Quilt Week ~ It’s the Quilts ~ and the People!

A huge part of the fun of traveling to quilt events is who you travel with. I’ve had so many wonderful travel companions over the 35 years I’ve been attending the AQS show in Paducah, and this year was no exception. Lori and Janis are good friends whom I’ve known for a while, and we meshed well on this trip. They both enjoyed sewing in our kitchen when we weren’t “doing the show”. I brought Aletta (my beige featherweight) for Janis to sew on, and they got along well.

Lori was designing a new quilt, and when she taped the blocks to the window it looked like stained glass.

I set up Irma (my machine) on my usual corner of the table and realized I really do love the color orange (pic on the left 😊). I decided I’d work on a new One Block Wonder top, and had so much fun playing with all the kaleidoscope-like designs.

Sometimes we even ate in the kitchen, and other times we checked out a few of my favorite restaurants ~ like Flamingo Row!

Lori is also a quilting teacher and an expert on scrap quilts. She has a wonderful online presence, and a great website: https://quiltingwithlori.com/. Lori has loads of free patterns available, and she does live and zoom meetings and classes. This year she had two quilts in the AQS calendar, and was part of the “Meet and Greet” autograph party!

Please do check out her site. What a blessing quilting friends are!

And then there are the new friends you meet at the show. I had so many lovely quilters sign up for my classes. Yes ~ I was blessed with the opportunity to teach at this year’s show! I taught two free-motion quilting classes, as well as my “Seminole Sampler” and a new class I call “Silhouettes and Shadows”. All of them went “sew” well.

It was very exciting to have Katelynn in my Seminole class. She lives in Florida and is of Seminole Indian heritage! She had such interesting information to share, and even had beads in authentic colors.

One of the other fascinating people I met on this visit to Paducah was Karen Nyberg ~ the astronaut. Some of you may not know that she actually made a quilt block while on the Space Station.

The National Quilt Museum had an exhibit about her during Quilt Week.

She was scheduled to do two talks in the museum during the week, and I was so glad to have been able to hear her speak. IQA in Houston held a star block challenge in her honor while she was on the Space Station, and some of those quilts were on display in the museum. The one with her block was behind her during her talk.

She shared about how difficult it was to sew a quilt block together in outer space, and many other fascinating things involved in living on the Space Station. She’s designed two lines of fabric from the photos she took while in space, and a few of her quilts were on display. This one showcases her first fabric line:

This was my favorite.

The quilt of her husband, fellow astronaut Doug Hurley, was also well done.

At the end of her talk we were able to have our photos taken with her. I met up with my friend Judy in line and we now have proof that we met Karen 😁.

The last group of people I’d like to tell you about in this post have become very dear to me. As I’ve mentioned, I’ve been helping to hang the quilts in Paducah since 1989, and many of the people at AQS have become good friends. I think it’s about time I thanked them on this blog for all the kindness and encouragement they’ve shown me over the years.

From the first day I helped with the show Bill and Meredith Schroeder and their family were welcoming and appreciative to everyone. They never put on airs, and actually worked right along with the rest of us. Meredith and her daughter Lynn Lloyd continue to help hang quilts to this day. I’m so grateful for their friendship.

From the very beginning there has been one man that seems to have his finger on the pulse of most all of the important details involved in actually running the show ~ from hanging the quilts to keeping the classes running smoothly. His name is Terry Guill and he has been a good friend and great blessing to me over the years. Here we are rolling the art quilts to be shipped home after the show.

And then there’s Bonnie Browning. She came on board as the Executive Show Director a few years after I began to attend, and she was the perfect person for the job. A fine quilter in her own right, Bonnie did it all with her good organizational skills, and great sense of humor. This was her last show before retiring, and she will be missed. Congratulations Bonnie!

So many dear friends, and so much fun!

But Quilt Week 2024 had to eventually come to an end. After Lori, Janis and I did our best to support the vendors, the stores, and the artists, we still had some room left in the van. We are praising God for a wonderful adventure and safe travels home.

Can’t wait for next year!