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Showing posts from 2015

Animal Quilt - Final Touches

After coloring and putting the animal tracks on the borders, I went ahead and quilted them first before attaching them to the quilt. I used Hobbs fusible batting to cover the entire thing, even though I had already had batting on each individual piece. This batting serves, what I hope is 2 purposes: First, I hope it evens things out a little and makes it all nice and smooth and secondly, I'm hoping that since its fusible on both sides I can simply iron the top, bat and backing together. I used Hobbs Heirloom Fusible Queen sized batting that I ordered from Amazon. The description indicates it is double-sided and will gently fuse your quilt together so you don't need any pin or baste anything together. Its also re-positionable. So if you get a wrinkle in your backing just, peel, smooth and fuse again. And for $28 I'm hoping it really will be that easy. I placed my backing, batting and quilt top on my dinning room table and did my best to smooth at any wrinkles in the bac

Animal Quilt - Center Panel Part 3

I posted about the quilt borders a few days ago by accident. I meant to post the center panel part 3 first but oh well. It's okay. Just pretend you didn't read about the borders first. A few months ago, I decided to finish my center panel. I wasn't certain if I was going to thread paint it or not. It's a nice painting and I really didn't want to screw it up because its a really big panel to have to re-create. But all the other animals are thread painted or at least the backgrounds are but I had some reservations about thread painting the rhino. When I used the white ink I had (like for the polar bear) it was a lot more opaque and dried harder than the other inks. So when I tried to thread paint over it it looked like giant holes where punched through the paint which looked really bad. So I avoided thread painting on white areas or ink mixed with white. And the rhino has some white on it and mixed with other colors so I was concerned it was going to look really b

Animal Quilt - Borders

I've gotten a lot of my Animal Quilt done and I'm ready to begin the borders. I had this grand idea to make the borders 10" wide and make one with an arctic, savannah and jungle theme with additional paintings of animals but this seemed really daunting to me for some reason. Maybe because they're quite large? I didn't want to screw them up and have to start over? I dunno, but for whatever reason I was dreading doing them. I am really struggling to get excited about them. They're big, complicated animal/nature scenes and I'm worried about them. Period. Just worried about them. I also keep going back to the footprint theme. I thought before I would have footprints that would fade away as the animal progressed showing that the animal is disappearing. Then I thought I would simply put the footprints of the animals on the back of the quilt. At least they would be somewhere, right? After sleeping on the problem, I thought I should figure out something else fo

Barn Hunt Ribbon Board

Since River likes scent work, I decided we should try barn hunting. There's a bit more of a "hunt" feel to it, since she really has to search little hidey holes, dig through loose straw and of course climb over bales of straw. We've completed 2 trials now and she seems to enjoy it. We've gotten a few qualifying ribbons, a third and first place ribbon, a High in Class and of course a title ribbon. And just like with the ribbons she's gotten for scent work, I decided to put together a Barn Hunt ribbon board. My ribbon boards are simple foam core and this one happens be a gold color. And since I still have some paw print scrapbooking paper and paw print stickers from decorating the scent work board, I went ahead and used them. I found some beige colored ribbon with chocolate paw prints on it and of course I founds some little cat nip mice. I used my Cameo Silhouette to cut out the letters for each level and decorated the corners with the paw prints ribbon.

Barn Hunt Trial - Columbus All Breed October 31 & November 1

River and I participated in our second barn hunt trial on October 31 and November 1 at Columbus All Breed. She seemed to really enjoy the barn hunt in Marysville at Anything Goes for Dogs and this one was no different. We entered at the Novice level and after 1 successful rat hunt, we moved up to Open. We had a time of 1:27 for our 3rd leg of the Novice title. Not bad at all. The second trial we moved up to Open and it's basically the same as Novice but you find 2 rats instead of 1. River searched the area really well but unfortunately, she only found 1 rat at the 2:30 mark which means we were out of time. So no ribbon for that run but that's okay. She was doing well searching everything but she just didn't hit on the right area. On Sunday, November 1, we entered into 2 trials. Both were at the Open level. River is used to alerting to a scent when she's on the ground level. Here she has to try to alert to the rat when she's balancing on a wiggly straw bale up

Adult Coloring Pages

Every day our lives are packed with stress. We are constantly bombarded with news and its usually horrific or shocking from around the world. It's some kind of disaster (natural or otherwise), people being murdered, sold, abused, neglected or tortured. It seems the human race can and does on a regular basis sink further and further to new levels of violence on a daily basis and between TV, computers, radio and smartphones we are constantly hearing all about it. So we need to find a way to focus our minds on something simple and block out all the garbage and let our minds find some peace. Even tasks such as crochet, knitting or video games takes a certain amount of concentration. If these tasks are fairly routine for your brain and is soothing or calming to you, by all means have a go. But there's another way to "zone out" and turn off your brain. Coloring. Adult coloring books are all the rage right now. Amazon will frequently indicate a coloring book for adults i

Animal Quilt - Frog

I have completely forgotten the name of this little frog. Golden Mantra is sticking in my head but I guess it doesn't matter. I worked on the background first and then the frog.  I had some slight bleeding into the background but I'm not sure I care. This little frog was pretty easy to do and its a decent painting but I just don't think this one is doing anything for me. I was going for some diversity in my quilt but I may have to find another animal to paint.

