We're in training ...

... Scrappy and I have decided to take a leaf out of the Olympic contestants' books, so we're now officially in training. It's going to require a lot of hard work, and great personal sacrifices while we aspire to become Ladies Who Lunch! We started today by going out for posh coffee instead of making our own. In a couple of weeks, we are off for some luxury spa treatments, plus lunch out. See, I told you it's going to be tough, but hey, we can cope.

After a slow start, we did also do some quilting. Scrappy finished piecing this quilt

and cut the backing and the wadding, and I finished off the binding on my YMQG Challenge quilt. Since this quilt is due to be displayed at our meeting in December, I can't help feeling a teeny bit smug about having finished, and I thought you might like a sneak-peek at it, so here it is.

Whatttt????

..... OK, that's not a very polite way to start a blog post is it, but I'm feeling very wound up.

I've just been reading this blog post from the Modern Quilt Guild and I'm afraid it's really made me annoyed.  It's about the rules for entering quilts in QuiltCon that can be considered "derivative" and then goes on to define what is derivative.

Reading through the post, it seems to me that they are saying that unless you live and have created a quilt working totally in a vacuum, it is likely to be a derivative of someone else's work. Does this mean that, just because I love the work of Jacqui Gering and have taken her online classes on Improv Piecing, and Quilting with a Walking Foot, and I have read and loved Christa Watson's books on quilting, and used techniques from them all of them in a couple of my quilts, that my quilts would be considered derivatives and therefore not eligible to be entered into QuiltCon's categories for awards? Not that I am considering entering any, but I just wonder?

Surely, almost everything we do in the modern quilt world derives from work done by pioneers such as the ladies of Gees Bend, Gwen Marston, et al., and isn't that, in fact the very essence of quilting, that we pass the knowledge, techniques, etc from one person to another?  If you do go and read the post, do look at the comments too as they make interesting reading, and no, not all of them agree with my point of view.  I would have liked to leave a comment myself, but I don't seem able to, maybe because I am not a member.

OK, I'll get off my soap box now shall I?

Advice needed ....

.... if there's anybody out there still reading my blog, I need some help please.  I would like to make some quilt labels using my printer at home.  Can I just attach ordinary fabric to freezer paper and run that through or does the fabric have to be special, pre-treated stuff?