Wednesday/Day Three

Each morning of the show I took a class, but I left the afternoons free. One lesson I learned at a past show was– leave yourself time to SEE the show! Plus… SHOP!

Wednesday started out a little later at 8:30am with a class on Cross Hatching on the Longarm with Stacie Spradlin. We’ve all seen those lovely cross hatched borders at quilt shows.

Stitching them was pretty much intuitive, since I have a lot of ruler work under my belt. I did pick up some good tips to help– especially how to backtrack along a line that’s already stitched. Here’s what I came up with:

It’s a bit hard to see with the chalk lines but if you stare at it, it looks like a little dome over my grid!

We all had to share a HandiQuilter longarm– I shared my machine with the sweetest person who flew in from the MidWest. She had just purchased the type of HandiQuilter we were working on. We chatted so much, I think we lost some of our practice time! I wish I had exchanged contact information with her. Whenever you meet quilting people, there’s an immediate bond.

This teacher’s sample quilt was beautiful, so I took the opportunity for more pictures of it.

I flatter myself that I could get to this level of quilting, but not without making it my 40 hour a week job for a couple of years! There’s too many things I like to do, and machine embroidery will always be first. ❤️

After lunch, it was back to the show! I took hundreds of pictures. I’m going to show you a lot of them because you never get to see the non-winners, most of which should have been winners! If you want to see who made the quilt, just look at the number and then visit the New England Showbook that I linked to in the last post.

Here we go…

Phew! If you have a glazed, overstimulated feeling now, I’ve succeeded in re-creating exactly what the show was like. I have been going to AQS shows since about 2016, and let me tell you– the quality of the pieces has skyrocketed.

The show closed at 5– dinner was a bit of a problem each night, since the restaurant at the hotel was small and packed! We were too tired to walk out or drive anywhere.

One of the best parts of the show was meeting people from my old guild, the Bayberry Quilters of Cape Cod. Some old friends were staying at the hotel and then they sponsored a bus trip this day– everywhere I turned was a familiar face! Having dropped out of sight during 2020 and then moving, I was really touched by how many I remembered, and who remembered me. ❤️

That night, I had to check out the pool! It was on the top floor and at sunset, the views were spectacular. One of my old friends met me up there and we sat and stitched and caught up with each other– the perfect ending to a wonderful day.

A day for the books! I still have enough photos for a Part Three– so be sure to subscribe and don’t miss out on pictures of the special exhibits, and my final purchases.

xox
Carol