Slow Stitching Sunday Reflections …

Welcome Y’all!  

Molly and I are greeting you from our front yard today!

 I am grinning so big because I splurged and got myself a good pair of sandals for the summer…

 They are from a company called OrthoFeet!  You can find them online just googling that name if you are in the market for some orthopedic shoes in a wide selection!!!!  I can tell a BIG difference in my fatigue levels… from when I wear any other shoes I own!  YAY 😀

I finished up the last name on the wall hanging panel this week that I was working on …

 and pondered the steely grey perle cotton in the photo below…

 But it just clashed with the navy I used on the last name… so I am using a different stitch ~the split stitch ~ on the first names like this in the same 12 perle cotton navy color I used on the last name …

Linking this slow stitching progress to Kathy’s Slow Sunday Stitching HERE  <<<< Kathy shares her own embroidery and many link during the day to share their slow stitching of varied types.

Also… I am linking with my friends in the HQAL group too!

Hand Quilt Along Links

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, Tracy, Deb, Susan,  Nanette,  Edith, Sharon, Karrin, Gretchen, Kathi, Daisy, Connie, Monica and Sherrie

My daughter and her boyfriend are planning a visit this coming week…
Here is my dd (darling daughter) Brandi and some of her cross stitching too!

The above cross stitch is complete and we will frame it while she is here visiting… while the wolves on black cloth are in progress… she works on it most every day and LOVES IT ❤

 I reworked the guest room quilt that Connie and I are working on this fall…

 And my honey graced me with a vase full of flowers… vase was a gift from Jannessa!!!

 I reworked the “message board” I was gifted last week in prep for my honey’s birthday!!!!

The message board and the letters to go on it came from Amazon with a gift note from the sender 🙂

I ❤ Love It!!!

And here is our fave pic of my honey taken earlier this year on a snowy day outside…

I am so excited to celebrate the day he entered this world… as he is definitely a keeper & he keeps me laughing each and every day!  It is good to be loved so much by another human 💕

While my nails still looked ok… I was anxious to change colors and try a new one… and I got these in this week from Holli Jo… so I had lots of options!!!!

 I finally decided on the Seattle Royale I had purchased 😀  And easily removed the “At the Plaza” you see on my here…

 So this gave me 3 checks on my frequent buyer card …

And in just a few minutes of quiet time and I am done!  You can see my right hand finished on the photo of my hand embroidery above! 🙂

Now I am pondering a new tattoo… I only have a permanent ink and it is on my right foot… it rarely gets seen as I wear these great new shoes I shared that cover it up.. that is ok.. but I am thinking inner wrist for this tattoo… hmmm… what do you think?  

Are you a tattoo wearer or lover?

I really like the needle and thread detail in THIS one below… but want a different design like above with the infinity or heart detail with the thread as below… hmmm  THOUGHTS PLEASE!

 And a meme I caught on facebook this week… WEAR A MASK WHEN IN PUBLIC or around other people… also Socially Distance when possible too… especially to those unmasked souls!!!

Listen to the scientists and doctors y’all!  This can be stopped for all of us in the world and the USA specifically where this virus is gaining ground instead of losing ground!!!  Masks stop the spread they say and have proven as in the above meme.  We wear seat belts in cars to be safe… why not a mask in public??!!

Thanks for stopping in and if you decide you would like to be invited to Holli Jo’s Color Street nail strips Facebook group let me know!  Happy to invite you to it 🙂  You can see without purchase … what others think too 💖 

While we are celebrating birthdays and welcoming our first visitors into our home since the pandemic started keep us in your thoughts and prayers.. makes me nervous even though we are being careful!

Advertisement

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! 🙂