The quilt that didn't win a ribbon

This is the comforter I made in January to keep me warm at night! It didn't get any ribbons, but I just entered it for fun.

 I made this all from my stash. It amounts to about 20 light fat quarters and 20 dark fat quarters for the top. I even had the backing so the only purchase I had to make was for the batting.

 I used 2 layers of an extra loft poly to make it really warm and fluffy. It's tied with perle cotten at the corners of the blocks. When you enter a tied quilt they look to see if the ties are all tied in the same direction. Mine weren't! I also had the comment that the ties were too tight? I can't quite figure that one out, but I like the quilt and it's really cozy on cold winter nights, so it fulfills its purpose.

More Fair Results...2006 Coos County Fair

My other blue ribbon winner was Butterfly Pond. I got some really nice comments from the judge, so I am really happy with that! I've been using the scraps from this quilt to make some really neat postcards. I have some for sale, just check out the quilts for sale link on the side of the page.

I'm also working on a tote bag from the scraps (I had a lot of left-overs from this quilt, and they were so pretty I figured I had to make something out of them!) I got about half of it machine quilted last night, but was really struggling with thread breaking. 

After some internet research this morning, I think I am going to give my machine a good cleaning, check the tension settings, change the needle (yes, a novel concept for sure) and do a test run. I suspect part of it is that I am just using good old Coats and Clark thread and my Juki does regular sewing ok with it, but doesn't really like it for quilting. But, I do like the colors I have and want to finish with them. Last time I was having this trouble a good cleaning did the trick, that was just last week, though. You never can tell though. All it takes is one stray thread to throw everything off!

Coos County Fair 2006

Last week was fair week. I entered 5 quilts, and a pirate costume I made for my daughter last year. I got two blue ribbons, and two red ribbons on my quilts, and a red ribbon for the costume. I won the special award for miniatures with my paper pieced lighthouse quilt- "A Light in the Storm" It is made from a commercial pattern, which was very nice - all of the paper piecing patterns were included, and there were a lot of them! I need to figure out how many pieces in this quilt because there are so many. I had a lot of fun making it, and decided to hand quilt it because according to the rules at last year's quilt show it was too large to be a miniature (or so I thought). According to the applications for this years show it just makes it as a miniature - yeah!! Anyway, the machine quilted category for wall-hangings is huge, but there were only a few hand quilted ones last year, so I thought by hand quilting it I would stand a better chance of winning a ribbon on it. Oh well! It won at the fair, so I hope it does well at the show in Sept. The one thing about the show is that the ribbons are awarded by public voting, so it's not always the best technical work that wins, but the most eye catching. I try to enter something in the miniatures every year - it's a small but competitive category! Plus, I just like to make them, so it gives me a good excuse to come up with yet another small quilt.