The Quilt Show!

Last weekend was the Darting Needles Quilt Show in Appleton.  I've attended this show several times, but never entered anything.  This year I decided to enter two quilts.  I was really excited to win ribbons on both of them!

Hocuspocusville won a blue ribbon.  This is a pattern from Crabapple Hill Studios.  The blocks are hand-embroidered and the whole quilt is machine quilted.  This quilt has fabric from the Ghastlies line on the back, and I think the back is as fun to look at as the front.

And my Bee In My Bonnet Row Quilt won a red ribbon and a ribbon for Best Domestic Machine Workmanship.  It was hanging in the front of the show when I first went in, along with the other ribbon-winners.  This show had separate categories for domestic machine quilting, long-arm quilting and hand quilting, so the winners of all three categories were hanging together.  It was pretty exciting to see my quilt with a big ribbon on it!  The judges comments for both quilts (different judges) were that my corners should be 90 degrees.  I thought they were, but apparently not close enough!  I guess I'll have to start paying a little more attention to that.  And strive for consistent stitch length - sigh.  I've been working on that, but it seems to elude me most of the time.

Joanne Blank won the Viewer's Choice award with this quilt, which was from the book by Yoko Saito and all hand-applique in Japanese fabrics.  This was such a fun quilt to look at, and the quilting was very interesting.  Each section had a different texture in the quilting.  This whole quilt was just absolutely gorgeous.  I think Primitive Gatherings had a club based on this quilt.

I didn't take very many pictures of the show because I was a little rushed for time, but it was a great show and I'm glad I entered.

The only recent finish I have to show is for the Country Threads UFO Challenge.  My UFO #2 is done - it was a fall cross stitch pattern that I made into a pillow.

Finishing this turned out to be more of a challenge than I anticipated.  I quilted the fabric, so then I had to quilt the cross-stitch part to keep it from puffing up and looking weird.  The fabric was left over from a fall quilt called Spice Medley, so the pillow will match it. 

So that's it for the September roundup!  Hopefully October will include a little more time in the sewing room.  The weather here has been beautiful for the last few weeks, so I haven't spent too much time in there.