FB (Farmer Bob) took me to the state fair on Saturday….our friends Dee Dee & Jeff Mahaffey are in charge of the dairy goat show. Jeff is superintendent (I think that’s his official title) and Dee Dee is his #1 assistant. She emcees the show…calls up the divisions and passes out the ribbons, smiles and laughs a lot, and just generally helps everyone have more fun than they thought they were going to have. We love seeing them in action, and we always learn more about dairy goats and dairying from listening to the observations of the judge and talking to the dairymen/women. We had dinner with them and the judge…it was so fascinating to meet the judge and hear her history with dairying and judging and all her travels. She came the whole way from New Hampshire!

The traffic was awful driving through Columbia (our state capitol) to get to the fairgrounds, because there was a home Carolina Gamecocks football game that was just letting out when we got there, and the fairgrounds are just beyond the stadium. It took us almost 2 hours to get through town, and then we were lucky to find a paid parking lot and we walked the rest of the way. Unfortunately, when we got to the goat show, I realized that I had left my camera in the truck wayyyy back at the parking lot! Luckily, I had my cell phone! The battery was getting low, though, so I saved all my pictures for the quilts and honeybee displays. 🙂

I’ll tell you what, these quilters in South Carolina sure are talented! One difference between the quilt show here and at the Kutztown Folk Festival in PA is that most, if not all these quilts here are machine quilted. They also hang so high on the wall that they’re not always easy to see, but I enjoy them anyway. I hope you enjoy all these pictures.

The quilt on the left is FB’s absolute favorite of all we saw. He likes fall colors. The folks who hang the quilts at the fair do such a good job grouping them in complementary colors. You’ll see.

I’ve seen the pattern for the second one from the left below….it’s  a One Block Wonder pattern and this one looks awesome. The red/white one on the left was just gorgeous, with all the embroidery. That denim cathedral window-style to the right took a lot of work, I’m sure!

Just look at the lineup of gorgeous quilts below! I wish I could see that basket quilt up close. I love all the appliqued posies and ribbons tucked into those baskets. And what about the quilt on the right????? Wow!!!!

There were two “Farm Girl Vintage” quilts. That’s a book by Lori Holt, of Bee in My Bonnet.

I thought that this was a great quilt for a memory quilt. I’ve seen quilts where the front of the shirt was used, but always thought that would be a not-so-comfy quilt with all the buttons and placket (and hard to quilt around those buttons, too!), and I like the idea of using the back of the shirt with the tie. Simple but very nice, don’t you think?

I hope that I get to meet Janice Stokes some day. Here’s another one of her beautiful quilts. I loved this one so much, with the piecing and applique and custom quilting. The colors really caught my eye, too.

Isn’t this a striking quilt with the contrast between the black and yellow and lavender? I’d like to see the whole thing. My friend Charmaine told me when I started back quilting that she always chooses her border fabric first and then builds from there. This really makes sense to me and was such a good bit of advice! You can see the beautiful fabric in the border of this quilt and how it’s incorporated in each of the blocks to pull the whole thing together.

This cheerful quilt below just feels like summer and the beach, doesn’t it? I’ve seen the pattern but can’t recall the name off hand. It looks very layer cake friendly, doesn’t it? Maybe it’s a MSQC pattern.

Just look at the black/white quilts below! I bet that one on the right is a Judy Niemeyer pattern!

Below is another one of FB’s favorites. He just loves those fall colors.

At first I thought this quilt below was made of denim, but after I uploaded the file and could zoom in, I’m thinking now that it is made of pieces of woolen suits. There doesn’t appear to be any quilting in the squares, so maybe this is just a stitch-in-the-ditch in the sashing quilt. That sashing fabric really pops on the solid fabric of the squares, doesn’t it? I loved this quilt. It would be a good memory quilt, or just worth a few trips to Goodwill to get suits to cut up. If I ever meet Mary Clark, I’ll ask her about this one. She just lives in the next county over from me.

I saw this quilt below from across the room and told FB, “Hey! I recognize that one!” One of our talented guild members, Wendy Seegars, made this one. It’s a Buttermilk Basin wool applique BOM pattern. She always brings her work to meetings and stitches away, so I have seen her working on these blocks. I should do that…might keep me from getting fussed at for talking! HA!

Well, I hope you’ve enjoyed the picture show, and I’m proud of my little cell phone for struggling to get pictures of all these quilts. It did a pretty good job, don’t you think? Now I have more inspiration to get busy and get more of my own quilts underway. I have so many patterns in the queue that I’m not sure I can possibly make all that I want to in my lifetime, but it will be a lot of fun trying!

EIEIO!
Deb