Marion's Miscellaneous Musings

Prologue #1:

I say that I never win anything. Not being competitive by nature, that is OK with me. I do win the occasional door prize. When I was at my first job out of college, I won the world series pool -- $50. Of course, then everybody had to give me a bad time because, technically, gambling is illegal and I should lose my job. But no one turned me in because it was their money I had won. Then when I put $5 in the offering at church, another friend said "Wow! She even tithes her illegal earnings!" So you can see I am, underneath, a very honest, moral and ethical person. (I can confess this now, it is safe. It was 33 years ago. The statute of limitations has expired.)

Prologue #2

My husband of 30 years (or 20, if you block out the years my kids have been teenagers) went out to dinner on Monday, March 14. Our anniversary. (Yes, it is Pi day, and yes, we are both good at math, but no, it wasn't intended that way. It was a free Saturday not in June.) At 3:00 am the next morning, I heard him in the bathroom putting $35 worth of food down the toilet in a rapid manner. My first thought was oh, good, he is getting rid of the germ, and the next was "The bed quilt is going in the quilt show! Aaarrrggghhhh!" and I quickly got it off the bed so he couldn't contaminate it. (He survived. Thanks for asking.)

The Quilt Show

I enjoy working the quilt show, especially the admission table. It takes very little time, I just have to be there to remove excess money from the till (Remember, I am honest, moral and ethical and they trust me with this!) and make sure the people sitting at the table know what they are doing. This means I can't sign up for any other jobs during the show, and I can wander around and see quilts and shop to my heart's content. And find vendors who would like to change their 20 dollar bills for 1's.

So I was sitting in the breakroom counting money next to the people who were counting votes for people's choice awards when I heard my quilt number mentioned. I figured that my husband (who recovered enough to come and take pictures) had voted for it. Then I heard it again and was totally thrilled. It meant that someone besides my husband (who is also honest, moral and ethical and wouldn't stuff the ballot box) had voted for it. But I knew it wasn't going to win an award. There is just too many really good quilts this year.

Saturday afternoon I was helping to tally the votes and discovered that my quilt had 14 votes! Cool! My friends were voting! The best of show had 90 votes and there were a whole bunch of quilts that had votes in the 20s and 30s, so I knew I wasn't going to win anything. But then I got called from the admissions table, and they were running out of 5's, so I left.

Well, it turns out that if you divide the voting into enough categories, more awards can be given. I wasn't competing with the art quilts, which were getting 20 and 30 votes apiece. I got second in the machine quilted category!!!!!!!!! I am totally thrilled! Absolutely! And it turns out that my friends got there too late to vote, and my husband didn't vote at all! He explained that, in order to determine which quilt was the best, he would have to stand them all side by side to really determine which was the best (see how moral, ethical and honest he is?) instead of just going with gut instinct like the rest of us. (He is also an engineer, can you tell?)

My first instinct, when someone praises my work, is to say that it doesn't deserve it. I have stopped saying this because a friend pointed out that when I do this I am calling the complimenter a liar. I had thought I was being humble, but it is a false humility. I will also not point out the points I missed (there are a lot of triangles with 4 sides) or any other flaw. I will just say thank you and find a way to compliment them back. It is a great boost to my self-esteem to win on merit.

Credit: This quilt is based on the 2009 block of the month at http://www.thequiltshow.com/. It was designed by Sue Garman, whose blog is here: http://suegarman.blogspot.com/ and her website is http://www.kinshipandkompany.com/ It took me a year to make, working 2-3 days a month when I got the directions for that month. It was machine quilted by Sylvia and she did a great job like always. I really feel like all I did was follow directions, but I chose all the fabrics, found a way to put them together and did it well enough that it lay flat. And that is what counts in a regional show like ours.

Not to mention being honest, moral and ethical.