WAAAY OUTSIDE MY COMFORT ZONE

Oh, Hello my dear Blog Friends...

I jumped WAAY outside my comfort zone... 

I have always been what you would call a "private quilter"...
I never held up a quilt in show and tell...........no, never even once...
I never put a quilt up for judging..........
I just quietly made my quilts and stacked them up in the corner or the closet, or gave them away...

And then - on a whim - I submitted a quilt to the ROAD TO CALIFORNIA juried quilt show...

And then I though, oh, my what a joke - oh well.

AND I GOT IN...  so, I thought, well, they must have taken LOTS of quilts..
Probably a whole wall of mini-quilts, like mine...in fact, I figured I would probably have trouble finding it, since there would be so many...

So, Friday, DH and I drove down to Los Angeles to see the Road to California Show... I had never been to it before, being new to California and all..

It's in a fabulous conference center...  here's the view as you enter - great quilts!!

And, here is my name tag - which so nicely got a sun shadow on it to block out my last name, good form on the internet, of course...  But - do you see that ribbon - I am a 'contestant'... good grief, I didn't realize I was competing...  probably everyone has one of these ribbons... I looked around but didn't see so many after all.  

 So, I go into the show, walk down one aisle, turn a corner, and BANG - walk right into MY QUILT... MY QUILT .... MY QUILT...  the little basket one with the purple border.....I started it in a class with Sally Collins last year.   The half square triangles are 3/8 inches finished...  so fun.

OMG, there are only a few minis - there must be a giant wall of them somewhere else - but no, there's the blue ribbon one - oh my, do you mean there are only a dozen  minis - and mine is one?????
And then, the kicker...The "official card"  for my quilt, number 11051... well, there's no being anonymous now, is there????  Can you believe each quilt had a lovely card about it??

There were lots of people gathered around to see the minis ... "oh, no, I wanted to say, don't look - the seams aren't perfect, the quilting isn't perfect, oh no, oh no, it is imperfect"... I just hid away and took the picture.

Did I survive this sudden thrust into quilty notoriety?  All day people stopped me and said 'congratulations' on having a quilt in the show... in the class I took, they clapped... 

oh my goodness, I was so very far outside my comfort zone...

..........................but I guess I must have liked it at least a little bit, because I have already started thinking about what to enter next year!!!!

THANKS TO ALL THE ORGANIZERS AND VOLUNTEERS WHO MAKE THESE QUILT SHOWS POSSIBLE!!

Happy Quilting,
Kate