Swooning Progress & MORE ~ Lots of Links in this Post !!!

Welcome Y’all!  Happy Fall and almost time to say Hello to October!!!

Here is a wonderful applique and embroidery I pulled off of facebook from a friend with no history on who did this or where they were from.. so just enjoy and Do It >>> Say Something Kind to Someone Today 💖

I am linking to Kathy’s Quilts Slow Sunday Stitching HERE today <<<  Go check out her blog and the gorgeousness everyone is linking from their talented hands!!!!

My hands have been very busy this week as well!!!  Last week I shared Swoon Progress from my quilting frame and left you with this photo…

I have a Hinterberg hand quilting frame we bought from a kit and added our own wood and metal dowels available at big box home improvement stores… as well as leader fabric to each pole!

I am now able to load up to large queen quilts 105″ wide and as long as I care to quilt in this permanent piece of furniture… my honey built it and stained and top coated it to be a piece of furniture as well.  Best of all … no pin basting needed once you pin the quilt top and bottom (all layers are pinned) to the leaders or the backing or the batting and backing 😀  Directions come with it and there is LOTS of support from this family owned company as well.  Buy new though… don’t buy a used one unless you know the one who built it!!! 

So Sunday and Monday I spent time on the outer border… here is a close up of this 3rd row of swoon blocks out of 4 rows of swoon blocks total in this quilt.  This is what I love MOST about hand quilting.. you can really customize your designs and make them accurate and make the quilt pop when the quilting is done!

 See this photo from Tuesday through Friday’s work… I finished the bottom 1/3 of the swoon block (they are 24″ tall and I can only reach the 1/3 at a time all the way across) and the sashing before the second swoon block….

 Then yesterday and early this morning I got this far on the second swoon block…

 This Swoon pattern is easily found in varied sizes now in pattern form where cutting directions of this fat quarter friendly pattern are mapped out by the author.  This quilt was pieced by my best friend Connie and will be her main quilt on her bed once it is finished and bound and washed and dried… we are both very very excited with each progress photo. 

I hope to have this done within the next couple months for a Christmas delivery too!!!  We shall see but at the pace I am able to go at the moment she should have it!!!!

This hand quilting portion of my quilt is dedicated to HQAL (Hand Quilt A Long) Group I joined a few months back after seeing this group mentioned on a friends blog post… I enjoy sharing my hand work … which is a mainstay to my sanity 😀

This Hand Quilt Along is an opportunity for hand quilters and piecers to share and motivate one another. We post every three weeks, to show our progress and encourage one another.  If you have a hand quilting project and would like to join our group contact Kathy at the link below.

Kathy, Margaret, Emma, Tracy, Deb, Susan,  Nanette,  Edith, Sharon, Karrin, Gretchen and Kathi

>>>  And here is a challenge for you this week! 
Each day this coming week as we say goodbye to September and Hello to October… go outside and do this….

Make it a different time each day of this coming week… lets report back to each other next week on how this may have changed our appreciation for living and for life itself… sooo much beauty in the sky and surroundings… what do you see… what do you hear… what do you smell <<<

No matter what part of this wonderful world you live in … this is an awesome challenge to be a part of!

A few weeks back on my Sunday posts I shared a sneak peek of this cute hummingbird wall hanging!  Well the FREE pattern is out now and available with a video on How to do something similar to mine HERE… Information on how I did this is available with a heart design on a previous blog post HERE.  Check out both links… they will open in a separate window so you don’t lose your reading place 😀

Check out some of Lisa’s other videos if you like… she has a wide variety of fun stuff on her Youtube Channel!  She uses thinned glue for her technique and I use Steam a Seam 2 for mine… what will you use I wonder… let me know if you try this what you use to make it stick until you can fmq it through the tulle!  I added hand quilting around my edges and a binding that is machine applied then hand sewed down too 🙂

Next I want to share the progress I have made on my turkey wall hanging…  Last week I shared the layout and the Missouri Star Quilt Company video… HERE is it’s link again for ya <<<

I am doing this project with my great friend Jannessa.  She will be visible in a few more pics down…

First we picked out some flannel for our boy turkeys….  I laid mine out to get a feel of how I wanted the lights and darks to play on each other…

Then from more feminine quilting cotton (not heavy flannel) we chose fabrics we liked for the girl turkey…

 Following the MSQC video with Jenny Doan for how to cut and sew the dredens to make the turkey feathers we then pressed them all in one direction and used Elmer’s School Washable Glue to hold down the side edges on the right and left ends of the feathers 🙂

Here is Jannessa pressing her turkey feathers…

 After using Steam a Seam 2 (me ) and Soft Fuse (Jannessa) to fuse our turkeys to our background piece… we had made lots of progress and my honey snapped this shot for us…

 I cut borders based on our plan and our likes and avoiding our dislikes and while I did all that cutting …. Jannessa straightened off my cutting table which was A HUGE MESS !!!!  Look at it now 😀

Why I hadn’t looked at this before I don’t know but after Jannessa left I looked at my calendar topper for September….

