poodle mischief... A Cole's Caper

Someone on my online art group asked if she needed to be concerned about adopting a cat since her studio is open to the house...
This was my response...

My standard poodle puppy ate straight pins.

I kept him in the studio with me so as to keep trouble to a minimum... that didn't work as unbeknownst to me, he quietly took the pin cushion off the sewing table. Stealthily he left the room because he's apparently a ninja poodle, and when I looked up and saw him gone...
I went looking and found him just outside the studio quietly pulling the pins one by one out of the pin cushion.

Yiikes!!

Gratuitous picture of more pin cushions

 I first asked him if he ate any, but he was 5 months old and hadn't learned English yet, so I rushed him to the Poodle Emergency room. They did an x-ray and sure enough he had ingested two flower head pins. I said, well, go in with some scope thingy and pull them out!

They said, "just wait and see if they pass naturally"
Naturally?! Are you kidding me?
"Oh, and don't let him be active in the meantime, and feed him bulk agents like metamucil to move things along"

Anyone else had a 5 month old standard poodle??? Keep him quiet??
We'd all need drugs.

To make a long story longer, we followed the plan, he was subdued too, walked slowly, and as he turned out to be, he followed our feelings intuitively.

Three days later, three long days of checking poop each time, three long days of enduring worry and feeding rice, a miracle happened and he did pass those pins!

They were stuck in some toy fluff he had also eaten.
We yelled hooray! He leapt into the air with glee because we were happy again!

After that I respected his stealth. He became perfect as far as not eating weird stuff until he turned 11 or so. Then when we left the house he ate three hexies including plastic templates (see the first picture of what was left!), well one was just chewed up and left.

 he ruined two pair of dance shoes by eating half of each left shoe, he ate half a watercolor painting I had just finished, he ate half a roll of toilet tissue, and other random stuff.

He bought himself into poodle-prison with this antisocial behavior, so that we baby gate him into the pared down living room when we leave the house so he has to just lay on his sofa, look out the window, now down to (dog)food and water.
Cole's take on it??
"I was framed... You ain't pinning this on me!" says Cole, likely thinking up new mischief to get into now that he is old and gray.

(want to see some of my pin cushion collection?? CLICK here for those posts )
(Want to read the original bad dog post? (read it from his perspective)
(want to read more Cole's Capers? See poodle puppy ponderings link on the sidebar!)

slow stitching/ hand stitching/ Bead fun

I am finishing up the painted fall piece.
 I showed you the painting of it, and showed you the 3-D leaves, and this is a pic of the leaves sewn down, the top is pretty heavily quilted for a small 22" X 27" quilt.
I am putting on a striped binding slightly larger than usual, finishing at 3/4". 

The leaves are standing up nicely and I quite like the rough threadwork on the edges and the veining.
The binding will brighten up the whole caboodle.
Of course I woke up thinking about embellishments though. I am not even done with binding although I did add in the sleeve already. I should wait to do beading and special trims til the binding is done, however....

Can you see the bugle breads, yellow sequins, and gold metallic star sequins?? I played for an hour while having coffee this morning. Pulled out the bead trays, auditioned many possibilities. A few are being called back for a second trial but by tomorrow I should have sewn down the binding by hand, then be well into the hand beading.

The whole thing was never meant to go this far. I painted it on a whim, and thought it wasn't worthy of finishing til my friend Annie said it was. I looked again and thought, maybe it is.

Then I fussed with borders til I got the idea to make scrappy 9-patches and loved them. Some leaves are painted, some raw-edge appliqued, and some are free standing finished on both sides and curling up like real leaves.It's almost all done but the hand work and I wrote a short story to go with it.
Should be ready to post by Monday.
Thanks for looking!! 

a couple more flamingos to go

another multi colored flamingo, love this fabric! The green with multi colored dots too.
Note the little octopus hiding near the legs,

on blocks this small you can use small scraps. And I save almost all scraps for this purpose. Never know when it will work!  See other lime blocks being made at superscrappy

All the multi-colored ones together.
Colorful types like to flock together...

happy thanksgiving from Cole and his peeps

Happy Thanks giving from Cole (and his peeps)
The sketch is vintage, last year, but he hasn't aged much. Still sitting at the table asking for a plate just like ours. 

In honor of a feeding frenzy, I thought I would show you what we bought at the craft festival last weekend... 

Look closer....

some hummingbirds made from forks. To go with the dragonflies made with spoons.
All in the front planter.

