"Your quilts are show quality," said a nice friend.
"You really should enter one of your quilts in a show,"
said a second nice friend.

"Why would I do that?" I always wondered.

I quilt because I enjoy it.

I think I would make quilts even if no one else ever looked at them.
Beautiful fabrics, designing, cutting, arranging, rearranging, sewing pieces together only to cut them apart and then resew them together...how fun!

I spent days weeks months contemplating.

I eventually concluded that if I wanted to improve as a quilter I needed feedback.  Not only from nice friends, but honest feedback from experts who did not know me.

Entering a show would do this, right?

I decided to try.

To my surprise and delight Winter House was accepted.
Yes, it's the quilt featured in the header of this blog...
one of my favorites.

The honest feedback I received was welcome.

"Strong focal points are defined by design decisions."
"Pieced binding is a nice accent."

How nice! Like my friends!

The honest feedback also included...

"Inner border should be straight and consistent in width."

Okay. That was a fair critique. That inner border is a little wonky.
(Nice friends would never say that.)

I am grateful for my quilt show experience.

Now hopefully I will improve...
especially on those tricky skinny inner borders.

Will I ever do it again?
Perhaps...maybe...
Who knows?

I quilt because I enjoy it.

After a long rest on the shelf,
my box of cut pieces from my scraps for the Go Four It quilt
(a pattern from the April issue of APQ magazine)
was reopened...
and I began...

by sewing together 243 strip sets.

After cutting the strip sets into segments,
it was time to sew together the four-patch units.
729 of them!

And then uncertainty happened.

What was I thinking?
Why did I think all this scrappiness was going to look good?

I need to make blocks that look like this...

And blocks that look like this...

You can see how willy nilly this will be...

Hmmm...

Back on the shelf for now.

Voices...
this month in pictures...

Halfway!