word Featured is appearing on my image hover boxes

It means your post is set as a sticky post (fixed). Open that post in the editor and in the upper right corner, click on the “Edit” after “Visibility” and uncheck the box next to the Sticky option.

I figured out the connection with sticky and featured. Is there a way to have the post sticky and stop the word featured showing?

Also, is there a limit to the number of image posts I can display on the home page? – where can I customize? At present it’s limiting me to 4 rows of 3 and I need it to go to 5 rows.

Figured out how to change the number of images in customizer.

If you want a post to still be sticky but hide the label, you can do this custom CSS in the Additional CSS tab of the customizer:

.home .sticky-wrapper {
    display: none;
}

That hides is when on the home page.

Thank you!

I am assuming that worked?

yes like a charm!