Quilt Show Report

My friend Jacquie and I went to the local guild's quilt show today during our lunch hour. I work with Jacquie and she just got interested in quilting a little over a year ago. She's a single mom with a younger son still living at home and she doesn't have much time (or money) for quilt classes and such, so she hasn't had very many opportunities to see quilts made by others or learn different techniques. She has taken a couple of beginning quilting classes at JoAnn's and avidly pours through quilt magazines, planning what she wants to make next. And like most of us, her ideas far outstrip her time. Also like most of us when we began quilting, a great deal of her stash consists of fabrics from JoAnn's, but she's discovered the wonders of quilt shop quality fabric, so I wonder how long she'll be content with JoAnn's?

Last weekend, Jacquie joined a bus load of women bound for the Pacific International Quilt Festival, a Mancuso show, held in the Bay Area. Of course she enjoyed it immensely and just wished she could have spent more time. She's already making plans in her head to go back next year and possibly stay overnight. And today, of course, I introduced her to the local guild's annual quilt show. We only had an hour to spend there, and when we got back to the office, she told me she thinks she'll go back again this weekend and spend more time looking at the quilts and the vendors' wares. Isn't it fun to see new quilters fall in love with quilting?

Our local show usually displays a couple hundred quilts and we have about 30 vendors, so it's a reasonably large show. Yes, I did find my hand dyed fabric lady--she's such a nice woman! If you're anywhere on the west coast, perhaps you know Linda of Linda M. Designs? I rarely buy very much from her but I always buy at least a couple pieces to add to my collection, and we chat about the show and what's going on with the other vendors. This time, Linda's booth was across from another woman who had bolts of fabric priced at $4 to $5 a yard. I wondered whether Linda was benefitting from the huge draw of quilters to that corner of the vendor area, but it didn't seem to work that way since Linda and the other vendor tend to attract different types of quilters. Linda got MY money today though! Here are the three pieces I purchased:

I just LOVE this yummy shade of purple, although I'm not much of a fan of purple. I also liked the green, which will make some nicely shaded leaves. And the blue/green combo reminded me of trees reflected on the surface of a lake. I'm always on the lookout for some hand dyed brown/black fabric that looks like the texture of tree trunks and branches, but I haven't had much luck. I DID find some once a few years ago, but I've used most of what I had. But I'll keep looking--that's at least half the fun!

At another vendor booth, I saw this quilt made up and hanging against the back wall and they had just one kit left. The pattern is by Quilt Soup. Now these pastel colors aren't what I'm normally drawn to, but for some reason, in the last couple months they seem to be calling to me. I don't even want to THINK about redecorating my house to accommodate my changing tastes, but it may just come to that some day! When the vendor commented that I was getting the last kit, I told her I was on my lunch hour and had to shop FAST--kits are good for that!!!

I was kind of hoping to find a couple needle punch embroidery kits, but if they were there, I missed them. That's okay, though--I have plenty of other things to keep me busy. We also have a serious lack of stencil vendors at our guild show. Stencils are one of those things that are best shopped for when there's a wide variety, and quilt shops don't usually carry that many. At least we're lucky enough these days to have online access to companies that carry things like needle punch kits and stencils.

Am I boring you yet? I think this post is getting awfully long, so I'll just say good night for now and save the last couple photos--photos of a few quilts from the show--until tomorrow's post.