It was a wonderful, wonderful quilt show. There were antique quilts there that all featured the color orange. That in itself was interesting due to the variances in dyes. Some have proven to be more steadfast that others over time. Some of the oranges were fading to brown while others held on to their vibrancy pretty well. I know when I was beginning to quilt way back in the dark ages (before rotary cutters), yellows and oranges could be used in a quilt, but not too much of either color. Just enough for a pop or two of bright. Then about five years ago it seemed that quilt designers threw that caution to the wind and suddenly lots of orange or yellow in a quilt was perfectly fine.
It was kind of nice to know that somewhere our quilting foremothers were smirking because they obviously were doing the very same thing back in the 1800's.
The vendors were varied. There seemed to be as many local quilt shops there as nationally known ones. Martelli has its own long arm out now. I got to play on it for a little while. It's an impressive system. I shopped at the Red Button Quilt Company's booth and fell in love with all their little quilts and buttons and wools.
All of that was lovely. But the classes were what really rocked. I took a class on Friday with Cindy Williams called Setting Solutions. That was a 3-hour lecture class. Cindy was hilarious and made learning the math in quilting fun. I plan to reference her book Setting Solutions in the future. I wish I could have taken her borders class.
Saturday Shelle and I had an all-day class with Sue Nickels on Machine Applique. I have several of her books and she's kind of in the Who's Who with AQS and has quilts in the National Quilt Museum. So to say I felt just a little intimidated going into this situation was putting it lightly. I knew I was going to learn a lot (and I did), but I didn't know if she was going to be overwhelming or not.
She's absolutely the sweetest person ever. She came around to each of us and helped us get our stitch length correct. The pre-class prep work she had done for each of us was so wonderful. Plus she brought some of her amazing quilts with her, including her "Baby Beatles" quilt. She and her sister made this ohsowonderful quilt that has everyone of the Beatles recordings represented on it. The quilt hung in Paducah a couple of years ago when I was there and Sue was there to talk about it. The "Baby Beatles" was a smaller version.
Anyway, Sue's machine applique work is total perfection. I can only aspire....
Those four days passed far too quickly and now I am back home with all my purchases...and a terrible cold/sinus infection.
I have coughed up everything but a lung and my tennis shoes.
I felt so bad yesterday, that I forgot to put on mascara before I went to work. I have not not worn mascara since I was 14.
So needless to say for this week, no pretty pictures, no quilting information. But, for your viewing enjoyment, I will post this...
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