Quilty weekend

At our guild meeting last Thursday the quilt ribbons from our show in March were handed out.

My good friend Trudy won one of the children's choice awards. A very cute ribbon made with a crayon box, and ribbons embroidered with the name of the show and the award. Since she wasn't at the meeting I took it to give to her later. Last night my sewing 13 year old saw it, and got excited thinking I had won an award. I explained the whole thing to her. She disappeared for a little bit and came back in with "Vanessa's Choice" award because she thought my quilt should have won something. Sort of makes you go Ahhhhhhh doesn't it? Her award and the quilt I entered are shown here. I'm not sure if you can tell from the picture, but her ribbons are made from duct tape. She is referred to around here as the Duck Tape Queen.






The quilt I entered was made for daughter #2 for her graduation two years ago. She loves all things oriental and the color green. I don't think you can see it in the picture, but the edges have a double frame under the binding. My sweet favorite cousin, who was with me when I pieced it, had been doing similar edging on a wall hanging. Hers had one strip of fabric, cut at 1 1/2 inches and pressed in half wrong sides together and sewn under the binding similar to piping. It looked really pretty. She got the bright idea that if ONE of these strips at 1 1/2 inches looked that pretty, I should do TWO strips, one at 1 1/2 inches and one at 1 inch, that way folded it comes to 1/2 inch and then there would be 1/4 inch, peeking out alongside the 1 1/2 inch piece which, when folded becomes 3/4 inch. Does anyone with half a brain think this would be a great idea to do all the way around a queen size quilt? Well, the two of us, with two brains between us, thought it was fantastic!
I thought that for about 1/4 of the quilt, then I thought it might be sort of nice for the next 1/4 of the quilt, then for the rest of it I pretty much just thought that sewing those two folded pieces AND the binding was actually just a pain in the______. But by that time I was not going to give up and rip it all out. However, live and learn, I will never do that again! Sometimes I feel that I have a lot more of those live and learn moments than are actually necessary.






This picture shows some of my binding time this weekend. Like my helper? That's my sweet Cassie keeping my lap warm.