I spent five years designing and producing custom state-fair-inspired fabric and developing a custom fair-inspired quilt design before spending two years cutting, piecing, sewing, and quilting a 20-foot-by-20-foot quilt just in time to submit to the state fair this year.

I had to take out a payday advance with the worst terms you can imagine to buy the long-arm machine to quilt this enormous work of art because no one in the tri-state area has a machine big enough to quilt my art. The stress of this whole project and the amount of money and time I spent on it led to my husband asking me for a divorce, which will be finalized next week.

I wasn't expecting a ribbon or anything for my efforts, hard labor, innovation, or immense personal sacrifice, and I know that the fair features thousands upon thousands of crafts and pieces of art in hundreds of categories that would take the space of an entire small town to display properly.

But I'm still very mad that the fair organizers chose to display my incredible quilt draped over a chair behind several other entries in a case in the middle of the hall where very few fair-goers would be able to find it, let alone appreciate everything I did to impress the judges and show off my skills.

And that's not even the end of it! It turns out that the judges only provide feedback to the top 15-20 people in a given category, not all of the hundreds of entrants. Plus, there are no published judging criteria so it's impossible to know what the judges meant by the lack of ribbon and the terrible display location. And since I didn't win a ribbon, no one will even see my name on my quilt in the display case, so goodbye possible networking and knowledge-sharing opportunities!

Apparently the state fair promotes knowledge hoarding!!? They don't want us to know who the other quilters in the community are, and the state fair is the one and only place for quilters and fiber artists of all types to connect with each other!

How could this not be the main attraction for the entire state fair? Not so FAIR, is it?????