Garden of Quilts, Day 2

The 50 acres of Ashton Gardens, at Thanksgiving Point, was the site of the quilt show. Tera and I headed over there on Friday morning, along with Tera’s daughter and two of her grandkids (they are so cute!). After checking in, I took off—with Tera’s blessing—to explore by myself for a bit.

The quilts are hung on lines or displayed on frames. Some are outside and some are under tents.

I followed the paths around the gardens, stopping to admire everything along the way. I liked looking at the quilts hung on lines, because I could see the quilting on the back. Sometimes that is just as interesting as the front of the quilt.

This is not a juried show. The gardens were full of all kinds of quilts from many different quilters with varying tastes and styles. I gave up taking pictures almost immediately, preferring instead to enjoy looking at the quilts. I did snap a picture of this block, because I found it so intriguing:

There were two vendor areas and a large tent where the Riley Blake designers gave lectures and trunk shows throughout the day.

I met up with Tera and the kids again just before noon. Her daughter was heading home, so Tera and I went and got some lunch and came back to walk around by ourselves before leaving in late afternoon for the airport. (Tera was flying to Michigan to meet her husband for his class reunion there and I planned to stay in a hotel that night before my flight home on Saturday morning.) We looked at the quilts and talked about what we liked and what we would have done differently. I really liked the quilts that were scrappy or that weren’t based on a single fabric line. As nice as it is to have coordinating fabrics pulled for you in a line, I still think that quilts made that way tend to look flat. I prefer the visual tension in a design that includes one or two rogue fabrics to spice things up.

I enjoyed the gardens as much as I enjoyed the quilts. I wandered into a small fragrance garden with a Shakespeare theme and was treated to a personal tour by one of the garden staff. She was from the botany department at the university and very eager to show me the unique plants they had growing there. Did you know there is a dandelion with pink flowers? It wasn’t blooming or I would have taken pictures. And I have to see if I can find some chocolate cosmos to put in next year. It really does smell like chocolate.

I contented myself with just a few purchases, mostly wool felt for some embroidery projects and a pincushion pattern. Our goody bags included spools of thread—I got a spool of Superior Threads Charlotte’s Fusible Web and a spool of Fantastico.

This was such a fun weekend. It felt like the perfect transition between the end of gardening season and the beginning of sewing season. I came home inspired and full of ideas. I got all my merchandise for the sale tagged yesterday. I also took out the unfinished quilt projects from last spring and put them back up on the design wall. They got put away in June because 1) the breeze from the fan kept blowing them off the wall and 2) I didn’t want the distraction.

It’s been raining since I got back. The husband dug up the rest of the potatoes on Saturday. I need to sort them into their respective burlap bags for storage. We didn’t get as many potatoes as expected, even though the plants looked phenomenal. Oh, well. I think I need to get new seed stock next spring. Tera said she would take whatever tomatoes are left. I’ll be involved with the co-op sale on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday, and next weekend is the MCC relief sale in Ritzville. The schedule should settle down considerably after that. We’ve transitioned into our winter habit of sitting and watching YouTube videos after dinner. I am unable to sit and not do something, so I’ve been working on some EPP hexies. I’ll get out the embroidery projects soon.