The Reveal

I seem to have lost a lot of momentum.  Posting a photo of my show quilt, Urban Oasis, now, two weeks after our Guild Show, seems anticlimactic.

I've been busy since the show because when I saw the quilt on stage, I realized it wasn't hanging flat. I wouldn't normally care.  After all it is a bed quilt. But I've entered it into the Vermont Quilt Festival where it will be judged.  I've never done anything like this before and I'm a bit nervous about how it will stand up to the competition. What was I thinking?  The largest and oldest quilt show in the Northeast!  The theme category this year was My Fantasy Garden and so it seemed like kismet.

Naturally I want to give it my best effort.  So I asked my friend Chris who also happens to teach quilting for advice. What's wrong?  Is there anything I can do? At first glance she thought that it was bound too tightly.  I groaned inwardly.  That's not happening, I thought. But when she examined it further she changed her mind, and suggested more quilting instead.   Where I wondered?  Her synapses were firing, she hypothesized that the batik fabric was the culprit.   Maybe the batik fabric hadn't shrunk as much as the other fabrics as it has a higher thread count, maybe more quilting in the batik sections might help draw them in. This made perfect sense to me.  And there is certainly nothing to lose. I don't think there is a such a thing as too much hand quilting.  

Fortunately there are still a couple more weeks before I need to ship it off to Vermont. My fingertips need a break from the keyboard and now have a date with a quilt.

You haven't seen the last of this one.  I hope the next photo will be the professional one I'll have taken when it's on display.  Wish me luck.