County Fair Entries and Results, 2022

The Cass County Fair is going on this week. I did my usual stint checking in the canning entries and helped in other departments as needed.

I, myself, didn't have that many entries this year. Although I've been doing some "making", it's not as much as previous years and I'm not sure I finished any big projects. Or none that I still have in my possession. :)

Realizing the fair was coming up, I thought I'd better get to that quilt block for the raffle quilt! About two weeks before the fair, I decided on my idea (the only one that was going through my head), looked up some pictures for ideas and got started.

The theme this year was "Keep on Trucking" and they gave us a few pieces of fabrics including this piece of novelty fabric as the focus fabric:

I really didn't see how it would be very useful for piecing (with the wide variety of colours and values), and there were very few whole trucks for applique. What to do??

I ended up appliqueing a scene. I drew out the scene, copied it and cut apart the copy to know what shape to cut out the pieces. I used the original copy to place the pieces in the right place. I sewed it all together with a buttonhole stitch.

You have to use each of the fabrics, so I cut out the most complete truck from the focus fabric and put it on the road.

There are things I would have changed about the design, but the cream background fabric is the only one that is big enough to span the whole width of the block. The rest are only 10"x10".

In the end, my block was awarded honorable mention and was chosen to be included in the quilt.

There were a lot of block entries this year so I was gratified to make it.

Here are all the blocks that will be in the quilt.

I was surprised how many pieced blocks there were. Generally there are more appliqued ones.

Here are the top six:

And here's a close view of the top block. There wasn't a person who looked at the blocks that didn't point out this one as their favorite! It's beautiful.

The focus fabric apparently makes up the flowers in the back of the truck and the railing. I find it interesting that the block they liked best used the least amount of the focus fabric and you can't recognize it at all. This year's theme is "Keep Calm and Grill On" and it includes a novelty fabric with grilling paraphernalia. It's going to be just as hard to work with.

Here is the quilt from last year's blocks.

Where's my block? I couldn't find one in my pictures or Instagram feed from last year and then I remembered that I couldn't find the kit. I remember all the little squares with different animals so I either lost the kit or they had run out by the time I went to buy one. I can't remember!

My second entry was my Bright Stars on Black quilt.

It was in the category of king/queen/full--machine quilted--pieced and won first! I finished this a few years ago, but it was the same year I finished my blue and white elephant quilt and I had entered that instead. There were two quilts in this category and the other one had quilting issues.

This quilt actually has machine and hand-stitched quilting but I entered it in machine quilting because I know they value hand-quilting more. Any machine quilting would disqualify it in hand-quilting, but hand-quilting wouldn't hurt my position in the machine quilting category. People are funny, right?

That's it for hand crafts!! A far cry from my usual number.

I also entered two photographs. This one from a senior picture session:

which did not place,

and this black and white lakeshore shot,

which also didn't place.

I thought I could only enter one colour and one black and white photo, but they've changed the rules. Maybe I should have looked at the fair book more closely and sometime before the week that the entries are due! :)

I had a nice time walking around the fair after I worked the Home Arts table on Wednesday. I enjoy walking through the animal barns and had to check out the new goat barn that someone I know had worked on.

On Monday evening I was with a group of people and mentioned I volunteered and the fair. She asked, "Is that the one with the baby animal barn?" I said, ya the fair has one, not realizing that every fair doesn't have one. She was so excited! She had heard about this a couple years ago but lost track of what fair it was. She has looked online and asked anyone who mentioned a county fair and finally, I had given her the answer! She immediately started planning which day to go to the fair this week. Lovely to make someone's day so easily! :)