Clever says I. And at $5 a stake quite a bargain. I love the imagination they show, don't you? Someone creative, thought, those spoons and forks look like wings!

 I'll leave you with this picture of us last year getting ready for dinner....

Fall in Fabric

My love of trees is evident in my art.
I don't seem to tire of them, nor their leaves, bark, lines.
Is it their energy?
I also work on art inspired by the seasons, so I am just now finishing up this year's Fall quilt.

Remember you can click on the photos to enlarge for details. I recommend that to look at the veining in the leaves. Inside each leaf is the branch treatment in the tree... and the lines are inspiring. I find I want to paint the line with threads...

A very simple stylized interpretation on fabric. I pressed the leaf fabric onto scraps of peltex, proving one should never throw scraps away ,

small scraps of peltex stabilizer

 and directed by my heart, I drew lines with thread.

These are going on the fall quilt. I am fighting with the borders now, but it is based on my drawing, turned into painting on fabric, turned into a quilted wall hanging.

Linking to the wonderful parties on my links page, and .supermomnocape

Cole's Caper and some more fabric

Drying off....drying out.... what ever. 

Cole has been hitting the sauce pretty heavy lately, or at least he smelled like he was. (I suspect his "aim" when peeing is off (old man stuff) Anyway, he just got a bath and his one and only task right now is to lay still on his towels and dry off. Then we go into action, brushing, plucking, scissoring, shaving, trimming. 

Oh. It's. SO. much. fun. On to happier times...

Last weekend was the end of the Quilt shop hop and we took a little car trip over to a town called Mt. Airy to Patches Quilt shop http://patchesquilting.com/ 

The owner has puggles, and has always treated Cole like family. He loves her and the store, as do I. 

He and Dad rested their heels on the front porch while I shopped for really cool fabric. Then we all stepped inside to pay the piper....come on in!

 This store has everything. I mean it. And the shop helpers are the friendliest ever. I love coming here but it's an hour's drive for me. Still. I managed to find this ruler set to go with a pattern for a turkey I bought last year. Now where did I put that pattern????

Check out my choices. The top fabric is Laurel Birch Dog panel, the beige has metallic gold on the leaves, the red border print is so deep and pretty in person, and I got a big discount for finishing the bolt to the tune of 1 & 2/3 yds . As for the black and white...

 Did you know I have a betty boop fabric collection? Surprised? I am smitten with her and have been since I watched an old reel to reel cartoon in our living room as a little girl. We used to have a projector and have movie nights, and show cartoons too. What a production! Mostly home movies but the cartoons were real. 

I love a black and white fabric, and one with my pal Betty on it? Win win. 

I've been working on a Fall piece, it's almost ready to show, but here is the border fabric...

It is spectacular in person, and came right out of my Fall collection. I mean I keep my fall fabrics in a special bin, heh heh.
I might be reaching critical mass in the fabric hoarding... I'm using it as fast as I can!
I don't need anymore fabric...said no quilter EVER!

raspberry parfait

Ahhhh Raspberry Parfait is this month's cow. The color is Lime green over at So Scrappy but my "green" cow was already lime plus grass green. I made an executive decision to use red violet...

and just for some sparkle... red violet sparkly glittery fabric for her face. Who doesn't want to sparkle???

Raspberry Parfait is a girl who loves to sparkle. She wants to stand out and vibrates at a lovely rate.
When she was a little calf she thought of becoming a dancer (hoofer) on Broadway...

but alas she had two left feet.
Then she thought about becoming a hoof reader,or a hypnotist, look deep into my eyes, she says....

Her ears were full of stars and moons, and she thought great thoughts. She sang beautifully or so the local bulls said, and she often took the bulls by the horns!
 She loved long walks in the paddock and yearned for imported alfalfa.
She considered getting a tatoo.
She was that kind of girl, one who wanted to experience all life had to offer.

She never left the farm, but she still sparkles.

A little trunk show

Violet Valentine Vase (c)LAPaylor

I am doing a little trunk show today for the blog hop at whimsandfancies so check out the others!
There are  blogposts to go with each of my quilts here,  with detail shots and how they were made.
I have made well over 200 quilts in my quilting life, not all are shown on the blog but I do show 40+ when I  do speaking engagements for groups.

The above picture is one of my 21 Valentine quilts, one each year we've been married. I do a special trunk show of all of them, plus all the Halloween quilts for guilds and speak about working in series.

A-Moo-Ha (c)LAPaylor

A-Moo-Ha was made to as an homage to a state I would love to visit, Hawaii. I do love a cow, and she is stuffed to look, um, like me.
Speaking of me, here is one of my self portraits....

