This year's show turned out to be the most memorable since I moved here 8 years ago. My sister, Cheryl, is visiting for the show and it was great to play the hostess and show her around. But first, I came in early to help with the quilt hanging. Here's my team hanging quilts in the Teacher's Tent. **Click the photos to enlarge**
These hippos were done by Janet Fogg. Can you imagine doing this kind of quilting? Wow!
On my way over to meet Cheryl at the Sisters Coffee Co., I happened to pass by the Rosalie Dace student exhibit and there was my quilt! And look at the beauty right next to it.
Here are more of the amazing pieces in this special exhibit.
After getting our coffee we headed up to the Peter Pan quilt exhibit by the Cover to Cover Book Club Quilters. This was a very nice exhibit with lots to entertain the kids.
We had 17 special exhibits to see so we went on a mission to find them all. Along the way we found several fun quilts.
That's mine! And right next door, these cute doggies.
This special exhibit was really wonderful. This group of quilters posed a challenge to themselves that they each had to dye a yard of fabric, then cut it up to pass out to the others. All members ended up with a swatch of each color and had to make a quilt. These two are my favorites. Such whimsy!
The Stitchin' Post employee challenge is always fun to see. In fact, I got some great photos of these quilts last night at the Picnic in the Park. I am going out of order here, so will post those tomorrow. Meanwhile, here are three favorites.
The Small Wonders exhibit was looking good! When we went there, fairly early in the morning, there were still lots of yellow tags (meaning they hadn't sold yet). I hope they sold by the end of the day!
My great pleasure of the day was to meet Andrea Balosky, Bill Volkening and his mom, Liz. There were several missed photo opps today, but I did manage to get this one of Andrea and I holding the two AAQI quilts that she donated and I bought! She was such a delight to meet! Bill is also a great guy. He will be doing a showing of his AAQI collection and I offered to let him borrow my collection (7 strong) to add to his 12. They will be at a winery in the Willamette Valley in September and October.
After that quick visit with Andrea, Bill and Liz, we headed out again and caught up with Featured Machine Quilter, Helen Brisson. Her work is always innovative!
This one was seen in the Portland Modern Quilt Guild's special exhibit.
So, by early afternoon, the clouds were building in Sisters. Everyone was on high alert that a storm was expected to blow in soon. Cheryl and I hurried to see as many more exhibits as we could.
We came along my Second Chances quilt, The Moon Above Sees it All, hanging on the Shell Station wall (of all places!). Had to get a photo with it!
On the way to the library to see the Novel Idea Quilts we found some extraordinary pieces in ManLand. I just love this one. The words are created with a marking pen on the fabric.
We hurried on to the Teacher's Tent since Cheryl hadn't seen that yet. It was the last thing we had planned to see and see it we did! And then the skies opened up and we had a ferocious storm, pouring rain, cracking thunder and lightning. We were stuck here until a friend showed up with a car and we made a run for it.
The quilts were all down by 3:30, well before the official 5:00 end of the show. The quilt and bike raffles were held inside the Stitchin' Post instead of on the lawn. I happened to run in to friends near the Quilt Show Office where we had all offered our services to help with the quilts. As it turned out they had plenty of volunteers and sent us on our merry way. Since the town had nearly cleared out by this time, though the sun had come out and the streets were on their way to dry, we decided to go out for margaritas and appetizers. A fitting way to end this extraordinary day. I heard someone say that it hadn't rained like that at the quilt show for 25 years. I don't know if that number is correct, but I'm sure it's been a very long time!
Tommorow are the Save it for Sunday events and Cheryl and I will be there. Maybe we'll hear more about how this year entered the record books!