County Fair Contest, My first

I entered a contest at the county fair for the first time in my life.  What a great experience.  Now I know how nerve racking competition in sewing and quilting can be.  But talk about exciting...  I even got a blue ribbon.

This was a special contest for quilt blocks that will be made into a quilt for a drawing at the fair next year.  The block had to follow the theme, "No Place Like Home...Town's of Kansas." 
I had a crazy time trying to come up with an idea for my block.  I went through books, magazines, and web sites with no inspiration at all.  I wanted to go out of the box and not do a basic house block.  I really wanted to go bright with the colors.

I was about to give up, when I opened the July 2012 issue of American Quilter magazine.  Deborah Gordon created a foundation paper pieced baby quilt called, "Baby Bunting" that looked beautiful and reminded me of  a sunset.  Kansas sunsets are so beautiful.  I knew that was what I wanted to do.

I knew curves would be a good challenge for the judging, but I wanted to do patchwork also.  I pulled out the graph paper and designed silhouette of the roof tops for the bottom of the block with 2 1/2" squares and half square triangles.

Sun on Kansas Horizon quilt block

(Just noticed every paragraph starts with I.  lol)  This one was about to too.  I'll work on my writing skills..................................................

The half square triangles were made with this technique.  I love it!!  There is a chart to help with the starting size of the squares in that link.  It is very handy! 

The rays of the sun were made with charms from  
that I participated in earlier in the year.  The rest of the block was a variety of batiks from my stash.

It's so funny how picky you can be when you are going to be judged.  I sewed and ripped and sewed and ripped and sewed and ripped again.  If I spent this much time on each block every time, I may only be able to make one quilt in my lifetime.

The support I received from my husband and daughter were incredible.  When I was ready to give up the idea of doing this, they encouraged me.  I thought it was a crazy idea to do this when I only found out about the contest a couple of days before the block was due, but my husband knew I could do it.  I'm so lucky to have them in my life. 

The ladies accepting the entries made me feel so good.  The first words were, "Oh my, how pretty."  I was good with that and was on top of the world.  They even invited me to join their quilt group. 

Overall, this was such a great experience.  Even without winning, I would have been a winner.  But winning is cool.  lol  My prize?  50 bucks...oh yeah!!!

Now I'm ready to get out of my comfort zone again.  Maybe I'll enter 2 projects next year. 

My husband also had an entry at the fair.  I want to share it because he is so talented.  Check out more of his work here.

Gone Fishing Metal Art

Now to clean up my sewing room,

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