The end of July finds us at the Canyon County Fair in Nampa, Idaho. My apologies to the superintendents of the Elmore County fair on their quilts being folded in to quarters for display – it looks like they received more quilts than anticipated, and it was the same way at the Canyon County Fair. What a great problem to have, more quilts than space to display! We talked a bit with the superintendents at this fair and they were…
The 3rd weekend of July finds us in Glenns Ferry, Idaho attending the Elmore County Fair. Quilts are always a significant part of the textile/needlework divisions at most fairs and this one was no different. There were quite a few quilts to look at and enjoy; however, it doesn’t seem there was enough room to properly display them all. Even the grand champion and reserve champion weren’t displayed in their fullness, but they did give them more room – these…
In June, 2024, we attended the 3rd annual Upper County quilt show in Cambridge, Idaho which has a population of only 335, located in Washington County (population 11k). For a location with this population – there sure were a lot of wonderful quilts to look at. I got a picture of a few before finding out both camera batteries quickly went dead. This quilt show is open for an entire week at the local school so there is plenty of…
May 17th and 18th of 2024 found us in Yakima, Washington enjoying the Quilts in the City show put on by the Yakima Valley Quilters’ Guild. There was an entire convention hall filled with quilts and another filled with vendors. They labeled all the aisles as street names, like you were in a city of quilts! There were a lot of imaginative roads to be found. I am always partial to Halloween, so here was my favorite Halloween quilt –…
The last weekend of September in Boise, Idaho finds us at the Boise Basin Quilters 2023 show. There were so many quilts to look at in the exhibition hall as well as a whole hall of vendors and demonstrations. A lot to see and do to fill your day. This was the 40th annual quilt show and the theme was the “Ruby Jubilee” – so they had a special category of competition for red and white only quilts. There were…
Our nephew, who is really into dragons, came for a visit in the spring time. I mentioned some dragon panels we’ve seen while visiting the area quilt shops to see if he might be interested. We took him to see the panels after taking him out for lunch. He quickly purchased the fabric and became a “Beginning Quilt Designer” by coming up with a design for two hanging quilts for his apartment. His technical layout is below: We worked together…
From the local county fairs to the state fairs, quilts are everywhere. Not much commentary as I think the quilts speak for themselves. The exhibition building had probably 1/4 of it dedicated to quilts. Enjoy! I have a sneaking suspicion that some of these quilts are going to re-appear at the Boise Basin Quilt show at the end of September. We’ll keep an eye out for them there!
Another weekend in late summer and another fair! This time we are in New Plymouth (pop. 1,500) in Payette County (pop. 26,000) – let’s go see what kind of quilts we can find. The fair had 2 exposition buildings, the first one had what we were looking for – quilts and other stitching arts – not a lot of room to show off all the quilts so a lot of them you could only see half of them without going…
Late summer is fair time in a lot of places and we’re off to Owyhee County (population ~12k) to see what kind of quilts we can find there. In the corner of the only expo building we could see, we found a whole lot of quilts! Many of the quilts were high up, so a little more difficult to get pictures of them, but they were still fun to see. I like the re-use of denim from old jeans and…
Our 3rd adventure of the year finds us in Newport, Oregon during the first weekend of August for the Annual Quilts by the Sea show. This is our 2nd time attending this show and it’s always a lot of fun to head to the coast from the inland desert to escape the heat. The show is held at the Newport Recreation center and upon entering they have 2 gyms stuffed with over 300 quilts to admire. Like most of the…