Cribbage, Dad, Quilts, And Making Lasting Memories

National Cribbage Day is February 10, and Kris’ dad’s birthday is February 21. Now, what do those two things have in common and what do they have to do with the Pixeladies? Well, let Kris explain!

The Quilt

The first quilt we ever made together as the Pixeladies was for the River City Quilters’ Guild’s 2004 Quilt Show, “A Legacy of Love.” The challenge we set for ourselves was to make a quilt with no hearts! At the time, my dad was working on his autobiography. We had edited several photos for him to include in his autobiography and thought they could also form the basis of an interesting quilt. Dad, who was also known as Harry and Stormy (!!), held court at the quilt show. My, how he regaled the people with stories and basked in the limelight. He loved this quilt. (You can read a bit more about him in this post.)

One of the many symbolic elements we added to the quilt were 1,000 red French knots. We based this on the Japanese senninbari, or 1,000-stitch belt. During wartime, women would fashion a long white cloth and have other women embroider a French knot stitch in the cloth. They would then present this belt as a talisman to a soldier going off to war. My dad had such a belt presented to him at Tule Lake Segregation Camp, which he visited once while serving in the US Army. On our quilt, we had people at the blood donation center, the airline waiting area, and a friend’s bar mitzvah after-party add stitches to the quilt. We confess, the deadline forced us to finish the last few hundred stitches ourselves. (I use the term “we” loosely as Deb hates to make French knots. I think she tricks me by always saying mine look better.) Ah, there are many great memories wrapped up in that quilt.

 

Cribbage

Thinking about my dad always makes me and Deb remember the “great cribbage tournament” we organized between my dad and Deb’s mother-in-law, Blanche. We’re talking here about two very experienced players with a lot of swagger. Blanche was twelve years older than Dad. Dad was not one to bow to anyone, but he sure doffed his hat at Blanche’s card-playing ability. She won the day, even skunking him one time! (Click here to learn how to play cribbage.) I memorialized the now legendary tournament in one of my first Photoshop projects as Deb’s student. Wow, that was eons ago! When Dad was at the end of his life, he held court . . . again. Deb and her husband Dave came to visit, and Dad told Dave, “Hey, I’m gonna play some cribbage with your mom again.” He always did want that revenge match.

And here’s an interesting aside for my fellow cribbage players: the 34th Grand National Cribbage Tournament will take place Sep 22-27, 2020 in Sacramento. I want to go and watch the pros do it!

 

 

Some Photoshop Lessons

You, too, can place a photo within a shape using the cookie cutter tool in Photoshop Elements. Click here to read how Deb used the tool. By the way, we’ll be teaching our beginning Photoshop Elements series again, starting April 6. Registration begins March 6. Click here to read more about our classes.

And one last lesson: always keep your Photoshop files. You never know when you will need them again. Case in point: the reason Dad’s photo at the quilt show is so small is because we didn’t think we’d need to keep the hi-resolution image (and now we can’t remember who gave us the original). Also, the image of Dad and Blanche is the scan of the actual scrapbook page because “I’ll never need to use this Photoshop file again.” Ha!