Mid-Atlantic Quilt Show

What a day...getting up at 5:00 AM ( a real shocker for me these days) and heading north to travel to the Mid-Atlantic Quilt Festival with a car full of women. We had an amazing day. The show was mind-boggling, with the number of quilt, special exhibits, and vendors from around the country! I took lots of quilt pictures and was truly humbled to see the exquisite, artful works on display. I have not finished cropping, editing, and trying to identify the quilts, but here is a special shout-out to Carolina Longarm Association member Rosemary Cushman for winning Best Machine Workmanship, Innovative category. I believe she used Tsukineko inks to color her quilted motifs, in this fun quilt.

And here is a group quilt made by members of Capital Quilters Guild, including two members of my Anything Art bee (Tama and Margaret) and also my CyberBee ( Mary, Tama, and Kathy).

I spent most of my time gazing at quilts, but visited a few vendors to make some donations...

I have so many toys to buy supplies for...the long-arm, the regular sewing machine, the embellisher, the mixed-media world... I concentrated on purchasing things I normally have to order by mail...or things from vendors of specialty items...

like sheep wool! Oh, boy, I wish I had purchased more of these hand-dyed wool curls.

These are used with the needle-felting (embellishing) machine, especially for projects in the books by Margo Duke. That cool skein of yarn is destined for adding colorful stems and flower details to my Cubist garden quilt for the Pamela Allen class. These are from Mangham Wool and Mohair Farm in Charlottesville, VA.

Also for embellishing, some hand-dyed silk ribbon from Quilter's Fancy, Cortland, OH in yummy rose and teal shades.

And since I found some teal curls and ribbons, how about a variety of teal Dupioni silk hand-dyed fat eighths from Country Keepsakes of Rome, PA?

I bought this Christmas ornament kit because I had never seen one like this. There is a pre-printed, pre-colored design on fabric that you embroider over batting, add a backing, and finish. The design is by Carol L. Steffensen, and I can't remember the vendor. The website for the pattern is Chickadee Hollow Designs.

Less fun, but useful for my longarm quilting, I stocked up on The Bottom Line thread and Super Bob pre-wound bobbins at Superior Threads.

Also at Superior, I purchased some HEAVY-duty water soluble stabilizer in two sizes, to avoid disasters like the fibers wrapping around my bobbin assembly a while back.

Any my last stop before we called it a day about twelve hours after I got up: some new feather stencils from The Stencil Company. Most of my longarm quilting is freehand quilting, but I occasionally need some stencils for quilts like the heritage Blazing Stars quilt I just finished for my sister-in-law. I got really tired of the stencil I used over and over on that quilt, and now I have another just like it to quilt. Maybe I will try one of these new designs.

And, I did not forget my blogging friends while shopping...next time I will show what I bought for a Blogiversary Give-Away!