The last bird in the nest finishing high school

So very hard to believe that our last little birdie is graduating in just over a week!  She had to present her Senior Project yesterday and I really enjoyed seeing it.  She had 3 people on her judging board that she knew well, so that helped with any nerves.  And she really rocked it!  I was very impressed with her speaking skills, and I'm a pretty harsh critic in that department ;)  She knew she would get an A, she had prepared well and had a good presentation.  So her real goal was to get an A+.   And we found out today that she did - WOO HOO!  She really knocked it out of the ballpark quite soundly!  There were five judges, the top and bottom score are thrown out, the remaining three are then averaged for your score.  She found out it didn't matter:  all five judges scored her at 100% - WOW!  Needless to say, she is quite over the moon.

I'll have to come back and insert a picture - she took my camera out of the car to download pix on her computer, so it's not here at work today.  This was just a great way to wrap up her High School years and a suitable reward for 4 years of hard work.

In quilting news, Polly Pocket got her binding taken off and new binding put on - and put on straight this time!  There is a nasty bulge where the final seam is joined, and I may try to work on it once she's home from the Minnesota show.  But it looks light years better than it did.  I went ahead and did this because there are only 7 quilts in her category at this show, so maybe, just maybe, a third place ribbon could be in our grasp.   But it would never be in our grasp with that wiggly, sad binding, lol.  Youngest DD was a doll and helped me reblock it, so I think I've sent it on its' way in the best possible condition (although, perhaps crammed in a smallish box to try to save some shipping, so I'll pray for wrinkles that fall out quickly!!)

I think I'll rebind the Wedding Memories quilt too, before the Shipshewana show.  It somehow ended up at about a 1/4 inch on front, but more like 3/8ths on back.  Pretty noticeable, AND, when we block it - the pins are in the ditch on the front and not seen - but they are going right through the middle of the binding on back and leaving a polka dot trail of pin holes -*sigh*.

Now if I could just get that customer quilt going that has been on the frame since January!  I need it out of the way to get DD's t-shirt quilt on there and maybe at least quilted by her party, don't forsee getting it bound by then, but at least pieced and quilted would be good!  She ended up with 25 shirts, but they are very mixed in colors so I'm struggling with what to use for sashing.  But we did find 3 yards of a FABULOUS print that will be used in the backing - it speaks to her love for art, which is only represented by one shirt on the front, so this is a nice touch.

There is a nice border print in the collection too, but I haven't figured out how that could be incorporated.  Maybe I'll just get a fat quarter and piece up a really cool label?

For now, I better get back to folding and taping the newsletter here at work, so I can keep my job so I can earn money to buy fabric LOL

My quilt came home

Unfortunately, not in time for talent night at church!  Talent night was Tuesday, and the quilt came home yesterday (Wednesday).  I had hoped to share it and the new ribbon, but had to scramble for a new idea at the last minute.  Talent night is so hard when you don't sing or play an instrument, those church folks have no idea ;)

The ribbon is pretty, and I added it to my collection.  The check wasn't in the box, but maybe it will come in the mail?  We'll see.  It's the first money this quilt has won, so pretty exciting!  I'm still reeling over the amazing comment on the judging sheet - "Phenomenal quilting design and execution" WOW, just WOW!
 
There is a lot of negativity in the show quilting world right now.  A day or two ago I saw a post from a national quilter, Sherry Rogers Harrison.  She was being targeted by a FB group - sounds like because her political views are not the same as theirs.  But it also sounds like they went way too far - saying untrue things to try to get her teaching gigs cancelled, her products boycotted, and get people to drop her.  It almost sounded crazy, but there were several other folks commenting that they had seen the posts and could verify them.  It was mentioned that a few others have suffered from similar attacks - one of whom is a teacher I took a class from, purchased rulers from, and enjoyed. This was her post that addressed the attack:

 Please know there are 2 groups on Facebook under the name Conservative Quilters. You will be able to see one group with 37 members. That group is NOT the group I am referencing. You will not be able to find the group in question because it's secret. I hope this clears that up.
The other day I alluded to the fact that some nasty messages were being passed around by some people in my beloved quilting community. I stated that I never saw any of those messages due to the fact that my friends never came forward to share them with me. Since then everything changed and good people have come forward with the hope to make this end and to get back to what this quilting community is really all about. Some of the attributes that I love about this community are that we have people that we can share the love of quilting with one another, we can turn to each other for advice or comradery. We have each other to inspire one another, we hold up one another when we have fallen, and when we have faced heartache or loss, we are there for one another. That's what we do and it works.
What I am about to share with you is hateful and hurtful, mean and unnecessary and none of it belongs to this industry. There are people in this industry, friends of mine and friends of yours who are out to do harm to me and several others in this community. I have been sent screenshots from several individuals of this plot to take us down both personally and professionally. The goal it appears is to attempt to interfere with book sales, teaching gigs, personal relationships and to interfere with any business affiliations we deal with.
These people hide under the pretense of " Conservative Quilters" which I have no problem with them being. I am not a conservative, but i am human. I care about the rights of all of us, I care that we don't get so caught up with the hate and discord of this county and turn on each other like it has. I have expressed my thoughts publicly on my Facebook timeline. It's my timeline, my thoughts, my feelings. I've never in any way shape or form shoved my opinion down anyone's throat. I've never started a private group with the intent of tearing another person to shreds. I've never ever contemplated how to get them back. I've never ever considered provoking another person so they could watch the train wreck take place. I've never ever pretended to be a friend to find a way to take them down. I only have one face and it's the face I've always shown and always will continue to show.
I have many screenshots of messages from this group of people. At this point I have decided not to show you these screenshots. They are ugly and spiteful and mean and filled with untruths. They will make you angry and sad and will indeed embarrass many people that you know. That's not who I am and even though they are trying to hurt me, I'm not going to hurt them. I pray that they will wake up just by reading this message and I hope they take some time to wonder if that is truly who they chose to be.
So I'm asking that we all take a reality check and think about what we are doing. Are we standing proud and holding each other up or are we focused on the wrong things, the things that don't matter, the things that are hurtful and hateful.

