One of my personal sewing goals this year was to enter a quilting contest. I think the reason I picked this as a goal was because while I do put myself out there all the time on this blog, I don’t put myself out there for “judging”. Judging is hard. You worry if what you do is good enough. I’m really glad that I decided to participate if only for the experience. I’m not sure I will do it again but it was certainly fun yesterday to walk into the hall where the quilts are displayed at the county fair and see my quilts hanging.
I entered Anne’s Easter Dress into the fair just for fun. This is the dress that I am probably most proud of making because the bodice is fully lined (a first for me). I won a blue first place ribbon for her dress. It was so cute when Anne saw it yesterday and asked “mommy, is it going to stay here forever?” I had to reassure her repeatedly that we would be picking it up on Monday.
After finding her dress, I went on a hunt for my quilts and found my Rainbow Star Burst quilt.
I entered this quilt into the lap quilt lot for the machine pieced, machine quilted category and won a blue first place ribbon.
I ended up being kind of silly and entering two quilts in the same category, so they were competing against each other.
The Sew Intertwined Quilt was awarded a third place ribbon in the same category, Machine Pieced, Machine Quilted.
Ribbons aside, the most fun part was seeing all the quilts hanging up! I get to pick my quilts and Anne’s dress up on Monday and I will get a feedback form from the judges. I am excited to see what they have to say. I’m hoping for truly constructive criticism so that I can improve my work.
In the meantime I have 20 hours left to figure out my goal for August. Guess I better get on that! Don’t forget to link your finish up for July!
Oh, and I apologize for the crappy cell phone pictures! I brought my camera with me and took one picture and then got a nice little message saying “memory card full”. Seriously?!? I’m hoping to head back tomorrow with my parents (who are flying in this afternoon for a weekend visit), this time I will bring an empty memory card!
Have a great Thursday!
While this process may seem a bit excessive, I have to say it gave me lots of confidence knowing the overall visual impact the quilting would have before I started. I doubt I will do this with every quilt, but at least I will have this technique in my back pocket for the future.
