I've always wanted to go to an international quilt show, and my dreams were realized this past weekend. Quiltcon is a quilt show where people come from all over the world to attend, see their quilts displayed, and teach classes.
I live 30 minutes south of Phoenix, so to get to the Phoenix Convention Center, it was a 45 minute drive. I signed up for one class, "Photographing your quilt from every angle" by Kitty Wilkin. It was a 3 hour class and I learned a lot about quilt photography.
I also signed up to volunteer, which I did for about 6 hours. My first shift was "white glove", if someone wanted to look at the back of a quilt, I could hold it with my white gloves on and show them. A couple of ladies wanted to see how the binding was done, others wanted to see the quilting, and others wanted to know what kind of fabric was used. I kept taking off my gloves to take some photos. There were so many beautiful quilts, I just took a few photos because it was annoying taking my gloves off and put them on again, each time, lol! I would suggest going to Instagram and looking up #quiltcon2022
I thought this alphabet quilt was incredible!
This one really touched my heart. It was honoring all the Indigenous children who were taken from their families to live in residential schools. They suffered terrible abuse and even death. It happened between the 1830's and the 1990's. Unbearably sad....
I also walked around, enjoying the vendors booths. I bought some cute little Japanese prints. I wanted to buy so much more but resisted the temptation!I learned that you should go to these shows with a friend, it would be so much more fun! I also learned not to volunteer for so many hours, they seemed to have plenty of people :). It was a lot of time driving time since I was stuck in traffic twice and $15 to park each day was a lot since I was just volunteering.
Next year Quiltcon will be in Atlanta and in 2024, it will be in Raleigh, North Carolina. I would take more classes the next time too.
Hope you enjoyed reading about my little experience at Quiltcon.