I'm A Winner!!!!!!

It's always fun to win.  This year I entered a couple different contests and did win.  I entered my embroidery at the Alameda County Fair and won 1st place and Best of Show. I was quite proud of winning BOS because this was a first for me. At the county fairs I've entered, they lump all the embroidery together to judge. This means I'm lumped in with specialty pieces like Brazilian Embroidery, Machine Free Motion Embroidery, Ribbon Embroidery, and other awesome techniques that I have not attempted yet. But this year my Redwork piece apparently was the best in all the categories, so I'm a bit proud of that!  My plans are to enter it in the California State Fair for next year. I'm not really expecting to win that one, but it will be fun to compete anyway.

I also participated in The Row By Row Experience (RBR). This is a quilting activity that starts the first day of summer and ends on Labor Day.  The basic rules are: Collect 8 or more different rows from 8 or more different participating quilt shops, assemble a quilt top using those rows. A completed quilt can be submitted to any participating shop for a prize of 25 Fat Quarters of fabric.  If you use that particular shop's row, they award you with a bonus prize.  (A completed quilt consists of pieced, quilted, bound, and labeled)   The top picture is my completed quilt, the second picture is my AWESOME prize. This quilt shop, The Wooden Gate in Danville California,  has a very generous owner. She's only required to give 25 fat quarter cuts of fabric, but she decided to give 50 fat quarters. Why? Because the fabric she chose was the Deco State Flowers, which, of course, includes 50 states. She said she didn't feel right just giving the winner half the country, so she included all 50 states. She also included a pen with the store name on it (cool pen with a light and a stylus), and a store RBR fabric license plate. The bonus gift was any book from the store valued at $40 or less. WOW! Really generous!

Winning is fun, it gives value to your hard work and skill, and sometimes you benefit with prizes or money.  Gladly, the winning quilt for RBR is not the best quilt to enter the shop, it's the FIRST quilt. And since my quilting abilities will never win a blue ribbon at the county or state fair, I'm happy there's a contest for the first quilt!!!

I need to give credit to my FaceBook friend Erin for gathering a few patterns for me.  I gathered most of what I used in my quilt, but there was a couple she picked up for me.  Also a shout-out to my FaceBook friend Catherine, for sending me, as a gift, one of the rows from Broadway Quilts in Sonoma California (it's the one with the grapevine).  I had sent her a few patterns she was looking for, and as a thank you, she sent me this row.  Erin also sent me a cute row from Pennsylvania because she knew I would probably make a second quilt using a specific theme.  Very nice ladies, and generous!  And I've never met them face to face!!