ICYMI (In Case You Missed It!)
April was a pretty spectacular month here at Garden Gate Quilting! MQX Quilt Festivals was held April 6-9, 2016 and I was lucky enough to take two great classes and volunteer a boatload of hours!
On Sunday the 3rd and Monday the 4th I worked with the photography team photographing every quilt that would hang at the show -Â 1,783 photos of 420 quilts! It was so cool to get to see them all up close and personal! The workmanship was amazing! Plus the photography team headed by Jeffrey and Cricket Lomicka is the best!
On Tuesday I got to help out with Student Registration which is a lot of fun. You get to meet a lot of quilters and help them out with dining suggestions (it helps that I love going to the restaurants in downtown Manchester!). I met a lot of Canadians and a mother/daughter duo from Australia! When I got home on Tuesday, there was an email from Janet-Lee and Mary telling me that I had won a ribbon! It didn’t say which quilt (I entered two) or what ribbon, but I won a ribbon!! I’ve been quilting for 15 years and I’ve never won a ribbon at MQX (except for a teacher’s ribbon in 2014). That being said, I’ve only entered quilts a handful of times. Needless to say, I was very excited! I entered my “LOVE” quilt in the Modern Category. This quilt was made for my challenge group – the word was, “Letters” and that was the only thing we had to go on, so I created “LOVE” based on the Robert Indiana sculpture that was very popular in the 70’s.
Inspired by the Robert Indiana sculpture, my version of LOVE
The second quilt I entered was pieced by the members of the New Hampshire Modern Quilt Guild and quilted by me for QuiltCon 2016 Charity Quilt Contest. I spent a good deal of time quilting this one and donated my time to the guild. Here is my blog post about quilting that quilt, Quilting a Modern Quilt.
On Wednesday I had my first class – Express Lane to the Modern Quilting Highway with Angela Huffman. This was a hands-on class and very informative! We spent about 3 hours of the 4 hour class quilting our brains out! Then since I was staying for the Awards Ceremony later that night, I did a few more volunteer hours.
Finally it’s time for the awards ceremony! I am dying! I had a few friends show up to show their support and some of them had worked on the quilt, too! Then the moment of truth….drumroll please!
Controlled Chaos won a Blue Ribbon in the Quilts Among Friends category!! I was so excited! My first blue ribbon at MQX! And hopefully not my last! What a rush!
On Thursday of the show I had a class with Margaret Solomon Gunn, called Beautiful Backgrounds – GridBased Fillers and it was an amazing class! She had fabric printed out at Spoonflower with the grids already on it and the names of each fill under each square. I kid you not when I say, best use of a class fee EVER! I’m ready to bind mine and have it for customers to look at when choosing a background fill! Brilliant!
Friday was another day of volunteering and walking through the show itself (not to mention talking to friend old and new!) It truly is a great show, you should make plans to go next year (April 5-8, 2017)!
On Saturday I dragged my husband along (I kid) to see the show (and the ribbon!) and as we were getting ready to go grab a bite to eat before coming back to pick up the quilts, Kathryn the volunteer coordinator told me to hold on, she had something for me. I was confused but waited and low and behold I had been picked Volunteer of the Year! Whooohooo! I received a quilt kit and an Accuquilt Go! I was shocked and pleased!!I truly enjoy volunteering at MQX and to be rewarded was icing on the cake!
Then after a week long recovery from MQX, my husband and I left for a two week cruise to Copenhagen! But that’s another blog post!
Happy Quilting!!
Lisa
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