Mary volunteered me as a “white glove” helper: we walked the show floor for a few hours wearing cute aprons and white knit gloves.
Rule Zero: nobody touches the quilts. When people wanted to see the back side, we did all the handling. This worked out quite well; pretty nearly everybody understood what was going on, although we all agreed that fine quilts exhibit a magnetic attraction to fingertips.
Pro tip I: when the sign at the entrance says NO DRINKS, that means your coffee isn’t allowed in the exhibit area. You may be a special person, but you’re not that special. We’re not picking on you.
Pro tip II: when you bring your brat to a quilt show and let the kid dive under frames holding quilts representing thousands of hours of painstaking work, don’t act surprised when I haul him out by the feet, reprimand him, give him back to you, and expect you to get your act together.
I obviously had the wrong chromosome loadout for the mission.
Mary’s Butterfly Flower quilt nailed First Place in the Appliqué Wall Quilt division!
The Smell of Molten Projects in the Morning 
“Food and drinks permitted with $10,000 deposit. Forms available at registration table.”
?
Indeed!
Along with the ultimate threat: “Unattended children will be given a can of Monster Energy Drink and a puppy.”
I suggested something similar for the charity tag sale that would deter those professional shoppers who show up two hours early and rob you blind while you’re setting up: extract a $50 earlybird surcharge and don’t dicker on the price. You’d also need an Enforcer…
Congrats to Mary, very nice work. Sent the link to my XYL vu2pin.
She’s really happy; the (professional!) judges use an absolute grading scale, so she’s gearing up to send it to a national competition…
Congrats to Mary and to you for being so supportive in this mission. I would have done the same thing with the bratty kid ;-)
It was, as they say, something completely different…