Drum Roll, Please...

The winner is ... (suspenseful pause) ... Maureen, of "Pursuit of Quilts" who is having a great give away of her own to celebrate the 50 follower benchmark. Drop on over and sign up--you have until noon a week from today! Maureen will be receiving the Lori Smith pattern and the Comfort charm pack.
And the runner-up ... (more suspense) ... Kathie of INSPIRED BY ANTIQUE QUILTS. She will also receive a charm pack. I laughed when I saw who the random number generated had selected as runner-up. It seems like poetic justice since it is through her post about this fabric line that I learned of it.
Congrats to the winners. If you will email your snail mail addresses to me I will get your winnings mailed right out! And to those who won soap in the last giveaway--don't despair. The soap will be ready and mailed before the end of the month. Thank you for your patience (I feel like a recording you hear when you have been on hold on the phone for tooooo long).
Now for a visit to the county fair. I mentioned in my last post that the sweepstakes winning quilt was a "Dear Jane". I also said it was kind of hard to get good photos because the quilts were displayed in glass cases. Here is the best I could do for Jane while she was on display. These cases line the walls of the home arts building.

Dear Jane under glass.

So as the quilters came to pick up their quilts today I pounced on a few of them and asked permission to get a photo and post it on my blog with their name. You have to understand that my "post" at the home arts building has been the sewing/knitting/crocheting table for the past few years. This is not because I do those things, but because no one else will take that position. So I am across a large room from where the quilts are and I had to rely on peripheral vision to see when someone picked up a quilt that I wanted to photograph--it didn't always work, but I'll show you what I have. First I'll explain that our county fair gives three sweepstakes ribbons in the quilt department--one for the best machine-quilted piece, one for the best hand-quilted piece and one for the best wall hanging, whether machine or hand-quilted. This doesn't necessarily mean that the hand-quilted winner will have the best hand-quilting of those entries, but that of all the hand-quilted entries, it was the best overall, etc. Got it? I'm not sure I do.
So here is Dear Jane once she was released from her encasement.

That is Sue Baddley, the maker, smiling from behind the quilt. I would
be smiling, too, if this was my quilt.

Click to get a better view.

Look at this great documentation--on the front, for all to see! I like this. You can see that she pieced this a few years ago, but she just barely got it quilted in time for the fair. Just squeaked under the wire.

And this dedication.

The maker, Sue Baddley, has made more of this pattern than just this one. She told me specifically about one that is all red, white and blue. I'd like to see that. She did her own machine quilting and it is beautiful.

The quilting in the border.

The corner quilting.

She said the quilting in each block has a story behind it--but we didn't have time to go through them. : )

The sweepstakes winner in the hand-quilting category was picked up while I wasn't looking so I only have photos of it in the case, and I didn't get the makers permission to share her name. I want to give credit to the makers, so I will save her quilt for another post after I can talk to her. You will want to see it. It is an amazing quilt of appliqued Native American images. I believe it was a BOM quilt from a shop in Southern Utah, but I will try to have more info when I post it.

This is the sweepstakes winner in the wall hanging category. The maker okayed posting it, but I only got a photo while it was in the case. Very pretty little double wedding ring by Maylyn Knoppel. As I recall, it was hand-quilted. Hard  to be certain from the photo, but it looks like it.

I took these photos without flash (indoors--what was I thinking), so the pictures are a bit fuzzy. But I love this quilt. It was on a magazine cover a while back and it was one I was POSITIVE I had purchased, so I didn't bother getting the details from the maker. And do you think I can find it now? NO!

I'll have to call the maker, Charity Bates, and get the info from her. I can see the cover in my mind, but after an extensive internet search and search of my sewing stuff, I can't come up with it. I wish I had used a flash on the above photos. They would have been sharper images and not as yellow. I loved this scrappy "Many Trips Around the World" and the  border is even scrappier!

This last quilt is just cute and fun, using yo-yos as cherries--and yes, we have the quilt upside down in the photo. Cherries don't grow straight up--at least not the varieties I have picked. Why didn't I notice this while taking the photo?

The smiling maker shown above is LuAnn Rickson. She said this had been a kit offered at a now closed LQS. Love the pink and brown even when they aren't in a Civil War reproduction quilt!

It was fun to make some new quilting friends and share their creations with you. I have two more to share when I can contact the quilters. Stay tuned.

Congrats, again, to the winners. Hope you'll share what you do with the charm squares--even if it takes years. : )

Until next time, from the little mountain valley where the days are still hot, but the nights are starting to have that nip of fall.
Janet O.