Quilt Show Thoughts

Friends and I went to a quilt show yesterday. This is pretty much a springtime ritual with us. The Pigeon Forge "Mountain QuiltFest" is a big event -- spread over three venues, and you have to climb onto a free trolley to get from one place to another. It's fun to ride an "old" trolley. The wooden benches are slippery, and you get talking to your friends so intensely you forget to braces yourself going around a curve. But I digress.

We looked at each and every quilt in the two displays. Our comments ranged from "Ooh!" and "Ahh!" to "What in the world is that!" and "How did that win a ribbon?"

One quilt we agreed on was one huge, gorgeous quilt that was pieced by one of our friends and quilted by machine by someone who is really good at machine quilting. It had a white Third Place ribbon hanging on it. Loved the white, pink and green fabrics, were impressed by the piecing in a Log-cabin design and the appliqued flowers -- apple blossoms, I think -- all very precisely done.

And as someone struggling to learn to machine quilt, I was stunned by the beautifully executed quilting. Machine quilting has come of age in the last five years or so. It used to be: "You mean she machine quilted it?" but now it's: "She did a lovely job of machine quilting it."

I , for one, will probably never hand quilt a piece that is larger than a baby quilt -- my wrist just can't take the strain. I took a serious look at a machine quilting setup in the vendors' area. Hmm. . .just maybe.