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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Blessed Easter… Slowing down & "BE-ing"!!!

When was the last time you just “were”… that is what is meant by “being” 🙂

Ponder what Easter means to you today as well.. instead of rushing to wake and rushing to quilt.. this week I have pondered this holiday weekend and slowly welcomed it to me … how nice it has been!!!

When I did wander outside my bedroom this is what greeted me…

Happy Easter to me was my first thought… how blessed I am to live in Florida and it is just us 2 here now ( all the kids are doing their own things) … and God is watching over us… it is nice to finally be in a place where I can “Just Be” as Kathy shares today an article on this subject HERE… I am linking to her blog also with my hand quilting progress from this last week…

 Above you can see the “legend” of sorts I have made for myself… I had 94 flowers to quilt plus the triangles in between!  This legend came from a mini drawing I did then enlarged on my printer a couple times until I got it big enough to see and use a highlighter to color in the finished parts…

Today I am watching episodes in Season 5 of “Call the Midwife”… I love this show and will happily wait till season 6 is released in the fall sometime… I sure hope so anyway!!! lol

In order to get this far I had to come up with a design for the bottom border… none of my stencils worked… or were the right size… so I had to think of something on my own… I am not very imaginative so I pulled out this book I keep in my library for just such occasions…

 I got this off Amazon… it has been my most “go-to” book I have in my quilting library I do believe!

I flipped to borders and found one I liked…

 Then I filled up my printer with a few sheets of cardstock and printed off the “orange peel” part in larger sizes until I got it large enough!  this is trial and error for sure though…

Once I got that shape large enough.. and cut away the curliques I didn’t care for for this quilt border…. I decided it needed a circle or something … but then I couldn’t find my “perfect circles!” lol  so I found this circular object that was just the right size and put a circle of tape on the back to make it stay in place for each move …

 And ta-da… here you can see the first few done… along with my own basting at the edge and quilting 1/4″ in across the top!!!…

Here are the tools I used to mark this border… if you look closely you can see this border is marked now… but I just use a Dritz Mark B Gone marker that spritzes away once stitched with water…

Here are a couple of finished “flowers”… I am using Aurifil 28/2 thread I had in my stash of threads…

Aurifil 28 wt and YLI 40/3 wt are my go to threads for hand quilting… I enjoy perle cottons too and used a white 12 wt perle for the border I was sharing above… but am sticking to the lighter weight Aurifil throughout the center of this quilt.  Quilting design of the flowers I decided and the centers needed something so they wouldn’t puff up… both the flowers and triangles needed that extra bit (thanks Wendy for your advice here .. spot on!)… so with my quilting plan in hand I am moving forward slow and steady!!!

I have also been pondering a new project that is coming up for me…

Last year we donated some kid stuff we had to a fledgling local charity… she gave us a tshirt for our donations… instead of using the tshirt to wear I offered (once I got caught up) to make her a banner from the tshirt… using the tshirt as a center for it.  The founder of this charity loved the idea then 🙂

Well that charity has grown quite a bit since them… I remain an anonymous donor and am now gonna exchange this first tshirt for her newer more streamlined logo tshirt and make that banner… no time like Easter to make you realize charities you serve deserve your time as well!!!  This will involve imagination, experience, and machine quilting though.. so should go together quick once I decide what I am gonna do with her on Monday!!!

Meanwhile this sits right where I left it last week when I finished cutting…

And I have marked about 50 or so of these little 1 1/2″ squares so far with glitter pen…

That part is so fun and relaxing… but I wanted to make progress on the hand quilting because when this quilt gets finished to a flimsy I KNOW I will want to quilt it up for my son and his wife to enjoy as quick as I can.. so I am making headway first on Batik Hollyhock Garden… about halfway I figure I will get bored or need a change.. I will then pick this up and run with it… that PLUS I am a bit gunshy about some of the parts of this quilt… you know each quilt is a learning adventure and this one is no different… lol!  I will share my learning points as I put it all together down the road.

As for today.. I will hand quilt only… also working out some today on my new recumbent bike I got last week….

 It is a fun way to relax my joints and back after hand quilting a while and it is sooo quiet too… lol!

So hope you take time to “be” today and have a blessed Easter day as well… Jesus gave the ultimate sacrifice… and was glorified by His Father to rise up again… so now you can show your appreciation by “be-ing” today!