Village Day 2015!

We have a Village Horticultural day each year.  And every year we say we'll enter something for the show and see if we can win a prize and every year we either forget or go on holiday.  This year however, we were ready and as a family team entered 26 classes in the crafts and cookery sections.  But before I tell you how that went, here's a flavour of what trundles along the end of our lane on the way to the showground at the other end of the village...

 The village brass band.

 A ginger bread house.

 Ooompa loompa's from Willy Wonka (which we suspect was put together by the local biscuit factory).

 The local toddlers group on an under the sea themed float.

 Commemorating VE Day 1945.  The lady leaning forward is haggling with a black marketeer for some stockings.  If they kept that banter up all along the high street they did well (it's a long high street) and the float was fabulous!

 And here's a very small section of the tractor parade.  We're surprised every year at just how many tractors turn out, there must be about 50 and we're only a small village of 1800 souls!  We're beginning to wonder if our second car should be a tractor.

 The children play their part too on all types of transport.  The little pirate looked a bit grumpy despite having the best make-up of the day.

For most of the summer, I'd been completing a quilt starting 3 years ago and abandoned.  I prefer to complete one project before I move onto another and I'd made myself a firm rule that I was not allowed to start ANYTHING new until I'd got this quilt sorted.  When we had warm weekend weather I sewed outside.

When it was raining I took my time indoors trying to match the stripes on the binding.  Note to self - never do a striped binding again.

 It very nearly worked...

The fabric was clearly on the wonk.

And - ta dah!  Finally, here's the finished quilt.  I ended up really enjoying the free motion quilting on this with all the wavy swirls depicting the water round the British Isles.  And if you look at it from the reverse (which I forgot to photograph!) the quilting creates a union jack again.  You'll just have to take my word for it.

So how did the quilt do in the competition?  A second prize place which I was very pleased with.  There was fierce competition and the quilt which won was properly beautiful with perfectly matching points, lovely hand quilting and clever fabric contracts. Next year I'm aiming for first!  Unless we forget or go on holiday.

 Other classes did well too, the monsters pulled one of 5 Highly Commended's.

 As did a fimo bracelet

 My best class was in the greetings cards section.

And finally - my first 1st placement.  Hooray!!

Man child No1, won third in the sketching section despite having to enter the adult classes and a photo I took of a market in Budapest gained another Highly Commended.  I must confess to failing spectacularly in the cooking section.  Nothing for the chutneys, pickles, sloe vodka (quite happy to keep quaffing that though) or blackberry liqueur.  But it gives me an excuse to make more this autumn and we're getting close to foraging season.  

It was a good day!  And to top the weekend off in style Himself and I had both our Mother's (mine from Scotland and his more locally) visit us the day after our competitive success and all mama's like afternoon tea don't they?

We made our own Afternoon Tea menu, cut the crusts of the sandwiches and ate cake!