Zen & Bertha bring it home

Last weekend, I had quilts at both Quilt Odyssey and the Maine Quilt show.  Someday I'd love to go to Q.O. if it could ever be not on the same weekend!  It is a very good, high-caliber quilt show.  It is leaps and bounds above the Maine show, but this is in my home state and I feel some sense of obligation to place quilts here.  My Quilt Odyssey quilts both took home 2nd place ribbons ("Meet Me at Giverny" and "Rainbow Nouveau"), which was fantastic.  Who doesn't love a little Red, and green (yes this show pays money - an added bonus!!).  I had my Zen Garden and Big Bertha quilts at the Maine Quilt show.  Though I completely love Zen Garden and it's design and colors, I fully expected that Big Bertha would beat it.  The surprise was on me.

 Zen Garden won the Best of Judged, along with an exceptional merit ribbon for achieving over 97 points.  It received many nice comments from show-goers.  This is always nice.  I'm not the type of quilter that likes to hang out by my quilt for the duration of the show, just to be able to answer questions.  In some ways I feel like I am snooping as they chit-chat amongst themselves.  I do pop in and provide answers to their questions if I happen to hear them guessing about something though.  Generally, the comments were nice.

Because Big Bertha didn't win, I have been anxiously awaiting the judges comments to know why.  They arrived today.  I know that it had to be close, since Bertha took an exceptional merit ribbon also.  There was one other quilt with a purple ribbon - this one.  Megan's Japanese ladies are sensational, and so well made.  It's no surprise that this quilt was also the one right behind my Vermont win as well!

Judges comments are always something I try not to take too personally, but I was especially interested none the less.  In the past I have had one judge in particular that just hated a fabric that I used on a quilt, and every show it went to where she was there, the scoring showed it.  That type thing makes me bonkers!  After the unofficial disqualification of Big Bertha at MQS earlier this year, I am hopeful that it will do well at future shows.  Those judges just didn't think it was "traditional" enough.  Seriously, it is a Dresden plate pattern. Go figure.

Comments at the Maine show only separate my two quilts by one point.  99pts versus 98pts.  That is how insanely close it gets!  They think that Big Bertha could have had neater pebbles.  Sigh and grumble...they are very clean and round (probably better than what is on Zen Garden!!...as this was quilted 2 yrs ago). Both quilts got excellent binding comments, although if I were a judge I'd have used Bertha as the 25pt benchmark and critiqued the other based on that!.  That is why I am not a judge.

I have quilts at the Lowell Quilt Festival next weekend, and will hope for a good showing.  Zen Garden and Kaleidoscopic Calamity will be at that party.  I am mailing Big Bertha off to Houston in 4 days.  It will unfortunately be there until November, so it will miss all the fall shows.  I have all my others lined up, however to hopefully attend 4 or 5 of the fall shows.  Summer has been a welcome break from the constant rigors of custom quilting, even if it has come at the expense of sanity loss from having all kids home!  I have my kids spending next week with my mom so I can quilt one large custom for a client.  Then three more weeks of E2Es, and then back to the regular program of client quilting!!  Yea!  So if you have been waiting until the summer ends to send me a quilt, now is the time to get into my queue.  Drop me an email...