Quilt Shows & First Finish!

I've been on the road for work the better part of the last two weeks but managed to squeeze in a couple of quilt shows in the middle of my travels. I traveled home from Kalamazoo, MI last week via the Chicago and made a stop at the Quilt Festival on Friday. The best part of the trip was meeting up with the Chicago area quilter that is going to quilt Celtic Solstice and Grand Illusion for me. She;s hoping to have them both finished in time for me to bind them for our quilt show in June. If all goes as planned I should have five queen-sized quilts finished by early summer.  That definitely makes a dent in my UFO list!

I had not been to the Chicago show since it moved back.  I was very disappointed.  It seemed considerably smaller than in years past - a lot of the vendors I usually expect to see at a major show weren't there, and there really only seemed to be about half the number of vendors they used to have. A large portion of the quilt exhibits were repeated from Houston, too, so it didn't take me a lot of time to buzz through the show.  I was in and out in about an hour and a half.  

The version of the red and white exhibit at Chicago wasn't nearly as impressive as Houston but it was still very eye-catching.

I didn't get any other pictures at the show. Most of the quilts that caught my attention were in the "no photos" exhibits.  I am really disappointed that the Quilts Inc. folks prohibit photos.  I know that they want you to buy the books (which I always do!) but sometimes you want to get that close-up of component of the quilt that you just can't see in the book photos.

On my way home from Chicago I stopped in Bloomington, IL and visited the local guild's quilt show. They had a fabulous show!  They had a wonderful featured quilter, lots of really great quilts and a very nice selection of vendors.  I didn't take any photos since I was a bit pressed for time....had to get the rental car back before 6 pm...but I really enjoyed the show.

Now that I am back at home I finally managed to finish the binding on my Hunter's Star quilt. My daughter claimed it back when it was a pile of blocks so it's on her bed until show time. So far that's 386" of binding for the year....I'm off to a running start!