Success at Festival of Quilts 2019

The Chameleon gets his 15 seconds of Fame!

The Chameleon will have to forgive me for taking so long to get around to making a chameleon quilt now, don’t you think? Not only did I make him a quilt FULL of cheeky chameleons, but I showed it in our local Festival of Quilts, and it won its category’s blue ribbon. That ought to keep him off my case for a while!

The weekend just gone was the annual Quilters’ Guild of South Australia’s Festival of Quilts. After judging, entrants who are successful get a specific invitation to the awards and opening ceremony, but no indication of the flavour of their award. Happily, happily, happily I got one of those calls. So I toddled off into the city centre on Friday morning to accept my prize.

Turned out, it was four prizes, one for each quilt I entered. I had dared hope that the chameleon quilt would place, because I put my all into that one. Anything that wasn’t perfect on that project met Mr Ripper, pronto. But two of the other ribbons were pleasant surprises, and the third was more of a very pleasant shock.

If you will indulge my excitement for one post, I will show you what I entered in our annual quilt show and what I was awarded. Two of the awarded quilts were made primarily for this blog in the past year, so I hope you will also accept my thanks for reading and giving me a reason to make more quirky quilts. 🙂

The Chameleon Quilt

I mentioned a while back that I had started a chameleon quilt. It had been “planned out” for several years. In reality, that means it existed as a series of rough drawings with no sizing or other details. But in May it got a push.

Our state Guild challenge for 2019 was “Tropical Vibes”, and on first consideration I thought I would pass this time. I have entered the last two years’ challenge themes of “South Australia” and “Traditional made Modern“, and had proudly received a Judge’s Commendation and a third placing respectively. “Tropical Vibes” didn’t spark any ideas. Months went by, and at the last minute I chanced across the old files for the aforementioned chameleon quilt. And all of a sudden I was inspired – and in a Hurry!

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Not in too much of a hurry that I couldn’t do the pretty intensive quilting that I already showed you though.

Soon I will write a more detailed post on the chameleon quilt so I can show you all the close ups of the quilting and talk thread and design choices. But processing lots of pictures is time consuming and my kids are on school holidays, so today I am giving you the big picture and we’ll talk more later, ok? Great! 🙂

Thank you to Kapok Distribution for sponsoring this prize.

Beyond the Chameleon’s Quilt

The ribbon that caught me most by surprise and actually brought me the most pleasure was this one.

Every year the Festival of Quilts dignitaries get to choose a favourite quilt each for a VIP’s Award. Bernina is major sponsor of the Best in Show awards at our quilt festival and the local Bernina guru, Otto, is one of the VIPs. And this year he chose “Wild Australian Things” as his favourite quilt. What an honour! Since I quilt and blog primarily to add a bit of colour and textile joy to the world, to have a quilt honoured in this way was very moving. I was quite aware of the less-than-perfect nature of this quilt (from a showing perspective), and hesitated to enter it. In the end, I entered it because I thought it might give people a smile. Sometimes quilt shows are a bit serious and intimidating. And this quilt is not! I never ever dreamt it might get a ribbon.

I’ll admit I enjoyed stalking this quilt several times throughout the day, as it got lots of great comments from viewers who didn’t know who I was. Quirky, clever, and fun were all adjectives I was offered as an innocent co-viewer. 😀

FYI: Wild Australian Things was the result of the 2018 Island Batik Ambassador “Wonky and Whimsical” challenge last December. You can find out more here. And treat yourself to a silly taste of Australian Christmas in July here too, thanks to this quilt.

Also, a second placing and a third placing

Since I was entering for the Tropical Vibes category, I figured I may as well add in a couple of my other recent best efforts. I figured my best two quilts during the past year were Pond Life and Triangle Friends.

Pond Life is a sampler quilt made for the Island Batik Ambassador program. It was my accuquilt challenge in April. It placed third in Pieced – Small Professional.

Thank you to Vine Patch Quilters, Burra Quilters Group and Quality Always for sponsoring this prize.

And then there was Triangle Friends, the quilt that I made for my first magazine publication last year. The process of becoming published was very rewarding in itself, so a second place in Appliqué – Small Professional is a terrific conclusion to that journey.

Thank to The Drapery, Kapunda Quilters and McLaren Vale Patchworkers for sponsoring this prize.

I hope you have enjoyed sharing my big day. I would have liked to share more quilts with you from the show. However, due to the rules, I need explicit permissions that I haven’t obtained. Judy, who was one of the judges, has a bigger selection of the quilts on her site News from Jude, so I will happily refer you to her latest post for the Best in Show and other Festival of Quilts highlights. The official photo gallery for the show is also now available on the Guild website for your viewing pleasure.

Tomorrow we are back with Colour & Inspiration Tuesday and my July Artsy Fartsy project for Island Batik. Fair warning, I have changed my mind about my project……. bahahahaha.

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The Chameleon turns rainbow with pleasure when he hears from you. I am more reserved, so I will respond in gratitude by email instead. Now that it’s your turn…. Scroll right to the end, leave me a comment and tell me, what do you think? Thanks for connecting!

Would you like to keep in touch with Clever Chameleon and the fun quilty ideas I design as well as find all over the internet? You can follow directly for email updates, or through Bloglovin’, Pinterest, IG or FB. All your follow options can be found here. Don’t forget to link up all your current quilting projects on Tuesdays at our Colour & Inspiration Linky parties!