Chexers the Baby Skunk

Elsa the Westie and I take a walk down a really great paved trail in Livermore. The trail follows a former golf course and between the old golf course and the trail is a creek.
Needless to say, the water attracts a lot of different animals. We mostly see birds, but often see squirrels.
Lately we have been seeing some juvenile skunks in the middle of the day scrounging for food. As cute as baby or juvenile skunks are, we really don't want to get to know them intimately, if you know what I mean. But lately we have been able to avoid them.
The other day I saw a child's shoe box with some green leaves and a note. The note read, "For Chexers the cute baby skunk." I thought this was adorable. No doubt this was from the children in the house whose street butts up against the trail. I assumed that the green leaves from a tree were for "Chexers" to make himself/herself a comfy new bed. Or maybe the kids thought that skunks eat leaves (but I'm pretty sure that they eat ants, bugs, grubs, and worms).
I got the cute idea to embroidery a baby skunk and frame it, and also write a little note back to the kids, thanking them for the nice soft green leaves, and explaining that I, Chexers, used these leaves to make my self a new bed.
I'm hoping that the framed "Chexers" gets into the right hands. I left the show box with the frame and note off the trail, in the yard of the house where I think those kids live.
I will probably never know how this all turned out, but my hope is that the kids will find the frame with "Chexers" picture and hold on to a really cute memory about their friend "Chexers the Cute Baby Skunk".

Being Creative

 Original kit

My "being creative".

As much as I would love to be very creative, the fact is, I am not. I am a great copier, I can see a great idea and copy it, but I always find it harder to go beyond the original.

This quilt top was a kit. I don't often buy kits, but it was on sale and I had a $10 coupon for the store, so I decided to try it.  I thought it was a panel quilt kit, but it wasn't, but it was still pretty easy. Then I found corresponding fabric from the same line from another source, which also was on sale and I had another $10 coupon from this store too, so I bought the fabric thinking that I could use it to enlarge the quilt, or at worst, use it to back the quilt.

So the second picture is what I came up with, after consulting with some other quilting ladies on quiltingboard.com and with my husband. I kind of like it, I think. I think I might embroider some scrolling or flowers on the 'L' shaped white border in the near future, but it did enlarge the quilt from a wall hanging sized quilt to almost a twin sized topper quilt, which is what I wanted. I like the 'A' symmetrical design, something off-centered is nice, almost like a real flower arrangement.

I would enjoy any comments you have after reading and viewing these pictures.

I'm A Winner!!!!!!

It's always fun to win.  This year I entered a couple different contests and did win.  I entered my embroidery at the Alameda County Fair and won 1st place and Best of Show. I was quite proud of winning BOS because this was a first for me. At the county fairs I've entered, they lump all the embroidery together to judge. This means I'm lumped in with specialty pieces like Brazilian Embroidery, Machine Free Motion Embroidery, Ribbon Embroidery, and other awesome techniques that I have not attempted yet. But this year my Redwork piece apparently was the best in all the categories, so I'm a bit proud of that!  My plans are to enter it in the California State Fair for next year. I'm not really expecting to win that one, but it will be fun to compete anyway.

I also participated in The Row By Row Experience (RBR). This is a quilting activity that starts the first day of summer and ends on Labor Day.  The basic rules are: Collect 8 or more different rows from 8 or more different participating quilt shops, assemble a quilt top using those rows. A completed quilt can be submitted to any participating shop for a prize of 25 Fat Quarters of fabric.  If you use that particular shop's row, they award you with a bonus prize.  (A completed quilt consists of pieced, quilted, bound, and labeled)   The top picture is my completed quilt, the second picture is my AWESOME prize. This quilt shop, The Wooden Gate in Danville California,  has a very generous owner. She's only required to give 25 fat quarter cuts of fabric, but she decided to give 50 fat quarters. Why? Because the fabric she chose was the Deco State Flowers, which, of course, includes 50 states. She said she didn't feel right just giving the winner half the country, so she included all 50 states. She also included a pen with the store name on it (cool pen with a light and a stylus), and a store RBR fabric license plate. The bonus gift was any book from the store valued at $40 or less. WOW! Really generous!

Winning is fun, it gives value to your hard work and skill, and sometimes you benefit with prizes or money.  Gladly, the winning quilt for RBR is not the best quilt to enter the shop, it's the FIRST quilt. And since my quilting abilities will never win a blue ribbon at the county or state fair, I'm happy there's a contest for the first quilt!!!

I need to give credit to my FaceBook friend Erin for gathering a few patterns for me.  I gathered most of what I used in my quilt, but there was a couple she picked up for me.  Also a shout-out to my FaceBook friend Catherine, for sending me, as a gift, one of the rows from Broadway Quilts in Sonoma California (it's the one with the grapevine).  I had sent her a few patterns she was looking for, and as a thank you, she sent me this row.  Erin also sent me a cute row from Pennsylvania because she knew I would probably make a second quilt using a specific theme.  Very nice ladies, and generous!  And I've never met them face to face!!

Row By Row Experience 2016

It's time for Row By Row again!! This year's theme is Home Sweet Home.  It started in the middle of June, goes through Labor day in September.

