My Guild, Rockbridge Pieceworkers Quilt Guild, has a quilt show as part of the Rockbridge Regional Fair in July. I joined the guild in August 2006, but was not ready to put anything in last year's show. This year I put two of my quilts in the show - the T-shirt quilt 
and the Butterflies and Hydrangeas quilt 
. Neither of them won a prize, but it was neat to see them displayed in a public place. The quilting group that I lead at our local Senior Center also put a quilt in the show that several of us worked on, so that was neat for those ladies to see their handiwork on display. 
For me the best part of the quilt show was that our youngest daughter entered 5 of her quilted wallhangings in the show. I am showing them here with their labels so you can see what she said about each one. She is in her second year of working on organic farms in the Columbia County, New York area. "Flame," 
"Chocolate," 
"Bodo," 
"Wiltsie Bridge," 
and "El Corazon." 
She has painted on some of them, and I think just did a terrific job on them. She has an art background, but has only been quilting for a couple of years. Allie just recently finished a quilt for the daughter of her current employers that they commissioned her to make for their daughter's wedding. Here is a picture of her and my hubby with that quilt -
She designed the quilt herself, cut out all those orange flowers from some batik fabric and machine appliqued them on, machine quilted the quilt and included some botanical designs in the quilting and has a quote from Khalil Gibran quilted in cursive writing around the border - 
Quite an amazing job I thought! The couple did not see the quilt until the reception, where it was hanging up for all to see.
, BargelloBowl 
, Simplified Log Cabin 
and Say it With Flowers 
. Much to my surprise I got an Honorable Mention ribbon for the Say it With Flowers. I entered it in the handquilted category - I made it for my mom in '06-'07. I think it was the second handquilted one that I have finished. The comments from the judge were interesting. She thought my triangle points need improvement, and that my handquilting needed to be more consistent in size and space between - I thought the points were pretty darn good, and it was only my 2nd handquilted piece so I thought it was pretty good. She did like the theme fabric and felt the colors were well coordinated - I should give all credit to the fabric designer -- this was a kit that I bought so all the fabrics were in one collection from Northcott I think. She did like the checkerboard border - I was pleased with the way it turned out, and it was easier than I thought it would be. She also said "Excellent handling of difficult binding fabric choice - very good binding corners." That was satisfying because it was hard to do - the binding is a strip of the fabric that has a rope design that I used as the top of the binding and right beside that are some strips that show up on the binding on the back - so it was nice that she noticed that. It is instructive to get the judge's comments, but you need a bit of a thick skin. The important thing for me remains to be that I make quilts that I like, in fabrics that I like, that suit the person I am making them for if that is the purpose. My mom says she likes this quilt - and it will shortly be back in her living room - although this morning I was wrapped up in it a bit while working on this blog entry. It was a cool and foggy morning in central VA - a typical August morning that reminds us that summer is fading.
