Nancy's trip to Chicago Quilt Festival

I always thought that the excitement of quilting would die down for me after 20 some years, but that just hasn’t seemed to happen. I decided to make a quick trip to the Chicago Quilt Festival. We were not vending or teaching and I was just there to check everything out at my own leisurely pace. It was a bit of a challenge to get to Chicago, as Denver had a fairly large spring snow storm along with cold. Arriving in Chicago I found more weather issues with horizontal wind and rain! I left my house at 7:00 am to end up in Chicago at 5:00 pm, remembering that it is a 2 hour and 15 minute flight! Can you tell that I really wanted to go?

The show was great and I found so many fun things. Unfortunately I am pretty aware of what is out in the industry and thus didn’t find a whole lot of brand new things. However I certainly found some things that I couldn’t live without.

Two ladies from Colorado, Terry Taylor and Michele Cushman, have started a new company EYEmbellishments. They have produced dishware for the last umpteen years and are now branching out into fired clay embellishments. Their new products are wonderful and I found my share of “need to have” treasures. Be sure to check out their web site, http://www.eyembellishments.com/. These new trinkets are definitely “one of a kind” gems!

I also had my share of fun at Wendy Richardson’s booth. She used to be under the name of Quilt Studio but has changed back to just Wendy Richardson, as no one could remember Quilt Studio. She dyes and overdyes printed fabric including lace, doilies, clothing, velvets, seam binding, etc. What fun--I absolutely love her things. (You can see her amazing creations at http://www.qtstudio.com/).

I had time to look at all of the quilts and did not feel like I was in a hurry, (which is often the case). It was a gift! I had a great dinner on Friday night with the two wonderful ladies from Artgirlz, Lisa Englebrecht, Terry, Michele, Wendy, Rosemary and myself. Lots of good laughs and stories went around. I was ready to come home on Saturday morning, but felt so pleased to have taken the time to smell the roses (in my case look at the quilts) and just plain have fun. Lucky me!

--Nancy