project Pouch. And here are a crop of the fantastic finished pouches!

On Saturday nighty we had an epic Lucky Dip with a prize for everyone, some of them huge prizes!  And then we had Show and Tell!!

What a talented bunch of Quilters!

Here’s Mary with her stunning Welsh Blanket Quilt, and on the left Kate’s ‘Long Time Gone’ quilt top, made from a bundle of Karen’s fabric that she won at last year’s Retreat!

 

I was delighted to see this gorgeous version of my Crockery Cupboard Quilt made by Jacqueline. Pattern available here.

Tori came along to the Retreat with her mum Mary. The weekend was Mary’s birthday treat and on Friday night Tori presented her with the most AMAZING quilt! We asked Tori to tell it’s story during Show and Tell…

All the blocks and motifs mean something to Mary and the details are really awe inspiring.  What a fabulous daughter! Which means Mary must be a equally fabulous mum 🙂

We had a little quilt drive slot for Siblings Together. The wonderful Nicky and Jenny who organise the 100 quilts that the charity need every year gave a little talk about this wonderful project and asked for help to form another bee. And it looks like we might just have a Thread House Siblings Together Bee! And Catrin donated this beautiful heart quilt, one of my favourites from the whole night (which is saying something!).

 

Here are the students from Kerrys’ class showing off both sides of their fabulous aprons.

I taught my Tendrils Project Pouch again on Sunday morning, while Karen taught her Technique and Tips class.

I love the pouch that Catrin made from pieces she produced in her other classes. That star block was from Kerry’s class and she used her screen printing here too, and for one of the leaves of her tendrils on the other side.

It’s a TTH Retreat memory pouch!

Talking of Retreat Memory Projects, I was delighted to see this photo from Sue who came along to last year’s Retreat and made this stunning panel from all the pieces she made at all her classes!! She finished this weekend and it was so lovely to see it as we packed up on Sunday afternoon. Beautiful work Sue and I love the quilting!

Lastly I am pleased to present our Thread House Retreat 2018 Medallion Quilt!

Karen and I designed the quilt using our class samples from this year’s workshops and Kerry made extra blocks from her Small Piecing class which we added too. It’s made completely with Karen’s new Blueberry Park 3 collection (out in May!) and is an exclusive pattern for all this year’s Retreaters!

I had hoped to get it quilted and bound before retreat and the pattern finished too. But I got quite ill a week before retreat and I just ran out of time.  I’m really looking forward to quilting this over the next couple of weeks though.

Wow what a fabulous weekend! As Kerry said in an email today, being at retreat makes me feel all ‘warm and fuzzy’. It’s something about sharing a passion with lovely, friendly, generous people, and gettign away from it all to sew, chat and laugh – what could be better!

For info about future Thread House Retreats sign up to our newsletter here.

First Pattern Release

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Our first patterns launch today

Yes the wait is over! You can now buy any of our six The Thread House patterns as a digital download by clicking here.

Jo, Lynne and Karen have designed two quilts each for this first pattern release, offering a wide variety of styles and techniques. At the moment the patterns are only available as a download but paper patterns will be coming soon. Plus look out for some pattern giveaways popping up on our individual blogs and Instagram accounts over the next few days.

We do hope you love our new quilt patterns as much as we do and enjoy making your own version. We’d love to see your finished quilts, and as an extra incentive we are offering a prize (TBA) for the first finished version (quilted and bound) of a TTH pattern posted on Instagram using the hashtag #thethreadhousepatterns

On your marks, get set, go!

Retreat workshops announced!

January seems a long way off but we thought you would like to know the workshops we will be teaching at our first Thread House Retreat.  Jo, Karen and Lynne will be teaching two half day workshops each, details of which are below. As well as these structured periods we will be offering more informal demos during the evenings in a range of subjects. We hope you are as excited about these workshop as we are!

We will send you a form for choosing classes, swap sign ups and giving any other information like dietary requirements by the end of September. We will let you know which classes you have been allocated along with a full supply list for each class by the end of November, leaving you plenty of time to get organised before the event.

workshops

The Thread House Retreat – 27th – 29th January 2017

We promised you more information about our first retreat – it has gone out in our first newsletter and we are now sharing here too.  Tickets for the retreat go on sale at 2pm on Friday 17 June – click here to buy.  The retreat is being held at Folly Farm near Bristol which has a range of accommodation with all rooms being for either 2 or 4 person occupancy. Below are the room options along with per person prices. If you would like to book a whole room for you and a friend/friends then click on the quantity for that room. You can click on one if you are just buying for yourself and would like to be paired with someone.

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Twin en suite    £395
4 Bunk ensuite    £375
Twin 2 bunk sink and/or toilet    £370
4 Bunk, bathroom upstairs    £350

To secure a room you will need to pay 25% deposit. We will require the 75% balance by the end of November.  Your ticket price includes accomodation, all meals, teas and coffees as well as workshops during the weekend and of course a goody bag.  Transport is not included – you will have to make your own way to the venue.

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All workshops will be taught by Jo, Lynne and Karen. We will be offering a choice of classes using a range of techniques and to suit all skill levels. There will be organised swaps to add to the pre-event excitement and to help us get to know each other better during the weekend.

There is a bar at the venue and we will be organising some fun evening activities. However there will also be plenty of space and time for those who would like some quiet, focused sewing or relaxing. We’re also planning to host a pop-up shop by one of the leading UK stores for some or all of the weekend!  Our first retreat will offer camaraderie, learning new skills, and time for yourself, with an emphasis on friendliness and fun. We do hope you will be able to join us!

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You will find more information about the retreat and our patterns on the FAQ page of our website.  All newsletters will be published on our blog for future reference. Please don’t hesitate to get in touch with any questions or thoughts by emailing hello@thethreadhouse.co.uk.