Our guild is having a quilt show in a couple of weeks and they were hoping to get 200 quilts to hang but were short a few from what I heard. There are plenty of people who make quilts specifically for shows – we have an art quilter in our machine quilting bee that I think that’s the bulk of what she makes is for shows – but I wasn’t that organized. I do have a couple of original designs in my head but I’m still committed to not starting anything new until I’ve cleared out my UFOs from 2017.

But I figured I could at least submit 2 or 3 that I’d made in the past year.  They’re just bed quilts that I had made – the Splendid Sampler and En Provence – but I did a good job on the quilting for SS and the colors came out well on EP so I submitted them. I did also submit the mini that I made last spring which was an original.  I went to turn them in yesterday and…apparently I needed labels on each of them.  Say what? I knew they had said to cover up any labels so I thought I was done. This is actually in case the worst scenario happens and a quilt got lost. I replaced my machine with one that does embroidery but hadn’t learned how to use it yet. No time like the present! It takes a different bobbin holder, needle plate, thread, foot, and of course it involves a hoop.

I don’t know why I thought that would be a big hassle. I had it all set up in a couple of minutes. Fortunately, I had ordered a big roll of tear-away stabilizer and a trial size of thread so I was set. One thing I really like about this machine is that it tells me on the screen which hoop to use (it came with a bunch of different sizes), which foot to use, then it tells me the exact dimensions of the finished size and also how long it will take to stitch out. In fact, it even shows the total number of stitches required.

I tried out 3 different fonts and sizes for 3 different labels and got them stitched on last night by hand.  The quilts are officially in their hands. It’s nice to be able to relax, knowing I didn’t turn in a ribbon-worthy quilt and it’s just about the learning process. And who knows? Maybe next time I’ll work on something with the show in mind.