So much to share!

Hello my bloggy friends!!!  You will see as you read that I have been following my own advice to…

I am so excited to share my progress in so many areas of my quilty life!!!  As I am linking this post to my fave Sunday blog to read and enjoy (Kathy’s Quilts HERE) I will start with hand quilting progress on my Batik Hollyhock Garden quilt but there is more hand quilting below too!!!

 I was on the 2nd row a couple weeks ago when I linked up… now I am almost done with the 4th row!  The blue arrow on the left of the above shot shows where I am and you can also see the legend in the bottom right of that shot! 🙂

And here is a shot looking back on this row a bit too…

I love my Hinterberg quilting frame my honey built for me to use… and use it almost exclusively now even though I have a hoop and a project in that hoop that is to small for the frame.. I haven’t worked on it in a month or more!!!  Here is a shot you can see the frame better in if you haven’t seen my frame…

It has metal poles we got at Lowe’s… the kit we ordered from Hinterberg.com right here in the USA … I found a long length of cotton striped fabric on eBay and we used duck tape to apply the assigned length and width to each pole… this fabric is known as “leaders”.  The kit came with fairly good instructions on how to put this all together and how to cut and apply the leader fabric to each pole.. once in place it stays forever and I haven’t had any issues with using the tape to apply the fabric to the metal!

Unfortunately I broke a fingernail on my quilting hand into the quick of my nail bed… so I am taking a short break from handquilting as that fingernail grows back and it isn’t so sensitive… me and regular applications of Bag Balm are healing it fairly quick though… soon I will be back to quicker progress on this quilt! 🙂

While that is going on there… I have been piecing a quilt for my son and his wife that live in Tennessee… James and Heather… it is called Amethyst Star quilt.  I am using Gloria and loving her💖  I love my vintage machines to piece with!!

Glorious Gloria is her name!!!

Here is how I am laying out my rows for machine piecing in a controlled scrappy way…

And here are the first couple rows…

 I have all my pieces cut and in piles…

It took me a while from getting all pieces cut until I started piecing the center of this top… but now I am having a blast with it since I am not able to hand quilt too! lol  Make the best of a situation I say!!!

I am marking all the little squares with a silver glitter pen on the back across the middle diagonally…

… Then I am sewing just to the right of that drawn line to make my star points on the scrappy sashing strips…

I am piecing the squares and sashings into 4 patch units like this…

Above you can see how I make the join of the “4 Patch” rotate so each square can join like I have below in a row…

 I then have ironed the joined squares open as that seemed to make the most sense… and sure enough when I now have 4 rows all joined in this center section it looks MARVELOUS if I do say so myself….

 There will be 15 rows before this center is completed… and now my pile of parts has decreased some… I am hoping to keep the scrappy look going til the end though!  I started this with some of my stash and a layer cake cut all into 5″ squares… sashing strips… star centers… and a LOT of star point squares for the flippy corners I am marking! lol

 Yesterday.. April 29… was my honey and I’s 6th year anniversary!!!

 

I feel so blessed to have him in my life!!!  

 He got me a couple things to celebrate our years together… first we found this water bubbler for our foyer… summer is here already and we aren’t outside to enjoy those much anymore!

And a quilt pattern I just ordered last night on eBay….

This will be a Christmas wall quilt for our foyer if the size is right in the ad 🙂  I have always loved the feathered star pattern and this one is perfect for that space!

Here is the one currently opposite the bubbler …

 And a larger view… it was a rotary cut with templates, machine pieced and hand quilted finish quilt!

 Here is a pic of the way I label my quilts… I get these off Etsy from a seller there 🙂

And I finally made the banner for a local charity with some fabric I found online and a new t-shirt the charity owner brought to me…

I used the front tshirt logo on the back cross… and the back tshirt image for the front of the banner.

I really enjoyed making this up… I took a break after 2 rows of the quilt center on Amethyst Stars to get this made and delivered.  The lady that runs the charity is in LOVE with it as a banner for her charity!  She will be using it in parades and to mark her charity’s spot when in public places!  This was all machine done… my finger was hurt already at this point! haha  

I will continue to machine make things for this charity including quilted pillows for those that are injured and need a comfort pillow to help them feel safe again.  There is such a strong need for us all to be kind for sure in this world we are living in!

Another couple days of taking is slow should have me able to wear a thimble again though!  So no worries 🙂  

In this time of so much negativity going on everywhere in the world  … make sure you take time to…

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