I Smell Cows

Yeeeehaw! My quilts are going to smell like swine by the end of next week. It’ll be worth it if I win the top prize of 7 bucks. I could almost buy an elephant ear with that on the midway.
Here’s what I took in: I entered my only completed queen-size quilt finshed to date: Wedding Stars, aka, Wedding Spectacularrrrr (you’ve really got to roll your “r’s” when you say it though or it just won’t come out right). It was a gift to my sister-in-law and her new husband just over a year ago.

I also ended up entering the first quilt I made that was finished in 2002. I hadn’t planned on using my second entry since the other wedding quilt that I’m still finishing (I’m getting close!) isn’t done yet. I didn’t want to waste the quarter that I paid to enter a second quilt (yes, I’m cheap). From far away it doesn’t look too bad:

But when you get up close to it, you can really tell that I had no idea what I was doing. I hadn’t read a book, talked my quilting Granny, looked anything up online…. nothing. I remember when I put it on the floor to baste my quilt sandwich, my mom was standing there and her comment was, “It looks nice, but it kinda looks like an elephant sat on it.” The thing doesn’t even come close to being squared up. And when I started to quilt it (I hand quilted this one too) I had no idea that you could just pull the knot through the fabric and slip it into the batting….noo. I wiggled my arm all the way up to the middle and started my needle between the quilt sandwich. I got a book about 5 squares into it and suddenly realized, “oh! That’s how I do it.”

Just look at that puckering and stinky hand quilting! On the up side, it does have a four-leaf clover fabric in it that could look like a 4-H logo. I’m hoping to win some of the judges over that way.