Shining Tides Quilt Show

Here’s a phrase I’ll probably never hear Costas utter again, “So do you want to go to the quilt show today and clean the house later?”

He had ulterior motives of course, there just happened to be a quilt show held on campus of his university, so what he really meant was, “Can I go to the office and talk to my friends while you go to the quilt show?” Excellent arrangement, so we did.

Detail of "Celtic Stars" by Jo Bruce (my favorite quilt in the show):
And the whole thing (this quilt won Best of Show at the Topsfield Fair in '01):

I went to the Shining Tides show two years ago and what I love about this guild is that they have so many hand quilters. I often feel that I'm one of the last hand quilters left out there and the main stream quilting world is just pushing past us into the spotlight. Seeing the amazing quilts at this show renews my energy for hand quilting and makes me take pride in my strange old-fashioned hobby. The show was really nice. I went into it looking for different things now that I have the experience of working to put a show together under my belt from last year, and I've been thinking a lot about the SCQG show for 2009-- I was suposed to be the Show Chair, but because of the move I had to step down. I have been working with the new show chair though, and trying to give her all my ideas and information. I have sooo much to tell her after this show too.. do's and dont's. Hopefully she'll get a chance to see it, it runs through tomorrow.
They changed a lot of things about their show this year, the two biggest being location and addition of vendors. The location was great, right on the university campus, ample parking, a coffee bar with snacks on site (it was held in one of the student centers, so they used University staff at the cafe). Last time they had it in an old church in one of the smaller towns along the coast (I do have pics of that show over on flickr, but it looks like I never wrote a post about it..), which was also nice, but the addition of vendors did two things-- gave people more to look at & do, and it made things a lot more crowded/cramped. The quilt racks in the main display area were so close together it was hard for me to get good photos. At any rate, I was there for about 2 hours on Friday afternoon and the place was pretty full. I can only imagine how packed the show will be this weekend.

Another really awesome thing about this guild is that they have a sister-city guild relationship with a quilt guild in Japan. The Japanese guild sends quilts to be displayed at the Shining Tides show each year. Last time they all made ships, this year it was flowers. How cool..

This one with the flowers on the hats I thought was adorable~

The rest of my photos are tagged with "shiningtides08" over at flickr..

The absolute best thing about the show, in my opinion, was the addition of a scrap bin, but that was such a moving experience that I'll have to save it for it's own post tomorrow..