Reflecting on my Country Garden Quilt - It's A Star

I made this quilt in 2006 in preparation for submitting it to a couple of big quilt shows. The first submission was to Quilt Symposium Manawatu which was held here in Palmerston North in January 2007. It wasn't accepted, and probably because the photography was not good enough to be enlarged onto a wall for viewing. No matter, an artist (like a prophet) is often not accepted in their home town. So I got new photos taken by a semi-professional photographer (well he has much better equipment than I have - photography equipment, I mean!) and sent off the CD-ROM to the American Quilter's Society (AQS) for their big show in Paducah (held in April or May this year). Joy, oh joy, it was accepted - then I had to get the quilt posted to the US of A - the biggest hassle being insurance. After all this quilt, although 45 1/2 inches square took me at least 300 hours to make! So, huge buzz. My first quilt accepted into an American Show that lasts for 4 days and last year had 37,000 visitors! Two other New Zealand quilt makers had quilts also in this show - one lady has hers regularly in overseas shows and teaches here in New Zealand. This is flying with the angels.
The quilt had only just arrived home on the day of Rose City Quilter's Tote and Gloat here in Palmerston North, so it got a public showing. Our guest speaker was Helen Marshall who arranges for the collection and couriering of quilts for the World Quilt organisers. She suggested that I enter it into World Quilt - well I did make it for that show originally! So I duly sent off the photos again, and lo and behold! it was accepted into World Quilt with 25 of New Zealand's best quilt makers.
There is an article about these quilts in the latest New Zealand Quilter magazine, issue 61 - mine has special mention (page 7) because it was in both shows!I am expecting the quilt to arrive home in late November/early December - it's been away for most of the year!

Pattern is from Kim Diehl's Country Whig Rose. I actually rang and spoke to Kim to get permission to use her pattern and have it photographed - thanks to Amazon.com they had a comment on where Kim lived so I could track her down!