Minnesota Quilt Show and the 4th of July

About a week ago, I found out that I had received the Best of Show ribbon in the large category at the Minnesota Quilters Inc. show in St. Cloud. Knock me over with a feather, thats all I can say. The quilt is my Sweet Candy Dots that I entered into Paducah. Right now its the only show worthy quilt I've made for a while so thats all I can enter but I am so proud of it!
The Minnesota quilters show has been a favorite of mine for a long time. A small group of ladies and I would get together and eventually we became a dozen, we called ourself the Dirty Dozen. Almost every year we would rob from our grocery money, pack up two cars or SUVs or whatever we could squeeze in and head for the city of the moment for the Minnesota show. They have a revolving show in Duluth (which is my personal favorite as its not real far from us and quite lovely on Lake Superior), Rochester, St. Cloud and St. Paul. We cram ourselves into two or three rooms but that was after our 15 hour road trip to get to the show since we had to stop at every quilt show along the way, no matter how far out of the way it was. We're talking Amish on dirt road out of the way but they did have good prices on fabric!
The show is huge, and its fun and the people are nice and the food is good. We had an entire turkey dinner with all the fixings in Rochester for crumps sake...served at the show. Nice. Anyway, I did entered into one of their challenges one year and did get an Honorable Mention. I was so thrilled and I always wanted to enter that show with a "real" quilt and this year I did. Unfortunately, our Dirty Dozen has dwindled due to health and death. That kinda knocked the wind out of our travelling sails but I've heard rumors of rekindled interest in a road trip. I think the Moonlight Quilters will be making another run...