This is her post today, showing screenshots of two comments - one name I recognized, and interestingly, she had been pegged in my mind as a whiner because of some previous comments on a quilting board we both belong too ;)

"Its been revealed that members of the secret Conservative Quilters group have been busy deleting posts from their group's wall and doing all kinds of housekeeping to make everything look nice and clean. Members have been leaving the group to try to protect their identities. The administrator of the group has posted publicly denying that anyone was targeted by her group, and group members have chimed in with denials as well. But the fact is that you can't deny the truth.
To prove once and for all that none of this was made up, I'm going to share with you two of the more harmless posts that were made by members of this group. You can read these posts and make your own decision about what to think.

This isn't about politics, at least not on our side. We don't care if you're conservative or liberal, straight or gay, black white or green. We have our political opinions, yes, but we don't attack you for yours and we would never ever try to get you fired simply for not believing the way we think you 'should ' believe. We are sorry that you don't feel the same way about us.
We won't be posting any more on this topic. We don't want a witch hunt. That's not what this is about. This is about living and letting live. There's room for everyone in the quilting world. We hope that by bringing this out into the light we can stop things from being done in the dark and make quilting a safe place
Know that we welcome you into our tribe regardless of your political, religious, or any other beliefs. We use red AND blue thread, and rainbow variegated too.

If this works, it's a link to Karen McTavish discussing this situation ~
 https://www.facebook.com/karenmctavish/videos/10212129107679144/

I won't copy and paste more, but another quilter had nearly a dozen screenshots of comments - it's unfortunate.  And people using their politics to abuse others is part of what makes me hate politics all together!

This is the second negative incident - the other was Margaret Solomon Gunn being accused of copying a quilt design.  She refuted this, and truly, I watched her progress on this quilt through her blog over the year and I find it hard to believe that it was copied.  For one thing, if it was copied, she would have moved a lot faster - she wouldn't have had those months of sitting and thinking about what to do next, LOL. 

There was also that overheard conversation last fall at the class in Louisville about how the "judging" at one of the national shows (couldn't figure out which one!) is done by a handful of teachers (who haven't entered anything that year) just choosing the quilts that appeal to them - not actual judges.  And it becomes a popularity contest, or the person speaking said that for one quilt the "judges" said they knew who made it and think it's won too much, so they blackballed it.  Now, I'm no where near in these people circles, so I don't have anything to worry about, but it does make me want to tread lightly into the show quilt world!

We shall see ;)

Such a busy time . . . .

My goodness, where to start!  Let's start with the quilting news :)

"Memories of My Wedding Day" won an Honorable Mention at the Utah Quilt & Sewing Market (formerly HMQS) - WOW!  I got one of those awesome calls "We were wondering if you will be in attendance for the award ceremony, your quilt has won a ribbon" WOW!!  Of course, I wasn't going to be there, but they live streamed the awards so I got to see it, yeah :)  Mine was the first one announced and that was amazing.  I'll get a ribbon and $50.  The judging comments were emailed and for "best feature" they said "Phenomenal quilting design and execution."  WOW again!!!  I'm excited to send this quilt a few more places this year and see what happens!  Here is a screenshot from the awards video on Facebook :)

Youngest DD heard back that she won 2 more scholarships - yeah!  The ALJC Women's Esprit Woman Of Wisdom Scholarship through our church denomination and the Fish Family scholarship.  The family scholarship was by recommendation of the school counselor, no application or essay.  So I wrote a letter to her counselor asking for his recommendation - maybe it helped, who knows, but it was worth a try!  The ALJC scholarship will be awarded at the General Conference in Knoxville, TN in June - so looks like DD & I have a trip coming up.  We are excited about it and she is over the moon about winning this one.  She really thought it would go to someone who grew up in the church, or was a "somebody" (pastor's kid, evangelist's kid, etc.) in the church at the national level.  I felt confident she would win - but I was shocked to hear that there were probably 75+ applicants.  I might have been more nervous if I had known that, LOL.

This was a photo we took after church when it was announced.  The funny part is, it is supposed to remain a secret, for the most part, until the scholarship is presented at the General Ministry Conference.  So Bro. Joel began by saying "This, what happens next here, is not for social media.  Really.  It's not for Facebook or any social media.  No pictures, no posting, nothing outside these walls"  and he was staring right at an older lady who is notorious for posting all kinds of stuff on there, LOL.  Then he called DD up to the podium, and the lady behind us murmured "Uh oh."  I almost laughed, because it would never occur to me to think something bad was up, I'd be thinking "I wonder what great thing is going down?"  but I guess that's just my personality, LOL.  I figure it's ok to post here, because, well, I have about one person who reads this (besides me, and I already know) so almost no one will see it!

Quilting has stalled out.  It's probably my thyroid still not being right, I've just had no energy.  I think I only cooked one time in 10 days lately - and dishes were done less often than that :(  Hopefully, hopefully, hopefully my thyroid is getting better with the new medicine dosage.  It's been about a month, and that's how long it took to level out last fall . . . . so we shall see.  Shoulder is not healed, but the pain has gotten considerably better, so that's progress.  The same vintage quilt has been on the frame since Jan. or Feb. and it's still there - not halfway done.  At this point, I'll be struggling to finish it and the niece's t-shirt quilt by the end of May, and then one more t-shirt quilt by the next weekend. Crossing my fingers!!