Quilt and Sewing Fest of NJ

I am sitting here beside myself.  On a lark, I decided to enter two of my quilts into the upcoming Quilt and Sewing Fest of NJ.  I dithered, as I do, for several weeks over which quilts to enter, or if I should enter at all.  I was finally pushed over the edge by my husband, the poor man.  He listens to me freak out constantly, and I guess he finally had enough and told me to just enter and be done with it.  I decided to submit two of my recent finishes from the past two years and see what happened.

Denim Mondrian and Scrappy Plaid had some detail photos taken, and I sent in my submission on the very last day possible.  Now, I don’t consider either of these to be my best work, and I wasn’t super confident about sending them.  The denim doesn’t have batting, but nothing in the rules specifies that batting is required.  (I think without batting it isn’t even officially a quilt.)  The Scrappy Plaid definitely had some less than perfect points.  Both were bound by machine, which I had been scolded for in the past by quilt judges.
To my shock, last week I received a letter telling me that Scrappy Plaid had been accepted.  I was so excited when I saw the envelope, I ripped right into it, then ran up the stairs to tell my husband.  He  remained calm, told me of course it got in.  Such a downer.  We went back downstairs, and he pointed out the second envelope I hadn’t noticed.  Denim Mondrian got in, too.
My glee quickly turned to horror when I realized I had to sew on labels and sleeves to these two fairly large quilts, and I only had a few days to do it, along with meeting some other sewing deadlines.  I spent a lot of that hand stitching time agonizing over my imperfect bindings, and my lame backing on the denim quilt.  I hope the judges appreciate the return to our quilting roots when I make quilts out of thrifted fabrics.
Scrappy Plaid was made as part of a sew along with The Quilter’s Planner over on Instagram.  It used a lot of scraps, but not enough.  My bins are still full.

I made labels for both quilts, too.  I admit that I am frequently lax in that department.  I used these cool markers I found at Target.  I had a little typo while I was zipping along, and after cursing and thinking about doing the whole thing over, I decided to add some random rectangles.  One is covering my error.  I think it turned out nicely.
I was able to find the leftover backing fabric for this one and match the sleeve up.
Denim Mondrian was made in a vain attempt to reduce the levels of my denim stash.  It has already won a ribbon at the Eastern States Expo.  I noticed that it had a ton of loose threads hanging off of it.  I can’t believe it won anything before.
I consider this to be one of my most brilliant labels of all time.
Unfortunately, the sleeve on this one did not match the backing.  As the backing is three loosely related flannels, which I used up in creating the backing, the sleeve is just another fabric I never liked all that much.  On the plus side, a large hunk of it is now out of the stash.
I guess I’ll be back next month to let you know the difference between entering a county fair type event versus an actual quilt show.  Wish me luck!