QN OMG!

Well, if you are anything like me, you just love to purchase those glossy art mags at Joannes or Hobby Lobby, or Barnes and Nobles. Even though I've seen it all before, they are just too darn hard to pass up, after all, I carry one of those coupons for 40% off in my purse for just such an occasion. One of the magazines I like is Where Women Create. You know the ones with the stunning, to die for studios. The ones with cute little antique jars to hold all of your buttons and the antique sewing machines that are artistically placed in the room to give just the right touch of creative ambiance.

I also grew up loving fairy tales, and that is what those studios are ... fairy tales. Kinda reminds me of that line in Crocodile Dundee, where Dundee says Knife? That ain't no knife, eers a REAL knife. Well here's a photo of a real studio one month before entries to Quilt National are due.
Did I mention that I have battled an issue with procrastination all of my life?

I should probably just ignore one of the biggest quilting events in the country, but heck, it's only 40 miles from my house! How can you ignore that? Not to mention just to get in could be a career maker. Forget the part where the guy at Cord Camera told me last time that he couldn't figure out what QN wanted with their instructions for digital images, "Lady, National Geographic is not that picky." Or the part where they actually give an award to the person who has tried the most times to get in and finally made it. I was told the record was 7 attempts. With the event being held every two years, that's fourteen years of your life, hoping to hit the big one. Let's see, that means I have another 10 years to go if I don't get in this year. I'll be....uhhh...well... darn near 70 if I wait that long to get in. (I can't do math, thank god for art quilts, all those little pieces and yardage requirements to calculate with traditional quilts.) Anyway, hard as I try, I cannot let Quilt National go by without an attempt at fame and glory.

I have been pulling out all the stops this year to produce a quilt worthy enough to enter. When I say this year, I actually mean starting last week ( I did mention the procrastination issue). I am using those new silk screen techniques, have a groovy color scheme the judges are sure to love and keep chasing the cats off my entry every five minutes. But still things tend to go wrong. Now I have to admit I am a whiz at printing fabric in my printer, running paper bags and all kinds of fabrics through it (except maybe that one time when I had to go out and buy a new printer due to a severe jam.) But the last two days have been very trying, I have literally used up a 10 pack of ink jet fabric at $24.99, (all right so I did have a 40% off coupon, you do the math), and a whole brand new ink cartridge at $18.99, (I'm too cheap to buy the good stuff), and I was unable to print the big, enlarged photo I had my heart set on for the centerpiece of the quilt. Every print was completly unusable. Yikes!

Then I realized that God speaks to us in mysterious ways. If I had been able to print out that image, I would have screwed up the integretiy and compostion of the whole piece with my determination to do it a certain way. S0, I 'm out a few bucks and another trip to the store for more printer sheets and another ink cartidge, but I'm much happier with the version I was forced to make.

What am I making? There's a teaser in the corner of the photo, but I will say no more until I get my rejection letter in the mail, and last time I got a very nice one that I was proud to show all my friends. What's the saying? Nothing ventured, nothing gained. Got to get back to the studio. There's plenty of time to clean it up after QN.