Stories from the Sewing Room

Last month at the big guild, a guild member who works with the county fair asked us to consider entering our quilts in the fair. I've never entered anything in a fair before. It's free to enter, so I looked at what I've completed this year, looked at the class descriptions in the booklet, and selected three pieces. I also decided to make a fourth. The original entry date was supposed to be last week Wednesday, but it was moved to Thursday since the fair grounds didn't have power (along with most of town) after the big storm last Tuesday. 

Wednesday I decided to make a pumpkin pillow similar to the one I made my mom last year. I wanted to quilt it the same way, but I hadn't saved the pattern set up. Oops. I grabbed what I thought was the same one, set it up, watched it stitch part of the top row, and went upstairs to make dinner. I came back down and decided that it wasn't worthy of being placed on display. The pattern was off, the tension was off, it was just not great. 

As you can see, it's really tiny. It also has a lot of backtracking, so no way am I pulling it out. It's fine for someone who doesn't know quilting, so I'll probably finish it at some point.

I made a second one and used a different quilting pattern. I was actually going to custom quilt version two, but I didn't have any matching orange thread. Oh well. I quilted it with Swirly Girl and hand bound it. As soon as I was done, we drove over to the fairgrounds and dropped everything off. 

I entered my Malted Mystery quilt (the pink, green, and white one), my In and Out mini version 2 (last month's OMG finish), the pillow, and my art quilt. These are all pictured on my 2024 finishes page. I haven't been to the fair yet, but the lady emailed me this picture.

I had guild last night and another lady told me I did really well and had ribbons on all or most? Huh. I definitely will have to go now. I don't know what the ribbon signifies as far as place or whatever.

Besides that, I've been trying to catch up on the quilts. The whole power outage and then my daughter's job offer and the robotics tournament over the weekend really threw me off. 

I quilted Connie's Ohio Shop Hop quilt--this one is big!--with Radiate. It was fun to look at all the shop blocks and the custom shop hop fabric.

I particularly like these two blocks:

I quilted Haley's quilt with Cakewalk. This one is from Cheryl's Just Two Charm Pack book.

I quilted Charlene's with Diagonal Plaid and Glide Apricot Blush thread.

And I quilted Lauren's quilt with Flirtatious and Glide Limerick thread. 

I bound all three of Connie's quilts.

And put the binding on the front of Haley's so she can hand-stitch it down.