Quilt show…

Next weekend is the bi-annual quilt show, and I have three quilts entered. Only one of them is totally finished and ready to show — the one I secretly made for Jerry last year. That one is being entered in the “Pieced, Medium Size, Professional” category.

I’m having to enter all my quilts in the “Professional” category because I’ve sold a quilt now, so I can’t compete as an amateur anymore. So I don’t expect to win ribbons like last time, but I know I have three crowd-pleasing quilts so it doesn’t matter to me anyway. The judge is a very traditional quilter, so I don’t anticipate that my work will thrill her anyway. LOL!

The other two are very close to completion… The orange one with the quotation from my signature lacks only a label, and then it’s ready. It’s being entered in the “Art Quilt” category, though they may move it to the Pieced, Small Size” one once they see it. Not sure.

And then the Halloween quilt. I have entered this one into the “Pieced, Large Size, Professional” category. The only problem is that it’s technically a medium-sized quilt and I can only have one quilt in that category. So I had to figure out a way to add 5″ to the perimeter to make it qualify as a “Large” without making it look like I was fudging — I needed it to look like I planned this all along. So my mom and I were brainstorming a few weeks ago and came up with the idea of the quilt being held up by someone — a ghost, or a witch, or something. PERFECT!

So yesterday, I created witch fingers and knuckles out of fabric. Here they are, quilted only (prepainted), holding up the Quotation quilt:

And here they are (with painted detail now) this morning with the hat I added today, holding up the Halloween quilt.

So….. Once my mom comes over and takes a look at it, I’ll determine if I want to do witch feet peeking out at the bottom as well, or if I can go ahead and call this done. I have to have the quilts all done and turned in by dinnertime Tuesday. Unlike me to procrastinate this close to a deadline, but there it is.

Oh…. editing to add that the ghosts are painted on with oil paintsticks made for fabric, and it’s quilted with glow-in-the-dark thread around them. The quilted spiderwebs also glow in the dark. I will be adding hot-fix Swarovski crystals to the joints of the spiderwebs this weekend, but that’s not something I can do while the kids are awake because the tool is so dangerous and Alice would no doubt reach out and grab it.

Very excited, especially about the Halloween quilt. I’m glad it’s actually going to be done in time for Halloween! Yay!

Jerry’s vote is that I make the witch feet. I’ve sketched them out, but I think they need to be bigger to go with the hands… So I haven’t started cutting them yet. I’ll probably do them tonight.

Fun fun fun!