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 ;)