Everette Quilt show #2

All 3 faeries

So, I entered this show

Nice to see people stopping and examining my work!


Sorry the pictures are so blurry but I only had my cell phone and people kept bumping me.

Ladies of elegance

Here are my entries3 faerie wall hangings



and a full quilt I called "ladies of elegance" 

Faeries en rouge

By the time I got there all the ribbons except the viewers choice had been given out.


Alas not for me!


I had been warned by others that judges don't receive crazy quilts well for a variety of reasons,
none of which seem to be consistent across all shows.

which is unfortunate because they sometimes will discount crazy quilts entirely, because many of them have no batting or "real quilting"

 Faeries en violette

Faeries en lavande

Even though I did use my long arm to quilt them in the ditch around each panel

Mine were the only crazy quilts there

The best category I had to enter into was  "mixed technique" They had a "hand quilting" and "Hand pieced" selection but not a "hand work" selection.

I was ready for the disappointment, though

because every one wants to win right?

Yes they also switched the signs, but whatever

Still fun to see my quilts on the wall with official signs on them.

Cq ladies (CQJP 2015) is ALMOST finished

So this cq has taken a long time to finish.

Mostly because I have been looking for the perfect backing for it

A backing that would both give it some more structure and was still pliable

Tough bill to fill.

What I ended up with was a heavy brocade upholstery fabric

Can I tell you a secret? Promise not to tell?

I stole the backing, from material I 'm supposed to hem for my daughters mother-in-law, for a table cloth.
To be fair there is plenty more and I feel, not at all, guilty over the theft!

Its your own fault, if you leave me in charge of the perfect material, to finish something I've been agonizing over for 3 years!

Aand there you go, Mom logic.

It was bound to happen at some point.

Any way, It's ALMOST done.


I was looking at it hanging there on the curtain in my sewing room and decided,

It needs something,


It looked to plain, Just hanging there, It looked bare.

If something as embellished as these panels can be said to look bare!

I thought giving the panels a wide border   and putting the panels askew rather than in a uniform pattern
would make them less chaotic to look at.


Than sewing them all together in a bunch, throwing a binding around that and calling it good.

Well the spacing part worked out bUt Instead of the balance I was going for, the askew part just ended up making it look more awkward.

So, I am in the process of adding laces and flowers and stuff,

so it doesn't have all that empty space between the panels.

That look like they are going nowhere.

THey make it look Meh.

I will fix thAt!

CQJP the missing one

 So here's the thing

I missed one

so in an effort to rectify that mistake

I did this one in a bit of a hurry

and took for inspiration, again, the weather we’ve been having

and after 2 years of no snow woo-hoo! we got some, even down by us.
 though the poopie part is
we cant go skiing,

they've had the pass closed for avalanche remediation

so until they have that mess under control were stuck on this side of the mountains.

better than being stuck in miles long traffic or under piles of snow and trees
so there's that. the inner brat child just wants to go skiing.

CQJP December

 So here is December, just under the wire


she's all in blue, again


this month no featured stitch but a lot of bugs


from the fly in the lower lefthand corner


to mrs Spider in the upper right

to the green beaded bug in the upper left

and our whole picture ready for the usual northwest winter

kinda drab

                  kinda rainy

                                     kinda cold

OH!        Happy Holidays to everyone too

November CQJP

 Here she is naked as a jay-bird

now you see this little dragonfly?

not a big motif right?

I want to show you how she changed the whole look of this block but I'll get to that later

here's where designing gets fun or frustrating depending on which side of the dime your on.

to counterbalance this big crochet flower I had to do a little fiddling which turned into a lot of fiddling


the white ferns are one part then came more fern and green SRE roses and white trim.

I knew I wanted fans on this block so here is the beaded one

 and here is the embroidered one, with more ferns, in green this time

and a nice bit of button floozy going on there as a seam treatment




and here's the fun part, I told you I'd get to it!

this block looks ok

but there's this big empty spot my eye keeps catching on up at the top

and with the block being so busy everywhere else

it draws your eye to it and doesn't let it go

Taa-Daa!

and this is where the dragonfly comes in to save the day

as you can see it's not a big motif

but it's just enough of a bridge to keep your eye moving around the block and not just stopping

right there

I might even put something small and brown, in that bit of blazing white, under the beaded fan as it's beginning to bother me now........

October CQJP/BJP done

 Little did I know at the beginning of this month

that this block,
covered in Holbein stitch this month,
would be perfectly placed for my daughters wedding.

there she is with my lovely dear darling  husband.
 this months BJP is the wired dragonfly on the left,

not much to look at but I was a bit busy this month


the other one I mad from what is left of a pair of cloisonne earrings that I lost the rest of the dangle to and a blue dyed pearl

a little more folded ribbon and many more beads

to finish off the many corners
holbein stitch creates









 a little more beading and some ribbonwork to round out the last little empty spots and there you go

CQJP for september

 This month is chainstitch and it's smaller cousin lazy Daisy

  I like before and after pictures don't you?

 Before everything else is thrown on and it's just the main stitches


and after embellishments, embroidery, beads and other stuff is thrown at it

 She's very blue this month

  again

The green barely shows up in some places                  
I like that vase motif I have used it before.



 What is your opinion on using motifs/seams over again?
               I try not to do it too much. partly because I get boared with the same old thing over and over and partly because I like a challenge. I think I've mentioned this brfore using the same thing, seems like cheating.

  Now I know some of you don't like spiders, so fair warning but I couldn't resist

We in the great northwest are in the middle of hella spider time. sometime between end of august and whenever first frost decides to decend, we get spiders everywhere, bushes, trees porches.

Some days it feels like they are trying to catch me.

Isn't she sweet?

where did the summer go?

Benny RIP 11th may 2015

Until this weekend our weather has been inordinately nice.

 I am not used to all this sun

Wait, what?Is she complaining about nice weather?
                                      Yes I am.

So it just takes 6 years for you to become attuned to your new environment to the point that you're complaining about the weather like a native. Huh.

That I lived my first 45 years in Chicago, this makes me a little giggly.

Now, I know I haven't bogged anything since June, this is due to many things.
The death of my cat Benny, a visit from my dd#2 for a month, in which we did a lot of sight seeing and the moving in of my son to figure out his life post army.

my little helper

 Phew!
I was prepared for the daughter and son invasions but Benny's death threw me.
he developed an inoperable cancerous tumor, poor baby! he wouldn't eat and dropped 2lbs in a week. so we had to make the difficult decision to put him down.

Anyway it has been a little difficult to get back on my hobby horse with all the hoo-ha.

I did finally finish Julys cqjp/bjp and have been teaching a class every second Tuesday on embroidery and cq, which bless me has kept me more or less on an even keel.

I love my ladies!They make me giggle. Last class we all ended up singing campfire songs, now given that I am the youngest in the group and was able to keep up, this also makes me happy.

 anyway, the July CQJP/BJP is fly stitch and lots of blue

which goes with the weather we have been having.

Lots of beautiful blue skies

I did a folded 13mm silk ribbon  tacked with little blue teardrops
(my wish for rain)

I'm rather pleased with how the upper right seam treatment came out.

BJP July

 and the little brown bug in the lower right hand corner is for my BJP portion.


here is the whole thing finished

my sweet boy Benny