This is the third year we’ve been in charge of collecting beauties and arranging them in the building at the Pasco County Fairgrounds called Collura Cottage in Dade City, FL. The cottage is the home of creativity and more! This year we have 296 entries ranging from woodworking, plants, quilts, crochet, knitting, painting, jewelry, bags and lots, lots more.

When you walk into the interior room, this is what you see!

This year we had some truly amazing plants, including a rubber tree that just about hit the ceiling, a stunning fern, and many other beauties. The one thing I’d like to beef up next year is some flowers! We had only one flowering plant inside!

We decided to put all of our Florida Shop Hop quilts as a lead in to the main showroom. They are bright, happy and beautiful!

This was a fun corner to make, though it just kind of built itself. The wind chime with the teapot is just a fun thing that someone made, and the Pathos Party was a collection of stunning Pathos plants on a rack. I put our Take Me Away quilt behind and it really looks beautiful as you enter the room!

On the right, we have our newest hit, “Light ‘n Bright,” the upcoming best seller for the 2024 All Florida Shop Hop.

It took a small army to put all the quilts out. On the left, you’ll see Sarah helping me finish up one day. We had multiple people come in and help collect quilts, set up the room, and re-arrange it, until we actually opened on Monday afternoon, Feb. 19, at 3 p.m. We will continue to re-arrange and move things, probably the entire week! On the right you see the food judges, as people tasted the jams, jellies, pickles and other goodies.

Sunday afternoon, we brought in judges to pass out awards. We use the Danish system of awarding ribbons. It means that each item is judged against the standard. The Danish system means that each item gets an award based on its own merit, NOT the other entries.

The competition against other entries were awarded the Grand Champion and Reserve Grand Champion ribbons. All others receive either first, second or third place ribbons. This means the judging does take a while, as you can’t just look around and find your top 5 and study those carefully. Each item must be studied to determine its merit.

The baked goods and preserves are a classic thing that people think of when they think of fairs! We had our beautiful tea pot quilt quilt that we had made for our store sample. Thanks to Diane Hissong for making that one for us! It made a beautiful backdrop for some of our jams and jellies!

I tried cutting our foam cake. To our chagrin, as beautiful as it looked on the outside, it was simply foam or cardboard underneath. However, it was a beautiful work of art. However, the cookies on the bottom right were edible AND beautifully fun! So, that one got Grand Champion in the Decorated cakes and cookies category!

Woodworking is an area that we’re trying to build up. We are thrilled that our very own Forest Nichols took the Reserve Grand Champion spot with his custom sewing machine case, and Becky’s son, Jeremiah Petersen, took the Grand Champion award with his guitar! The judge told me later that he was quite impressed with both of those pieces of woodworking!

Ken, my hubby, took the Joe Collura Award, with his bucket of fun for everyone, as we do give a special award for the best entry in keeping with the theme. The 2024 Theme this year was “Buckets of Fun for Everyone!”

Below you’ll see some interesting, creative and/or stunning awards! You can see how the wall of paintings changed below as we got more entries in!

It was incredibly fun to see one of our own finished kits get entered into the show. That’s Florida Charm from the 2023 SHOP HOP, on the left! In front of that we put a cart that was loaned to us, and filled it with plants. In the center was a log with a bucket full of an owl family!

Be sure to click on the arrows below to go to the next photos. This way you can see the quilts BIG! If you don’t, you won’t realize just how many items we put up here for you to enjoy!

These quilts are beautiful. Sue Padgett took the Grand Champion award for the traditional or paper pieced quilts! Others are shown below.

Be sure to click on the arrows below to go backwards or forwards to see more photos.

Below is one of the quilts of the winner of our Vera Cox Award—Linda Kelly. She made 3 absolutely stunning applique quilts. Her technique is perfection, and her quilts are light, bright, fun and beautiful! The quilt was the perfect backdrop for our Christmas area, which featured an incredible crocheted nativity set. The designer crocheted each piece in the nativity set with such care that we knew it should be given “front and center” in the room. So, we did!

This is our third year of preparing this room. Each year, though it’s a ton of work, the reward is in the beauty in the displays, and in seeing all the people come in as they see their own work receive award after award!

This year we also got to find our own volunteers to make cookies and milk, too, as we pass that out to all the “walkers” through the room.

So, as we make this part of our local fair the very best we can, we hope that you’ve enjoyed the show! I’ll try to get more pictures, and show you even more as we go along! Behind each entry is a person, and with each person is a story! I might get some of those for you!

And if you’re one of those who helped either by entering things in the fair or by helping in any way collect, set them out or judging, we appreciate you greatly! Couldn’t have done it without you!

Thanks so much for coming along on our journey!

Be sure to check out what my sis has for you in the store here!

Feel free to browse the site.