I try to post to this blog every Sunday morning in the US.. but sometimes things get in the way! lol So Happy Monday to you all ❤
One of the biggest things was my honey’s birthday that happened this past Friday!
And one of his requests was for me to cook him some fried green tomatoes from our little garden!!! 😀
Here is the most recent photo I have of us… with my bestie just after she bought her home!
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My bestie, me and my honey in April 2018 |
I enjoyed doing that and cooking dinner later too… we had a neighbor come fish in our pond and had a relaxing day overall at home. SWEET! But this was how the week ended for us really… the beginning and middle were busy busy busy!
I am now over 69% done with the quilting on Hanover Stars! Sew excited to be rolling the quilt after I took this photo…
And look what I found!!! The beginning of the top is starting to show on my frame 🙂
To celebrate this fun milestone my honey brought me the lightly sweet smelling rose from one of our bushes… it is right outside our bedroom window but having one right by my quilting frame is wonderful… esp since it is from my honey ❤
And I hope you enjoy this video I made 🙂
It is a video of butterflies all over this bush in our yard… they love what this bush blooms of! They are vivid purple conical blooms 🙂
Having all that hand quilty progress made I decided to focus a bit on some machine work I have slowly been making progress on … Daisy’s Star quilt or more formally known as “Disappearing 9 patch Star” that I made a tutorial for these blocks HERE if you are interested… they are fun and easy!
Above you can see I laid each of the 30 completed blocks … one at a time… on a gridded cutting mat and trimmed them down so they all were 10″ square in the end. I thought I might could get them a tad bigger but some were tightly trimmed so 10″ it was!
When trimming down blocks you must choose a measurement that works for the smallest block and avoids losing your points too if possible but you have to give room to have a 1/4″ seam too… it is a struggle sometimes but these blocks give lots of room for trimming so it was fine 😀
Once they were trimmed I sewed 6 rows of 5 blocks as scrappy as I could make them lay out for me them. Then to add borders for easier quilting and finishing and I just felt these blocks needed a border too. So I chose the burgundy I used in the setting triangles and inner border of Hanover Stars… and a fun coordinating pup print I had in my stash!
I found some 5″ blue squares of some of the fabrics I used in the quilt in my scrap user’s system of fabrics of quilts past…. and made some qst’s with the burgundy scraps I had left in the same size… once made and trimmed they were the size of the outer pup border… 4″ 😀 I love it when that happens!
And here it is with the center all together and the burgundy border sewn on… it is looking JUST like this today too… maybe I will get back in there now that I am sharing it and get that pup border sewn on … it is ready as you can see from my design wall shot! lol
While doing my slow stitching… which I am linking to Kathy’s Quilts this morning HERE I have been avidly watching vids on Bluprint (the remodeled Craftsy Unlimited) that I have a 1 year subscription to… and have been watching a video on making full bust adjustments to tops/shirts. This video was especially helpful and I took screen shots of several points made in this video
by Jenny Rushmore she explains very eloquently how to adjust any pattern to your specific measurements and how to best obtain those measurements for best fit in the end!!! I have not regretted this subscription once… and I have so many things I want to learn from the new Bluprint platform and check into.
Finally, happiness like a kid at Christmas came Friday when me and my honey had a chat about the new red laptop computer… it was sooooo slow and painful to use because it would just go black screen for a full minute or TWO when moving from one tab to another that was already open… this just wasn’t the computer for us… so we agreed I could use the old old laptop if I could get it up and rejuvenated (it has not been reliable in the past and the battery has some issue too that didn’t resolve with a new one back in the days of trying to keep it running )… so out of the depths my honey pulled it out and Saturday I booted it up and wiped out the new red laptop for returning it to the place we bought it. Mission accomplished!
But the old old laptop wasn’t reliable and it was showing it’s age even though it’s speed handling the same I had thrown at the red one was much much improved! lol
So we searched online relentlessly and slept on it Saturday night and finally Sunday we decided a desktop was really what I needed… I rarely moved that laptop and we do have hopes of updating with a new hard drive for the blue laptop that started this saga.
so here is the new desktop tower and we are using an old 26″ flat screen TV I bought almost 10 years ago for a monitor with a HDMI cable for a great shot you can see just above my logo the pic quality better than the big shot that is overexposed to show the general area and my set up 🙂
I am definitely living my mantra this week of ….
How about you? How has your week been?
Are you living a life you love???
If not can you change something to make it better??? That is my challenge to you my bloggy friends! 🙂
You're moving right along on the quilting with Hanover Stars. Daisy Stars is very pretty. I tried the video and it didn't work for me but that doesn't mean it won't work for someone else. Happy stitching this week!
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Yay, you can see the top of the quilt now! I like the doggy print border you used for your stars quilt. How frustrating that your new computer was so slow!! I would have taken it back, too. I guess you saw where we lost our black dachshund Wednesday night. I'm in mourning, but hope to get back to quilting this week. (Tumpy was by my side every stitch I've made on this quilt, so I want to hurry and finish it for him… while his little dog hair is still all over it!)
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the video worked for me. sorry your computer was so bad but sounds like you have a solution now. I like having a laptop as I take it in the motorhome with me when we travel but when you are in one place like you are a desktop should work great especially with a large monitor. So glad you quilt top is moving along so great – how long do you quilt during the day – I'm sure it is off and on with breaks to stretch.I have been happy with my yearly subscription of Bluprint (craftsy) also and well get back to my crochet lesson as soon as I am done with the Bird quilt – I just need to concentrate on finishing that up
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Since I bought my olfa ruler I have been adding a hairline of fabric outside the beginning line. That way the block is just a tad larger and I also use a scant quarter inch. That way I can trim to the exact size I want. That bush is called a butterfly bush appropriate don't you think!
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