Quilt Show Info

Cotton Quilters' Guild Quilt Show


When: Saturday, October 6 9 a.m. – 3 p.m.


Where: Cottonport Museum 

220 Cottonport Ave 

Cottonport, La. 71327


What: Over 100 quilts, many for sale,


New This Year: Over 1,000 yards of 

quilting fabric at $4 per yard!!!!

Fat Quarters, quilting books, arts and 

crafts, food and homemade cakes!

Quilts remain on display through October 14

Come join the fun!

Whew! That was WORK!

This weekend was our annual church fair.  Richard and I are the "cole slaw people" which means we buy and donate the works for the slaw which is just a tiny part of the whole church fair experience. 

If you want cole slaw for 1,000 people, I'm your gal.  No, I can't take credit for work and knowledge I don't own.  So the truth is Richard is your man.   He knows exactly how much cabbage and "color" to order, how much dressing to pick up, how to mix it precisely for taste and texture, and how many ounces to serve each plate.  

All of this knowledge is necessary so that the ingredients come out just right and there's enough for every plate.  Because, trust me on this, if you run out early, or the taste is odd, or the slaw is hot, or there's not enough, or, or, or.....  

It doesn't matter what you add on the back of an "or," if there's an issue, it's going to be a horrible, awful, miserable, catastrophic disaster with dire consequences!

Do I sound like a drama queen?  Cause, I'm not.  Really, it's the hubs of the family who has the nervous tick and the non-stop dialogue.  It's a mantra really, "Do this, stir that, it needs to be right, serve 4 ounces, find the right spoon to measure the ounces, don't put too much, put a little more, it has to be 4 ounces, use this spoon, serve 4 ounces." 

Can you imagine this man?  Sure, he looks like a laid-back cute hubby, but give him a reason to be nervous and he's all about the jitters!  What if he were responsible for the main dish?  What if he had to make the whole meal?  For all 1,000 folks?  Oh, he would stroke out during the first nervous breakdown!

My job is simple: mix the slaw while HE pours in the right amount of each ingredient, then go do something else....anything else.  Anything not where the slaw is being served. 

To that end I designated myself the ticket taker.  I stand at the window, take and count dinner tickets as customers arrive, bag up the correct number of plates while chatting them up so they forget how long they stood in line.  Is that not the perfect job for me?  Rich has the nervous breakdowns; I chat it up with total strangers.  We are GOOD!

An artist drawing of our pretty little church (internet photo)

 So now, at 5:00 o'clock in the afternoon, it's safe to say we lived through another fair.  It got a little iffy last night while I helped with Bingo.  I called Bingo numbers just a smidgen too long and all that loud talking and laughing gave me a headache, but it was fun and I slept really well, so this morning I was ready to go at it again.  


This afternoon I had even more fun picking up the handmade bench that I won.  It's really pretty and is the perfect length for our mud porch.  I'll add a cushion and we'll put it to use putting on and taking off muddy boots and shoes during the winter.  There's just enough space under the bench for storing those boots and shoes so they don't have to come in the house.  If I didn't know that Mr. Walter Riche made the bench, I'd consider it sent straight from heaven.  Wouldn't you agree?

Quilty Tuesday

Today started out pretty agreeable since I finally got a chance to do some serious work on the guild quilt.  I'm not finished, of course, but I'm getting close.  Since I am responsible for the quilting only, there's no squaring up or binding to worry with.  Just finish the quilting and deliver it to the next person.  Easy enough, right?


Not that you can see the quilting in this photo, but I chose to quilt the red blocks in a feather wreath design that goes from corner to corner so that it supports the seams.


On the inside of the wreath I dropped in some feathers and a few scrolls that help to fill in the center.  This works quite well since a few of the fabrics have scroll designs in them.


The green posed a problem for me because of its shape.  I wasn't sure how I'd fill out the points but I liked the idea of including Christmas designs.  Again I went to the fabrics for ideas and the border fabric has some beautiful poinsettias.  I used my trusty white board to mimic the design.  

As usual, my drawing was pretty crude, but the quilting outcome isn't so bad.  You may be able to see the small pointy circles that represent the stamens and the two or three leaf sizes of the poinsettia flowers.  

While that worked quite well for the complete blocks,  I didn't think it would look very good in the half blocks.  Another look at the fabrics and I found some holly berry and leaves, which are pretty easy to mimic even on the white board.


I finished everything off with a small stipple in the yellow.  Otherwise, the yellow popped up in a most unruly manner and just looked silly.  The tight design helped to hold it down and allowed me to get very close to the seams, which I wanted to do since some of those seams were a little loosely stitched.


A couple of hours of sewing tomorrow should finish up the quilt and I'll deliver it on Thursday.  Just in time, too, because today the guild newslettter arrived in the mail along with the raffle tickets for this fundraiser quilt.