Bikini Body (c)LAPaylor

 I made this to interpret the song, "She wore a teeny weenie Yellow polka dot bikini" She is not only sporting a rhinestone belly button ring but cat's eye glasses with rhinestones.

Klimt  (c)LAPaylor

I was part of a group studying famous painters and interpreting them in fabric. With an emphasis on texture, the group was called STAT see them all here! and the side link takes you to each one, very different styles all 12" square. This one has metal embedded in her tiara.

Time Flies (c)LAPaylor

My favorite among many favorites, Time Flies was made for a challenge to interpret your favorite saying. Time Flies whether you're having fun or not, so better have some fun. It was made about 1998, has a working clock, and hangs at the entry to my studio.

I also make bed quilts, used to always hand quilt but now quilt on my small domestic machine, and although I know how to use subtle color, I revel in clear bright colors. Did you know that colors vibrate? That's why we're drawn to one over another, the response to the actual vibration.

Color is joy to me. 

My focus is on living the creative life, and I have a variety of artistic interests. I enjoy painting, beading, drawing, reading, walks, dancing, and writing as well as finding artistic events while traveling. Please come back and keep in touch. The connection between us is important to me!

Are you new to my blog?? I would love you to follow my progress in living the creative life.
    visit the other trunk shows at whimsandfancies

FAT---Fabric Acquisition Team

There is another reason to buy quilting supplies. Quilter's Quest shop hop with 10 stores spread out across the area. I suspected I would not make it to all this time but wanted to visit some of them and on Saturday this is the Fabric Acquisition Team at Ginny Beyer Studio.
The traffic was so bad it took nearly twice as long to get there as usual so I was in a tizzy by the time we parked. I ended up not buying anything here or at the next store Capital Quilts. I would have liked to buy lots in both stores but where will I put it??  I couldn't shop in Capital because they renovated and the smell makes me ill. wah.
However...

last week my friend Judy and I went up to Bear's Paw in Towson and I managed to leave with just this array of goodies... top left is software to print vintage images on cloth, top right is a pattern for a little bag made from hexies, far right is a pattern for jewelry made from yo-yo's, so very Japanese inspired, and the bottom is the free pattern and 6 10" squares from Bear's Paw given me for spending $40 bucks.
Behind the patterns is a 2 yard Stonehenge fabric on sale for $6 yard. By the way two of the above patterns were on deep discount.

All three on sale! $6 yard and $7 yard. Check out those mushrooms! Neutral lime green. Of course I needed a little glitz too...

what better to sparkle than fusible swarowski crystals?? On sale half off!!

I spaved! (spent + saved)

So Four shops visited, only bought stuff at one but I haven't done that in a while and wanted to see what the shops had for later. We are going to see Patches Quilt shop today, then visit an open house for sale.
Along the way, because Mr Not afraid of color was good enough and patient enough to fight traffic, while not-afraid-of-color poodle was enjoying the breeze thru the open car window, and we were all listening to Diana Gabaldon's latest book on disc, I did some sewing.

This little square was one of the pointillist  paintings I did over the summer with the dauber.go see the others here! I decided to try out some embroidery stitches and threads on it, so just had a great time playing.

I embroidered a bit, then sewed more hexies into my ongoing garden piece described here see my portable-hexie-transport-system here!

I like the lazy daisy + french knot flowers. Well, heading out to the next shop, where I suspect I might be due for a purchase. Wish you were here.

flamingo parade

The color of the month at superscrappy RSC may be lime green but I already did lime green flamingos when I did GREEN ones... I will show them to you in a minute...

 Here are the new three joining the flock.
Multi-colored!! Wheeeeee! What total fun! I might even do more!

I started with the "black sheep" of the flock, with the lime dots. The green dot was in perfect position for his eye right? ( used a marker for the center)

I had a vest made with this fabric, heh heh

I just love the little scrap of water fabric I used... it's probably meant to be sky but I just love the color change. Don't know who made it, but I only have a little and I wish I had lots. Can't have all of each fabric I like, where would it live?

 Is now a good time to show you the size scrap I need for these little guys??

 Here is a printed pattern from SewPrecise, and this time I cut it out, to enlarge it on my printer.
This is a big one, lol.


Look at the beak piece...
which is a pain to do so small...

this is the little tack holding up my batting to make a design wall, isn't it cute?

 The top two are from the Green month. See? When someone says green I think lime...

I want to make two more this month, a red violet and one with this silly dotty green.