AQS Thursday

Today is a beautiful day in northern Indiana. Which is nice because yesterday was windy, rainy and otherwise unpleasant, putting me in a very grouchy and whiny mood last night. But today I am feeling much more sunshiny.

So... AQS adventure continued: Thursday-the second full day.

Thursday we slept in a bit before heading into Paducah and making the first stop of the day at Hancocks of Paducah. To understand this store picture this: imagine a large warehouse divided into two sections. The front half has bolts upon bolts of fabric and notions and patterns and home decor fabric and more. Hundred of bolts just waiting to be loved. But then in the back is table after table piled high with stacks of one yard cuts. The stacks start out orderly but quickly grow chaotic as quilters converge on the tables and dig through the fabric that is being sold for $4.98 a yard!!!!!! Only upon walking into that back room of Hancocks of Paducah did I understand why we were warned that first day that first year attendees tend to go a bit overboard with the buying of fabric and other pretties. I don't even know how much we got. Eventually the Momcat started feeling too overwhelmed and I had to remove her from the building. There were lots of people and lots of fabric and it really all was a little too much.

Having escaped from the fabric store relatively intact (although our credit cards said otherwise!) We parked the car (safely on a side street this time) and walked down to the Quilt Museum. The museum had the Best of Show winners from the past 25 years on display, which were beautiful to see. It was so interesting to see how different some of the winners are. After spending some time there we walked down to a store that had a huuuge yellow sign reading "Fabric Sale." Warning bells started to go off in my head but they were unheeded. They had fat quarters for $1.75. And if you bought 12 you got the 13th free. Momcat and I ended up getting two sets of identical fat quarters for our first ever challenge quilt project. We both have to use these 11 fat quarters plus one other fabric of our own choosing to make a quilt top of at least wall hanging size. It must be pieced by Christmas. I'm really looking forward to working on my own and seeing what she comes up with!

We then took a break and went to lunch at a nice Mexican place downtown before going to Finkels. This is an old building filled with more AQS vendors. The front of the building had regular vendory type things but the back--oh my! They had a Hurt Book sale of books that had been purchased and then returned for $5 each if you bought six. And they had t-shirts and calendars and bags and more. Needless to say-we purchased some books.

We headed back to the car to drop off our goodies and pick up our supplies for the class that night: Stack-n-Whack Ribbon Weave with Bethany Reynolds. On the way in we stopped for our dinner of strawberry shortcake from the Boy Scouts! Yummy! This class was super nifty and it was fun to learn such a different technique. (I've just about finished piecing this top and hope to get pictures up this week!)
Me and Bethany Reynolds

After class we headed back to the hotel to get some rest before our 8:30 class the next morning. It was a good day, but a tiring day.

Tomorrow AQS Friday!