AQS Quilt Show

I just returned from a grand trip to Paducah, Kentucky for the annual American Quilter's Society Quilt Show! I flew into Nashville, TN with Chris and Ron, the friends we are staying with during our homeless period, we picked up a car and headed for western Kentucky!! We stayed with Judy and Rich and Sue, (whose husband stayed home like mine did) on a docked houseboat in the Kentucky Marina on the Ohio River about 20 miles south of Paducah. The plan was for the guys to fish and play golf and the girls to go to the quilt show. I love it when a plan comes together!!

The guys did exactly as they intended and fished and played golf for 3 days while we saw all the "show" quilts and shopped in every vendor's booth we could find!! We had dinner with the guys every night and enjoyed our evenings in the houseboat with "show and tell" (so all could see what we bought!) and playing cards and laughing till we hurt!

The whole town opens to this huge quilt show every year and every place that is large enough for a few vendors to set up shop is filled with wonderful sample quilts, fabric in every color you can imagine, and more quilting and sewing gadgets than you could ever use! It was wonderful!! Even the regular shops in the old downtown area all decorate their windows and compete for the best "quilting window"!! The convention center is huge with several large halls, the mall was filled with vendors, the civic center got into the act and the old empty buildings downtown had lots of colorful new life for a little while! One of the Delta Queen river boats was even docked right next to the convention center for 3 days while her passengers were at the show! The town estimates that 30,000 folks pass through during the 4 day show and leave about $12 million behind!

We all did our best for the local economy too and I came home with quilt kits, fat quarters, neat gadgets and with a special ok from my guy - a new Janome sewing machine!! I told him after our first granddaughter was born that if we ever were lucky enough to have a 2nd granddaughter that I would need a new sewing machine that had all those wonderful stitches! I have a 30-yr old Kenmore that still sews like a champ, but I will now be able to add all sorts of pretty decorative stitches and it even has 2 sizes of letters with 4 styles of fonts each!! I am sooo jazzed!! I can hardly wait for the UPS man to deliver it!!