A Slow Stitching May Day !!

Happy May Day to you my bloggy friends…

I hope you are making time to stitch at this wonderful time of year 🙂

I sure am!!!

Earlier this week I finished this cool wall hanging… it is a mix of slow and fast stitched quilting 🙂

This was a wedding gift for my oldest son who eloped with his beautiful bride last month.. so a bit belated but they didn’t seem to mind! 🙂  You can read and see more pics on this quilted finish HERE 🙂

Also my honey and I celebrated our 5 year anniversary yesterday!!!!

 Above is the photo I post on my facebook page 🙂

My daughter made me a bracelet… I enjoy a stretchy bracelet on my wrist… when I get nervous or anxious I play with it! lol

So she made me a rubber band version in colors I chose… I think it turned out quite nice too!

Since finishing the wedding wall hanging I have refocused on Brandi’s Starlight ~ Starbright quilting though… nice and slow!!!!

Here was my progress exactly 2 months since I started this quilt… I am on the 4th block of 9 presently….

 Here is a close up.. use my needle minder to orient yourself to where this is in my frame if you like 😉

 Here is a fun slant on my progress…

 And here is a straight on view…

 I am currently big stitching around the top of the star…

 And here is my remaining part to quilt today and tomorrow probably 🙂

I am also working on my Spiral Log Cabin quilt again… I have the center now bordered with a thin black border that brings my measurements up to the right size for the next border…

 and here are the flying geese that will make up the next border … in progress on my ironing surface! 🙂

While I have been working on all these things my honey has been busy constructing a Hinterberg Hand quilting Frame 🙂  YIPEEE!!!!!

It started with some specialty parts and machine cut wood pieces in a box we ordered a few weeks ago as soon as they became available on their website…. then the instructions explained what wood to buy and how to cut it… it was all Greek to me! lol  but my honey is a master woodworker with things like this and he figured it all out…

Here is a picture of the raw wood being held in place to get our first idea of what the end would look like…

And here it is laid out on the floor.. the small parts have already gotten stained at this point…

Here it is now stained and top coated… 

This actually took several days to get the wood cut and detail cut and sanded all down… then stained… cured… and top coated and cured.

It still seemed fast to us though… It is NOW ready to use once we buy the poles for it next week!

I know it is long… we made it as big as the instructions called for so it would be versatile.

We also have more “tweeking” to do to give me side tension ability etc… Lighting and a good chair are necessary too… but instead of thinking of all that… 

I would rather dream of that Log Cabin being done so I can load it in this frame!!! My first quilt to load in it!!!

Well… I have shared quite a bit… if you made it this far CONGRATS!!!   Hope you were entertained!

If you have a similar hand quilting frame and ideas on how to load a 3 rail system the easiest please let me know.

Also I am planning to buy the leader fabric for the poles next week also… thinking I got a lot of zig zagged edges to keep the fabric from fraying over the years too!  Oh well, it is all worth it in the end!!!  

Hope you have a blessed Sunday and Cheers to Slow Stitching with MUSTER…

Speaking of mustering… check out Kathy’s Quilts blog today and see what that is all about and what fun hand work people are linking right HERE!

Remember… no matter the highs or lows each day… even each minute… Life IS Beautiful!!

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A Fun Finish!

Today I have a wedding present ready to give…

It is for my son DL and his new wife Kayla… they eloped in March… so I had to get something made special just for them…

Last week I shared a sketch that I penned on graph paper but once I got the word panel squared up …

It sort of took on a life of it’s own… lol!

I love how this border turned out too.;.. also this is a matching game border… the colorful fabrics have 1 match somewhere else on the border… there are 34 matches all together on this wall hanging! lol!

Next I was going to put some 5″ squares in a wider border in a modern setting but it called for a little less busyness to me… so I added this border…

And because I was hoping to gift this during a planned visit from my son, his wife, and CJ on Sunday afternoon for dinner…

I decided to machine quilt the center parts…

 So I pulled out my very first vintage sewing machine Fiona!

She is a Morse Sewing Machine made by Toyota in Japan… she is a clone of a Singer machine when a loophole allowed their plans to be copied for a time…

She really helped me make fast progress on the machine quilting parts… which was over 75% of the quilting of this wall hanging.

Then I pulled out my hoop ( since my frame is full! lol) and stitched the borders … I thought it would go quickly… as I did big stitched hearts in a continuous pattern…

But I wasn’t done by dinner time on Sunday … oh well… I have called my son now that it IS done and he is stopping by today to get the package all nicely bagged 🙂

Here are his initials I embroidered on the left upper corner.. I put hers in the right upper corner and “Est.” and “2016” in the bottom corners with dark blue Aurifil 28/2 😉

Finally it was time to bind it!  I was never so excited to get to this point! lol

And here are the finish shots….

 A closer up pic of the top half…

 and the bottom half…

 Can you find matches in the triangles ??  Some are easy to spot!

 I used warm and natural cotton batting as this is a utility piece and may not be cared for as I would… so that made the hand quilting difficult and the texture of the quilting not as prominent in the pics but the texture is there and all the fabrics are soo soft and fun to interact with!!! lol

 Here is a close up of the heart and the border and the binding all together for you to see…

 A view from a different angle…

 Do you see my boo boo I had to fix??

 Labeled and proud of this!!!!

 And my YAHOOO shot!!!!!!

Including the back side that turned out so nice n flat!!!  I was sooo happy 🙂  This is definitely the best quilting by machine job I have done yet!!!

 Here is a close up of the hanging loops from satin ribbon I put on it for flexibility when hanging… they can use a rod or push pins, or a dowel rod or a yard stick… any of those things would work well here!

This quilt was a lot of fun… definitely out of my comfort zone but I like being out here sometimes… and my next project to piece has more similar issues for me to deal with… even moreso!!! lol  So let’s hope I learned all I needed to to be ready for my next adventure…

For now I am happy hand quilting for a few days and making headway on Brandi’s quilt !  Currently I am on the 4th star of the 9 stars on the quilt 🙂

Linking this FUN FINISH post to:
NTT (Needle and Thread Thursday) with Kelly at My Quilt Infatuation HERE
WHOOPING with Sarah at Confessions of a Fabric Addict HERE

Hope you have a blessed rest of your week my bloggy friends!!!  And remember no matter how bad it may get…