Isn’t that appropriate for how blessed I am to not have just 1 but SEVERAL great friends in this life 😀

So once Jannessa left I got back to hand quilting to chill and relax… but the next day I was ready to start the machine applique process…

 I will say Jenny mentions to have tiny pieces of your fusible between the feathers and the backing for better stability during applique and SHE IS RIGHT!!!  Pins would not be enough… I also added a stabilizer (tear away) to the back of this thin quilting cotton background fabric so I wouldn’t get puckers 🙂  All that made this go quick and easy ….

 I used a zig zag stitch set to medium width and length.  Then I started on the boy turkey…

 My boy and girl represent me and my honey so since my honey is sooo handy… he chose a saw to hold in this wall hanging.  While my girl is holding a quilt… my fave hobby and some cute cute cute fabric Jannessa had found in her stash… I just sewed a backing to it right sides together turned it and top stitched that turning opening closed and wha – la 😀  For my honey Jannessa brought wool and felt for us to use… her honey is a vintage gun collector so she added a vintage rifle in his hands but I didn’t get a photo of it up close 😦  Sorry! 

 We are to get together sometime this week and I will get a close up of her chosen quilt and his fashioned vintage gun too! 

After appliqueing the turkeys I added the inner border longer sides first then shorter sides so it doesn’t look so long and skinny… then I added the wide outer border with this stencil in mind for finally using it somewhere appropriate….

 I plan to stitch this stencil with dark burgundy perle 12 cotton to coordinate with the inner border and the binding I am looking at as well (you can see the binding is brownish burgundy with beige flowers on it above.

To miter the borders I really have my own methods I have taken from several Youtube videos … but my favorite is HERE from The Stitch TV Youtube channel.  Here I am with my uber long boders on the opposing corners and stitching them down leaving a backstitched area just 1/4″ from the end… my scissors are pointing to that…

 I planned this quilt to have the 2 mitered borders so I didn’t have to match my quilting design in that outer boder … I also plan to hand quilt 1/4″ inside each side of the inner border too for extra pop and stability of the quilting overall as well 🙂 

Below you can see the binding I am planning to use… small print brownish fabric.

 With the flimsy together (flimsy is a finished quilt top not yet layered up so it is more fragile or “a flimsy”) … I was ready to mark my outer border and decide what to quilt behind the turkeys on that backing fabric….

 Here is my outer quilt design marked…  I use pens I get on Amazon that are water soluble markers and more affordable and more fine pointed that Dritz or any other brand I have tried… I love these 🙂

 Now it is pin basted pretty heavy so no shifting occurs and I decided below you can see… to add double lines to the backing of the quilt center !!!  My batting is simply a lot of little pieces of the same batting type all sewn together to make a piece big enough… I call this “frank-en-batting” 😀 lol!

 Finally time to quilt… center on my machine… sweet Cleopatra is up for the challenge for sure too!

 I hope to get this done to take with us as a side project while we take a trip the end of the week where I may get to see most all my children !!!  We shall see when and how that works out … more on that next Sunday when we are back home.

So as we head into some possibly tumultuous times ahead in this country of ours… remember how lovely it is to be like a tree in the fall and let go of what you can’t control.

Now if you have made it this far …. and whether you are a resident of the US or another country… please pray for the US right now… we desperately need it… if you don’t pray … send out healing thoughts to our uproariously serious issues our country is in at this moment!!! ~ Thank You All!!!

In closing I want to thank you for visiting my corner of blogville… Have a blessed day and here is hoping October is cooler… it has been a hot and humid summer here for us 🙂

Finally… I am pondering a embroidery only sewing machine… do you have one… do you have a fave that is affordable ???  Do you have a fave video about your fave machine???  Please send it to me HERE!  Or leave me info on how to find it in a comment below 🙂

Happy Fall Y’all!

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