The basic rules are:
1. Visit and gather RBR patterns from participating stores.
2. Create eight or more different rows from eight different stores (some stores have more than one row)
3. Piece your quilt using these eight or more rows.
4. Your quilt must be pieced, quilted, and labeled before claiming a prize.
5. Be the first person to enter the store with a completed quilt to claim the prize of 25 fat quarters of fabric. If you used that store's row you also are able to claim a bonus prize (at the discretion of that store.)
I was able to complete and turn in a quilt in 2015 for the bonus prize at the Danville, CA store, Wooden Gate Quilts. The bonus prize was fabric pre-cuts and kits, which probably valued close to $100.00.  Needless to say, I was pleased with my two prizes!!!

I have personally visited about ten stores for their patterns. I've had some very kind friends in other areas doing the same thing. I hope that they don't get offended if I didn't use the row they collected for me. Sometimes it's all appliqué, which I really try to avoid. But I did include some appliqué in my quilt for two reasons:

1. The row was so cute and irresistible that I just had to include it in my quilt. (Notice how cute the picture below is!! I couldn't resist. The little coconut bra just made it that much more cute!)
2. The row was the store that I intend to claim the bonus prize. I just have to be the first one there!!!! (and I included 4 or 5 local stores so that I had a better chance of claiming the bonus prize)

The County Fair

 I

 

I have been entering my embroidery in various county fairs for about 15 years now.  I started entering in the Los Angeles County Fair first. The next fair I entered was San Bernardino County Fair.
Recently I entered the above pieces in the Contra Costa County Fair and the Alameda County Fair. The teacup table runner and the Black and Gold tea towels were entered last year at Alameda, and the girls pinafore and red work tea towel will be entered in Alameda County Fair this year.

Since I've been embroidering since I was about 6 years old, instead of trying to improve my look of my stitches on top of fabric (which after decades of embroidering, my stitches are pretty near perfect), I've tried to improve the way my project looks from behind. This year I've tried to use as few knots as possible, almost no "crossing" to get from point A to point B, and trying to make the back of my project look almost as perfect as the front of the project.

As skilled as I am at embroidery, I really do enjoy quilting much more.  Quilting allows for more creativity, in my opinion.

I've recently thought of trying new kinds of embroidery.  I would love to find a great Brazilian Embroidery class. I've been watching some great YouTube videos of Silk Ribbon Embroidery. It looks fun and pretty easy, and I've been looking for a good source of white silk embroidery ribbon. If I ever find that source I will certainly post my projects.

Quilt Labels

This is my most recent example of a quilt label.  I hand embroider all my labels.  This one in particular was attached to the quilt I made for my mother-in-law who recently passed away.  Laura was my mother-in-law, Louise is her older sister and best friend.  When Laura passed away, we asked Louise if she would like to take the quilt.  She was very happy to take it. It reminded her of her dear sister, and she loves homemade things.

I'm not a wonderful artist, so most of my quilt label designs are "borrowed" from Pinterest or other websites.  I have a light board with which I put the drawing on, then the fabric over the drawing. Then I hand embroider the design.

Quilt labels are important. They usually document the quilt name or pattern used, who made it, when it was completed, and sometimes to whom it was given to.

I'm pretty proud of how my quilt labels turn out.  My embroidery is much better than my quilting (but I enjoy quilting more).  On another post I will display some of my prize winning embroidery pieces.

Lady the Cat was my BFF

This past Sunday my sweet cat Lady passed away. We think she was 16 or 17 years old. Maybe older.

 My daughter named her Lady after she watched the movie Lady and the Tramp.  I could not convince her that Lady was a dog's name, but sometimes there's no convincing a 5-year old of something that makes sense to them.  I rarely called her Lady.  Sometimes I called her Stinky Pete, Stinky Petersburg, Shue Shue, My Love, Lover Lover,  but she always called me Momma (or at least I imagined she did).  She never really liked Stinky Pete. She told me not to call her that because that was a dog name (I used to call Whiskers the Dog "Stinky Pete" sometimes. Yes, Whiskers. That's what happens when a 4 year old names the family pet).

In this picture she was "helping" me sort through some fabric scraps. She often "helped" me with folding the laundry too. She enjoyed "helping" me when I would lay out a new quilt top on the floor, she would sit right in the middle of it. I guess she wanted me to see what it would look like on the bed, since she was always asleep on my bed!

She was quite the character, especially when she was very young. After my daughter would leave for school, she would go into her bedroom and pull off the bed covers, pull off the pillow (sometimes drag it down the hallway), pull out all her dirty clothes in the hamper and drag them out, and she would go through my daughter's drawers and pull out her jewelry. I told Eleanor that Lady acted exactly like a little sister, going though drawers, making a mess in her big sister's room, stealing her stuff.

She was a cat that could only love two people at one time.  When we first brought her home, she loved my daughter and me, and when Eleanor moved out, she learned to love John, but I was the constant in her life.

She died peacefully, in her favorite place, on my bed in the sunshine. The night before she finished all her food, after she ate she hopped up on the bed and slept between us, as always.  When I woke up, she was asleep in the crook of my folded arm. She acted normal in the morning, begged me to pick her up and hold her like a baby while I sat at the computer and she purred, which was our daily routine.  Then it was time for John and I to leave for the morning.  When we came back a few hours later, she was gone.

We found a box to fit her, while John was digging the hole, I wrapped her in the blanket I made for her, and set her in the box.  I didn't close the lid of the box.  I left it on the bed, and when John brought the box out and set it in the hole, he had tears rolling down his cheeks.

Lady the the Cat was my BFF, Best Furry Friend.

We think we are done with pets. It's just too hard to say goodbye.