Sewing Progress and Happiness to Share !

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!

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! 🙂

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June 2018 Already??

Y’all I just can’t believe it was already time to turn the calendar this week!!!!

Hope you are each having a great beginning of summer… we have been getting LOTS of rain… but when June came in… it stopped!  So now to let it all dry out!!! lol

I have been making lots of hand quilting progress in the rain though… both at home and on the go 😀

I am linking this post to Kathy’s Slow Stitching Sunday celebration… she is focusing on projects on the go this week!  So I will start with my hand quilting go project 🙂  Come see what everyone else is hand stitching HERE

This is a little Homespun wall hanging to be…

And here is some outline big stitching I have been doing on it…

My bestie did the raw edge applique for me and sent it to me … I added the borders with leftover fabrics and am FINALLY making it a go project to work on when my honey needs to go to doctor appointments.

My home project has been the Hanover Stars quilt on my big frame though 🙂  I am smiling because I figured out how I wanted to quilt the star squares on this one FINALLY!!!

First I auditioned wavy lines going across the block… but it didn’t sit right with me or my honey…

So THEN I made them symmetrical!  and boom ~ it worked for both of us immediately!

Here is a block stitched up with the chalk remaining so you can see the wavy lines…

In real life it adds a nice amount of texture and holds down the block well for future washings.. without distracting from the floating star and fabric choices…

And here is a look at my set up… my rolling chair is mostly out of the photo and I have the rolling table that holds my drink and sewing needs… and my bose speaker for vids and music sound 😀

Can you see the pond and grist mill in my view above the quilt frame above in the photo??

Here is a close up… sorry the quilting in the blocks doesn’t show up much but in real life it DOES with a fun texture only though  .. I am stitching those wavy lines with a neutral YLI thread!!!

So I am working on catching the sides up to the progress on the center of the quilt and hope to be adding the curlie cue lines on the sashings by this evening… we shall see how much I get done today since the rain has stopped and it is just amazing outside!!! 

Rabbits are eating ALL the strawberries before we get ANY from the garden!!!!  It is so sad that out of our 50 plus plants we may have enjoyed about 10 strawberries so far or less!  But there is a bountiful amount of blueberries, peaches and apples!!! YAY  and they are out of the rabbits reach we think! 😀  It is all a learning curve.. we will add chicken wire around the base of our garden fencing to keep these critters out of our yummy fruit and veggies next year for sure!

I have done a bit of online shopping this week … I bought stuff to make a wall hanging in the sewing room that will camouflage an electrical panel on the wall.. I hope to receive that stuff this week to share with you all next week… very cute though and now out of print.. I had a hard time finding any thing I LOVED and I LOVE this !!

Then we sold a few items on Marketplace and facebook.  One of our buyers asked me to machine quilt this top….

It’s about 70″ x 90″ or so… here is a close up of the center… 

And here is my general quilting plan…

I then also ordered, with $$ they gave me for supplies, the backing and batting for this flimsy.

First I will warm up my quilting skills on a sewing machine by quilting the pillow sham fronts I pieced a few weeks back… then I will have to iron this and prep all the layers for pin basting.

The owner is a sweet lady who had a friend piece it then she washed it (OH MY!) but the seams are very generous so it survived the washing and will get starched and ironed or best pressed and ironed prior to pin basting.  I am happy to do this for her also!  I needed a project to make for someone else and God knew that so here we go 😀

As I stitch I have been watching Craftsy Unlimited classes… I think you can get a week of Unlimited for free if you sign up then you can cancel before they charge you to see if you like it… I ordered mine through my good friend Karen HERE she has a link in her right sidebar to Craftsy Unlimited and it gives her recognition if you go through her link when you order… as she is an affiliate 😀  Doesn’t cost you a thing extra either!

Here is a quilt I saw in a Craftsy class this week:

And look and her border!!!

I have templates for a Double Wedding Ring but have never found a layout of colors I liked… I don’t think I would use a white background but use my civil war kind of fabrics and maybe not patriotic either but what a cool layout of colors in general she did I think 🙂

My honey found me another 4 leaf clover this week…I pressed one so I just enjoyed this one and wanted to take a photo to share the luck with you! 

Speaking of my honey, about a week and a half ago he hurt his sciatic nerve on his right side and has had excruciating pain since then.. he was weedeating the river bank that runs through our yard!

