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Sunday, September 25, 2011

Look what I found at the fair

This year I had the wonderful experience of going to the fair, and getting to see several of my customers quilts entered into the competition. I had a couple surprises, and... I knew a couple of my customers had expressed an interest in entering their quilt in the fair.


This is my customer with her Thimbleberries quilt. That quilt started quite a following, I have since quilted 5 of them, and I have 4 more waiting for me to get to them. Her quilt received an honorable mention from the judges. Way to go, thank you for letting me quilt for you.


This is another customers quilt. She called it "Canning and Tanning". You can't see much of the quilting detail, so I will try my best to describe it. On the blue border, I just quilted a feather border. On the jars themselves, I quilted detail in the jar lid so it looked like it screwed on, and I put detail on the jars that looked like curves of the jars and then added in cursive the words Kerr and Ball (like you would see on canning jars). As for the shelves, she used all black fabric, so I tried to separate the detail by creating a tile background behind the jars and a wood grain shelf under the jars. I am not sure how well I can explain this, I hope it makes sense. She was very happy to receive a honorable mention ribbon for her quilt. I am so happy for her.


This is another quilt by the same customer. This quilt is all primitive appliqué and embroidery. I just did an all crosshatch with a old style feather border. My customer wanted to keep the era an old style quilt, and asked to keep the quilting to minimum. She received an honorable mention on this quilt also. What an honor.


This is a closeup, maybe you can see some of the detail?



This customer's quilt was a major challenge for me. I put this quilt on the frame three times. When I put it on the third time I decided to turn it, I felt like I needed to change my luck with this quilt, I think I was feeling a little superstitious.


My customer ended up with a second place. What a surprise. It sure was a beautiful quilt, and I think I quilted the hell out of it. It took 10 days and too many bobbins, but... I finally finished the quilt. I was definitely intimidated by this quilt. When my customer brought the quilt to me she told me she wanted to put it in the fair. Now that it is done and I see she has done well at the fair, I am ready to face this challenge next year. (Wish me luck!) Congratulation, and thank you for letting me quilt for you.


This was the grand surprise. This was the first real customer quilt that I ever did. I had been quilting as a business for about a month, and quilting for the ladies at the LQS. This customer quilt came to me by one of the ladies that is in my BOM class, she recommended me to her friend because she had seen my work and thought I might be able to quilt it with more than a pantograph.

This quilt also took me a while, but I learned so much. I put rays behind the birds, because that is what the book that the pattern came out of had quilted (by hand) on it, and then I did my signature feather doodle in the tan border, and in the mariners compass I just did quarter inch inset rules around it, and then some swirls around in the tan part. You want to talk about intimidation. I think I sat and wondered what I had gotten myself into longer than it took to actually quilt it. I remember calling the customer to tell her I had it done, I was so scared she wasn't going to like it. I was so happy to get this done.


She received an honorable mention and an innovative judges award. I am so proud of this quilt, not so much my quilting, but the story behind this quilt. The customer actually had a group of women from her office that worked on it. It was like a quilters guild project, they each made a part of it for a co-worker that had retired. What a wonderful group of friends to make such a beautiful quilt and give it to their friend.

Now I just wish I hadn't waited so long to go to the fair. I had waited until the last Friday night to go, and I had to rush to get through everything. I only stayed long enough to get some photos and get out of there.

What a wonderful surprise the fair turned out to be.
thanks - star

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