BLOGAVERSARY, CQI PURSE CONTEST

If you are interested in a great CQ blog to check out, Wendy is about to celebrate her blogaversary on her Stitchdutchess Crazy & Sane Quilting blog and is having a great giveaway. Wendy does lovely stitching and has a great blog.

The results of the CQI 2009 purse contest, all the purse entries are up on the CQI Blog, and you can check it out here. I thought all the entries were fantastatic and had a tough time voting myself.

CQI ANNUAL PURSE CONTEST RESULTS

I woke up this morning and checked my e-mail and found out the results were up on the
CQI annual purse contest I had entered. I could not share my pictures of the purse I entered
until after the voting was finished and the results were posted. There were 2 categories this
year, regular crazy quilting of which there were 9 entries, and other techniques of which there were 2 entries, 1 of which was mine. I won 2nd place in my category! Later, when the purses have been posted in the CQ blog, I will be able to share the pictures of the others. There were some beautiful purses entered this year, and I had a hard time voting myself, they were all lovely.



I decided to make an evening purse that I can take on our cruises. Because I was running out of time, and it was down to 3 weeks before the due date, I decided to just do silk ribbon embroidery. The wisteria-type tree took more than a week to do by itself.















Detail of bottom portion




























The other side

CQI PURSE CONTEST ENTRY

They posted the results of the CQI purse contest awhile ago, and I can now share my pictures of my entry. I was up against some really talented competition and I didn't place,
but I am happy I finished it up and tried my best.

This was one side of my purse. My whale has crystals on his fins for his barnacles. This part I did all by hand.

My original thought was to have a mermaid sitting on the bottom. I had a mermaid machine embroidery design I was going to attach when it was finished. (Too chicken to embroider right on my pieces and good thing).

My Bernina decided 2 weeks ago to have a nervous breakdown and started playing tricks on me. The first design I tried, it got off in the sequence of colors according to the chart and I put in pink for a shell, and it sewed out the mermaid's hair. I finished up the design, but it was off on another color too, and it ended up looking too stupid. This was after I spent 2-1/2 hours making 25 color changes.

The next day, I decided that maybe there was a flaw in the design, and I would try another.
The second design got to about color number 3 and it stopped and came up with an error message that said there was some sort of internal failure. I tried 1 more time but I only got to about color number 1. During all of this time, it had been breaking thread every other pass, despite changing multiple needles, multiple types of needles. I finally gave up on the mermaid idea and decided to just finish my purse, as it was down to the last few days. But it was frustrating. I picked my machine up yesterday and apparently there was a broken spring.




This is the other side of the purse.

I think now that the contest is over, I am going to add some more beading and things I did not have a chance to before.