BZB Quilt Show 2014

The quilt show was a success!  While I didn't get photos of all the pieces hung, I was very pleased to see that the last quilt I finished was a winner in the Large Pieced category--I got a 2nd place ribbon!  Very exciting!  This is the first time I ever won a ribbon for a guild show, and the first time our guild decided to vote for winners for all the categories with the guild members only, rather than have the public vote.  We had a potluck preview party on Friday after the show was hung and got ballots to vote.  The only voting that was done by the visitors was a Popular Vote--they could vote for their favorite.  While there were several really nice pieces, I didn't see any that were really *WOW* worthy.  You know the ones--the drop-dead-gorgeous one that everyone loves.  The winner of that vote is anyone's guess.

Just to recap, this is the Scrap Bag Jewel Box quilt--108" square.

This one I called Civil War Unchained because it's Civil War fabrics and it's a chain quilt.  I was playing with words and thought of slaves being unchained.  

This one is Purple Pinwheels, half-square triangles made from swapped charm squares.


Japanese One-block Wonder - Emma can now put it back on her bed. :)


The Children's Hospital Quilt for me to use the next time we need to have an overnight stay.


Pineapple Party!  Wheee!

So I was not at the show yesterday due to the SOUNDERS WINNING 4-1, but today I went out to the county fairgrounds where they were having a "Spring Festival". It wasn't heavily attended, at least on Sunday, but had rides, musicians, traveling entertainers (clowns, balloon animal makers), and some kind of car racing.  It was $5 for a car load to park, and all the activities (except for the carnival rides) were free.  We couldn't charge a fee to get in for the quilt show, but they had items for sale in the Boutique, sold vendor space in the hall, and sold raffle tickets for multiple items.  The guild calls it a "Fishbowl" raffle, where a number of items are offered and a fish bowl with a corresponding number is set out for each item or grouping.  Contestants put tickets in the bowls for the things you want to win.  They also have a Guppie Prize, which is everyone's non-winning tickets dumped into a large fish bowl and all the things that didn't get any takers are given to that person.  Kind of a boobie prize, really.


I was working in the charity quilts area where we had set up our machines to sew 9-patches together.


 We had pre-cut hundreds of 4 1/2" squares for our visitors to lay out on flannel-covered boards, and we would sew them together.  Some of them were well-thought out combinations.  Some of them were more...eclectic.  Those blocks will be sorted into piles and used to make quilts for patients at Children's Hospital.  This was a great activity for children and adults!  I hope that it made them feel like they were a part of the charity project.


We also had a pile of fabric squares set aside for children to color on, and those would be incorporated into quilt tops for the charity quilts, too.  They could trace photocopied drawings onto the fabric and then color it and add extras.  KayLee even took part and made a few blocks--adding tennis shoes to butterflies.


One thing I found an excellent idea was bagging all the quilts in clear plastic bags for transport back to their owners.  This helps lessen the accidental misplacing of a quilt, especially smaller ones.  We had an incident at the last Moonlighter's quilt show where a small quilt got sandwiched between two others and it took a few days to recover it.

Back to the grind tomorrow.  Three more days to finish the guild newsletter and snag 95 more points for the Munzee clan war.  I'm the last one to achieve the 600 needed for the month.  Sigh.