Entries are Submitted

The entries for the Do You EQ? Contest are due June 16 but my goal was to get them in the mail by June 1. I just now handed them to the mail man. Here are all three of them, Stars in the Meadow, Memories of Navarre and Licorice Delight. I finished the binding on the black one (Licorice Delight) late last night and hopped out of bed not long after daylight to get pictures of that one and the log cabin star (Memories of Navarre) before the rains got here. Have you ever really thought of what goes into making a quilt, especially if it's a quilt you want to enter in a contest? Not that the contest quilts always get more attention during the making process but there are all the extra steps.

1. Decide on a design. It could be something we've seen in a magazine or a purchased pattern. Or, we could draw it all out using our favorite software. Mine happens to be Electric Quilt. If we're designing it ourselves, we have to figure out the instructions and how much yardage we need.
2. Choose the fabric. Do you make the quilt just like the one in the pattern? Do you use your favorite colors? Do you use the colors that match your decor? Do you buy the newest and greatest fabrics at the local quilt shop? Do you just use whatever's in your stash?
3. Make the top. Now we spend days or weeks or months making the tops. I always have fun at first til I see how it's going to turn out and then I get a bit bored with doing the same blocks over and over.
4. Quilt it. Do you quilt it yourself? By hand or by machine? Do you send it to a longarmer? If you quilt it yourself by hand, that takes a long time. If you quilt it by machine and you do it on a sewing machine, that's not an easy task if it's a big machine. If you send it to a longarmer, that gets expensive and you may have to wait for months if your longarmer is really busy.
5. Bind it. I try to make the binding when I finish piecing and I try to put the binding on as soon as I take the top off the longarm. Then I have the hand work to do and I always think I'll save that til some time when I have nothing else to do . . which never happens.
6. Label it. Don't forget the label. That is so important and I am guilty of not always adding the label but I'm almost always sorry when I don't.
7. Block it. Do you block your quilts. Every now and then I can get by without blocking one. Licorice Delight was not blocked and it hangs very straight. Not sure why they are sometimes straight and sometimes not and I seem to always do them the same way. To block mine, I lay them out in the family room floor with a sheet between the quilt and the floor. I use the flower head pins and pin about every inch or so, spritz with water and let it dry.
8. Photograph it. When I first began entering contests, I paid a photographer $100 per quilt to photograph my quilts. Most shows required slides and there was nowhere around here to have slides made so I'd deliver my quilts to him, he'd take the pictures and in a week or so, I'd get my slides. The $100 per quilt was beginning to get expensive so I found a place online where I could e-mail digital pictures and they would make slides for me. This meant I needed a 5 MP digital camera so I bought a new one. It was about $500 back then but the 5 MP cameras are cheap now. I still love it though and have no desire to get a new one . . yet. Most of the shows now allow us to send in photos on CD's that we make at home.
9. Forms to fill out. Every show/contest has different forms. I'm really not very organized and getting everything filled out, all the requirements as to pictures needed, fees, etc. is the hardest part for me.

It all makes me very tired just thinking about it! :)

Judy L.