When I worked on my go project it was because he finally got to see his doctors at the VA in Asheville about 2 hours from us.  He not only got meds for this pain (steroid dose pack and heating pad) but also got renewed for his oxygen need at night which they delivered the next day !!!  Talk about blessed!!!  We are feeling the blessings this week 🙂

I am 20 pounds lower than when I started my weight loss medication too… so feeling happy about that and loved by my honey who was soo happy I was a nurse and could diagnose his pain issue and knew the right treatment for him to request from his doctors 😀

Until my next post … I have not received in my inbox ANY comments from my last post (and there were several … so I answered them on the blog post itself and hoped the responders got the reply)!!  So I have made comments now need approval before posting hoping this will solve my issue as blogger is making changes I don’t understand!!!  I want to know when you comment so I can respond though!

Make sure you take time out every day to… 

September 11! Hurricane Irma has left the area y’all!

We won’t forget….

 But we must move forward in America!  So this is my rememberance… to have a post today… but I was gonna write a post anyway if not for this reason to let you all know…

Today is also my niece Hayley’s birthday!!!! ❤

We made it through Hurricane Irma in one piece… a bit of fence damage but that is about it!!!  Here was an early update I shared on facebook!  That is where I posted updates for the many who were concerned about us and others in the area 🙂

Yippeee!!!!  This was the largest hurricane to ever make landfall in the US EVER!!!!  Crazy large and it is still quite windy and rainy but at least the hurricane I can report has been downgraded to a tropical storm now!!!

 So as we prepared for the hurricane… and whenever I had a nervous anxiety ridden moment that wasn’t filled with preparations….  I quilted by hand!!!

Here is a great shot when I was mostly done with the quilting on the pillow top… the texture is sooo cool!  Here is the pattern on the left… I found this on google search for wholecloth pillow patterns….

 Once I had the pattern I printed it on a regular piece of printer paper … cut that into a bit larger than a 1/4 of the pattern chunk of paper and enlarged it to make the pattern come out to 8″ square per 1/4 pattern piece to give me a 16″ square pillow pattern once taped all together…

I taped this all together as I just suggested and then taped this to a glasstop table… underneath the table I put a unshaded bare bright light and turned off all the ambient lighting in the room… I could then see the pattern through the table and onto the fabric.

I did tape the pattern to the table… then taped the whole piece of fabric cut to size for the pillow top on top of that.  Then I simply traced it with a mechanical #2 pencil 🙂

 Once I finished tracing it I untaped it all… put the shade back on the lamp! lol … and layered up the pillow top and stitched it with some YLI dusty blue 40/3 thread I found that looks simply tone on tone with this fabric my honey chose.  He likes little stitches and not big bold stitching… so that is what he got with his snuggly pillow!  And here is the finish !!!!

 The back of the pillow is a pocket opening for the pillow form to easily slip inside.  I did use Palmolive dish soap on the quilted portion of this pillow before washing it in the washing machine.  I scrubbed it in well over the pencil marks… soaked it all in a bowl for 1 or 2 hours with warm water… then scrubbed it again with the remaining Palmolive still in the fabric and rinsed it well.  Then washed it and dried it in the laundry with other laundry thrown in with it for balance… and tah dah!!!
Overall I am very happy with this project 🙂

Next I focused on making use of some orphan blocks from the hexi quilt I made and gifted to a good friend… now I have this pillow I machine quilted uniquely ….

 I love the backing fabric too!!!

I was inspired from the free Craftsy class I watched on Labor day when they had free classes to watch…

I watched 3 classes all together that day… but this was BY FAR my fave of the one’s I viewed 🙂  I like Jaquie Gering’s style… so if you are looking for some walking foot quilting inspiration and have the desire for an online class I recommend this one!!!

I shared my lighting find in my last post…

and I have gotten back to my frame for some quilting and trying out the lights during the hurricane!  Once I finished the 2 pillows I shared above.

Someone had commented when I shared the lamps shot that maybe I should put them behind the frame… well I am still unsure that this will work unless I do as I am doing below using 2 lights! hmmm….

 Here I am working on row #4 now!!!

 And here is a quilted friend we rescued this week….

So I found this rescued quilted doxie a home with our most precious vintage items… it is a Jim Shore pup… very cute and not like anything I have seen before… my honey found it! lol

 The photo above is now my cover on facebook too!!! ❤

Up next I am waiting for a template to come in the mail that has been delayed by the hurricane to start on a quilt in this pattern called Roundabout….

 You see my honey wants a LARGER quilt for our bed since we changed bed frames! lol  He is right though… so I will get to work on it!!!

As I quilt away on the quilt on my frame I find that in a quilt soon will come this quote!  It is soooo true!!!!

So for now from Florida’s east coast… I wish you all well and don’t forget to make time to show you…