Tag Archives: quote

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.

KathyMargaretEmmaTracyDebSusan,  Nanette,  EdithSharonKarrinGretchen 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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Slow and Loving Stitches Here!!!

Happy Sunday Y’all!!!

 This week I have had a very busy week to be slow stitching… but I find the beginning of a project busy as I gather supplies and make final design decisions on the hand quilting…  So I have been to the beach a few times!

We also were celebrating here more this week… my honey celebrated his birthday this week!  This was a pic I posted on facebook 🙂

 My bestie Connie took a couple of good shots of us when she was here… nice to have an ocean background as that is our fave place of late!

There is NOTHING to me besides hand quilting that equals beach visits for therapy of the soul!!!

Speaking of stitching let me show you the progress I have made slow stitching on this beauty Amethyst Stars…

I shared this planned stencil to use on the outer border…

 Here is where I marked it with Pounce Chalk… and enhanced those markings as I went along with a chalk pen I have…

 Here is the right side stitched up…

 Here is the joined area… this is a directional stencil… so because of that at the center of the sides, top and bottom I have a “join” area to deal with… which I prefer actually so it is all good…

 And here is that joined area stitched and cleaned and dry 😀

 Here is a fun photo I caught in the early morning one day this week too…

 Thought you would enjoy that shot! I love catching the stitching in different light.

Here is the inner border in the design I had planned… and argyl-esque look with 2 colors of perle cotton in use here…

Here is a shot of the “Argyling” I did… it looks oh so cool in real life.. I hope that is captured in these photos taken with my iPhone though! lol

Now I have rolled the quilt yet again (yep that is twice in a week!!!) and have ordered some stencils… I get stencils from 2 different places… The Stencil Company and Quilting Stencils International.  Both can be google searched and ship in the USA as well as overseas for a price I think!  I had exhausted the fun charm square sized stencils from the first place so I checked out the second place… I am now patiently… NOT… waiting for my stencils to arrive via mail.

I do wish there were local hand quilting outlets… I live 1 hour from a big city but there is no hand quilting shops near me … so most of my shopping is done online.  So I wait PATIENTLY! lol

As I wait I am using the stencils I had in my stash/or had ordered from the first mentioned place anticipating my need for charm sized stencil designs.  In this shot you can see my markings from a stencil to the far right charm square…

 And in this shot you can see that charm square is now stitched … as are the 3 stars …

So how many different threads am I using on this quilt all together you may wonder??! hahaha… let me share this shot with you then…

Yep, I am using Aurifil 28/2, YLI 40/3, Valdani 12 wt perle I get from the Rusty Crow online shop, and DMC 12 wt perle cotton too!!!  Each different brand has it’s own texture though so just like using lots of fabrics can make a quilt scrappy.. using lots of different types of threads can make it more scrappy in it’s finish too… I only bought a couple of these for this quilt… the rest if from stash!  I LOVE THREAD!!! lol

And here is my Pounce marking pad…

It comes in white, blue and pink … there is a good video on YouTube by Leah Day showing how to properly use a pounce marker… there is a definite learning curve to this way of marking… and when you “charge ” it to use you have to whack it against something pretty firmly and it makes a startling noise to others around who may not be expecting it! lol  So if you need a quiet environment or quilt with others in the room work out a communication for when you are charging your pad to mark is my advice 😀

I have a Facebook group that I started several years ago… it hums along usually but of late has been languishing… so I am trying to resuscitate it…

 Here is the group name and the Facebook header I just put up this morning 🙂  I have been so preoccupied with my honey and his health and my own health concerns… I am just getting back to keeping up with things I enjoy like this Facebook group ❤  If you are interested in quilty talk and sharing in a small group setting… as to join in this group if you like!  Would love to get to know you each better… if you aren't already in my group that is.

Also to add to my productivity this week I straightened my sewing room quite a bit…

 The top shot is my 401a (on the left) ~ Zena, and my 301a ~ Gloria ready for action… you can see my design wall and ironing surface there too… then below to the left is my cutting surface and it is MUCH tidier.

My bestie gave me that cool wood ruler organizer/holder over a month ago… I finally made a space for it and put a note she left me LAST summer on it along with my small cutting mat and my most commonly used rulers 🙂

To the bottom right is a collage I made of my next project coming up to piece and thus the reason my sewing room needed this tidy.  I now have all the major cuts made to this Christmas wall hanging… you can see the red and green and white with grey fabrics I am using… this will be a wall hanging for the foyer when the season arrives I am hoping!  While I was ordering the white/grey fabric during a clearance sale online… I found some remnant pieces I felt needed to be added to my existing stash to enhance it! lol  They will be used on a future quilt I am planning also!

Here is a closer up shot of my 401a… Zena… with the cool pin cushion my bestie gifted me for my birthday… I sent it to the lady on etsy that fashioned it from vintage stuff … and filled it at my request with walnut shells!  It is weighty and useful… I LOVE LOVE LOVE it ❤

Here is a cool way to use art to decorate and say something meaningful too that I found on Pinterest I think.  I sent it to my daughter but it has spoken to me also…

 I haven’t heard from my daughter since the 4th of July (my birthday) .. hoping all is well with her and helping her to see a silver lining if life isn’t working out as she thought it might!

For now I encourage you to each …

Stitch and enjoy… come over to Kathy’s Quilts to see what others are slow stitching this week too… that is where I will be posting this too!!   HERE is a direct link to make it easy for ya! 🙂  She has a fun interpretation of this too… this is just mine because it has the ocean in it!!!💕

Y’all … there is PLENTY of meanness in our world of late… please be the change in your area… I will be in mine by showing my love to others… won’t you try it too?!!!  
Have a blessed Sunday and a great upcoming week and grab the opportunity to make a difference around you!