Barn Hunt Trial - Anything Goes for Dogs in Marysville October 17 & 18

River and I took a barn hunting class last August and did well. She's participates in scent work trials already and barn hunt is similar. She has to find a rat in a tube vs. scent. Barn hunting is an off shoot of Earth dog. Earth dog classes are where small dogs, usually terriers, go "underground" or go under a faux ground and hunt rats hidden in PVC piping. Big dogs can't go through little tunnels so barn hunting was developed for bigger dogs. Terriers can still participate but now your bigger dogs such as Dobermans and mixes like River who is a Shepard/Husky mix can join in the fun too. In barn hunting, a search area is roped off and a course is built with bales of straw. PVC pipping is hidden on the course which can contain a rat, litter or nothing. The pipping can be on the floor or up on bales and are covered with loose straw. The dog must go through the tunnel, climb on bales (all 4 feet off the ground) and of course locate the rat. And of course, you are time

Ribbon Board for my Dog

My dog River, participates in C-WAGS scent trials and has won or qualified (Q'd) in several levels. You need 4 Q's to get a title in each level 1-4. She has her title in Level 1 and 3 and 3 Q's at level 2 so we have quite a few ribbons. I thought I'd organize them on a piece of black foam core that I had laying around. So I got out my Cameo Silhouette and got cutting. I had some paper left over from my in-laws 50th anniversary party and then I found some paw print paper and stickers in the scrapbooking section at Joanns. The board isn't really all that big so I started with the Level 1 ribbons at the top left of the board then I dropped down a little and went to the right side of the board for Level 2 and so forth. I was trying to maximize the board space and I think this way worked out well. The Title rosettes are large and colorful and I didn't think it would work hanging at the end of each level. They are a lot longer then the purple ribbons, so I f

50th Wedding Anniversary Party

I was doing a lot of planning for a 50th wedding anniversary party that was held on September 12. I started planning this in June since my in-law's 50WA is September 11, which as you all know is now a perfectly depressing day here the U.S. Location? Done. Caterer? Done. Save the Date postcards? Done and done.  I don't work so I've got a lot of time on my hands to kill, so I decided I would do some things myself. Honestly, after the caterer/location rental the budget has dwindled anyway so it's a good thing I'm crafty. I decided to stay away from the large bakeries for the cake so, I went to Giant Eagle Market District in Upper Arlington, since the caterer recommended them for the cake. I spoke to one of the cake decorators and found out a small 3-tiered wedding cake that will feed roughly 60 people will cost just over $300. Normally, I would say "great!" but after thinking about it, I can't image paying $300 for cake and buttercream is simple. I

Cake Lace

For my in-law's, 50th Wedding Anniversary is over. I decided to bake the cake myself and I'll probably get in over my head but no matter! I can bake cake but decorate? Not so well. But since I didn't want to pay several hundred dollars for a cake, I've decided to make it myself. I have another post on just the cake if your interested. I found a product called "Cake Lace" by Claire Bowman. You can find it on Amazon, Global Sugar Art or even Etsy. I bought the pre-mixed Gold color off of Etsy because it came from AZ. Global Sugar Art was sold out and I think Amazon ships from the UK. This is a product from UK so you might want to allow several MONTHS to get it. I was going to order the Soft Gold color for the cake but when I went to order it, it wouldn't have gotten here in time and yes this was Mid July for a party Sept 12. I could've paid the $50 to expedite it but I already have quite a lot in the materials I have and I guess I just didn't care

2015 Secretariat Festival

We went to the Secretariat festival last year hoping to get my quilt signed by Ron Turcotte and Penny Chenery. Unfortunately, the day we were leaving, the festival posted the Ms. Chenery was sick and wouldn't be there. We went anyway and got the quilt signed by Mr. Turcotte. This year was just the opposite. Ron Turcotte was injured earlier this year in a car accident and was unable to attend. I went online and pre-purchased an autograph token for Ms. Chenery. You pay a little more but everything goes to support various charity organizations, so I don't mind. This also puts you in line first. You don't have to wait in line with the masses. We got to the event at 9:00 a.m., and we saw the Superman Secretariat statue they had out front, which was new from last year. It was too cute and silly for words and I had to have a picture of it. I went into the building where all the signed merchandise and memorabilia is and got my token. I was amazed to find out that was #1.

How to Make a 4-Tiered Cake

Since I've apparently lost my mind, I decided to make a 4 tiered 50th anniversary cake for my in-laws. Seriously, I don't think anyone sane (who doesn't already make cakes for a living) would try this. Why 4 tiers, you ask? Well, because 1) I couldn't decided on what flavors to make so I'm making them all and 2) because the design I have in mind needed to be even. See perfectly good reasons, right? I ordered some cake mixes from Global Sugar Art and they were really good. One cake mix only called for oil and water since the eggs were already in the mix but the second one called for eggs. Apparently, they are changing their formula so you may or may not need to add eggs. Just follow the instructions on their packaging. You can check out all their products here . While, looking for websites, videos and whatnot as to how to do this, I came across something call Cake Lace. This stuff is really cool. You basically smear this paste like substance into a mold, let dry