The QuiltCon Experience....

WOW! I cannot even put into words what the 2015 QuiltCon in Austin was like. This was my first big quilt show event - and I picked a great one to start me off! I will share some of the experiences here, but if you would like to see more - be sure to look at the guild's Facebook page, CLICK HERE, and our Instagram page, CLICK HERE. You will find posts of every single picture that I took while in Austin as well as some fantastic videos! Enjoy the ride!

Day 1... Day one started off like any other... oh, who am I kidding... I couldn't even sleep because I was so excited! My flight left at 6 am, so that meant that I had to leave Lakeland by 4 to head over to Orlando...

My flight left on time and everything seemed to be going great. Made it to Atlanta for my connection and then there was a problem... it was REALLY cold in Atlanta! My Florida butt was NOT happy about it - apparently neither was the plane. The water lines on the plane had frozen and it ended up taking an extra hour to defrost them. :sad face: So, while I am stranded at the Atlanta airport I start to notice that there are quilters floating around. How did I know that they were quilters? Oh, we have our ways.... maybe it was the quilted tags on their bags, or the fact that one person's carry-on was a Tutto.... LOL. I met a lady from the Chattanooga MQG - she was waiting on the same connection that I was. We chatted for a while, she is very cool. Hope to meet up with her and some of the other Chattanooga folks when we travel up to Spool this summer on a field trip! She gave me my very first (but many more to come) QuiltCon pin to swap!

When I finally get to the convention center it is like a child who is first arriving at Disney for the first time! I am looking around and everything I see is beautiful and amazing! My wallet got so excited it practically leapt out of my purse! :grin: I went on a search for our guild's charity quilt right away. The fact that our guild had something hanging at an event that had traffic of OVER ten thousand people was mind blowing to me! I finally found it, right there amongst quilts from other MQG's all over the world! Ours is the grey one all the way to the left.

The "Mother Ship" really hooked us up with swag, lemme tell ya! The swag bags were AMAZING! Not junk in it either, really good stuff. Like a super cute watch from Moda and a book from Missouri Star! I snagged a copy of the new QuiltCon Magazine while I was there too!

I spent the rest of the first day in a bit of a shock and sensory overload. I didn't even take any pictures... it was just too much, lol. I went back to the hotel room to rest a bit and then it was off the the Moda Party!

Moda had rented the entire Mohawk in order to treat all of us MQG'ers to a private party. It was really awesome -- it was an open bar and you got to not only socialize with other guild folks, but your quilting icons were walking around also!

Day 2... Friday was the day that I had chosen to take the majority of the educational things that I was going to do on the trip. So I spent the ENTIRE day in lectures. It was fantastic! I took some lectures with some great people, people that I may not get a chance to hear speak and teach anywhere else.

Like Elizabeth Hartman.... <3

A tour and history lesson with Bill Volckening...

A lecture with Aliisa Haight Carlton....

That evening I hit the hay early and tried to rest up for a full day SHOPPING on Saturday!!!

Day 3.... Oh boy, you would just die at how awesome these booths were! I have a lot of cool ideas for our at the Expo! This trip ended up being VERY educational for me as well as fun!

As I was walking around and shopping, I constantly ran into the COOLEST people! I got some great photo ops - that's for sure!

Those are not nearly as many awesome people as I met and took photos with - check out the links at the beginning of this blog post to see all of the rest!

There were a lot of fun and funny things going on there at QuiltCon too. You know us modern quilters, we love to CUT UP! :grin:

Day 4... Sunday was bittersweet as it was the last day of the convention. :sad face: There were some pretty great shopping deals to be had, but it was still sad to see all of the vendors packing up. I snagged some of Lucky Spool's books for ten dollars off retail price though, so that was a score! Sunday was the day that I had signed up to do my volunteer duty. It was my pleasure to din the blue shirt and do my part! I was assigned a pretty cool job, so it wasn't bad at all! I was working in the "Teacher's Lounge"... which meant that I pretty much did whatever I could so make the presenters more comfy. Elizabeth Hartman sure made me run for coffee a lot though.... jeeesh (just kidding :wink:)

I had to say goodbye to all of the great friends that I had made there. It was really sad. I felt so lucky to have met a lot of my facebook friends and instagram friends in real life.

So.... at the end of it all... what did I walk away with? Sure, a seriously cool collection of QuiltCon pins...

Enough super cool fabric and goodies that I am going to need more storage, hehe....

But I also left with a LOT more education. Education about Modern Quilting and the people who love it. They dont have the final numbers yet, but they know that attendance to QuiltCon was well OVER ten thousand people! This is proof folks.... modern quilting is not some flash-in-the-pan fad... its the evolution of quilting. And whether or not you believe in evolution makes no difference - it happens anyway.