MQX East

Last weekend I headed down to Rhode Island to take a class at MQX East. I was so excited to go that I woke up at 4:00 AM and couldn’t get back to sleep!! Luckily I didn’t wake hubby up until 5:00 AM, though I am not so sure he would call that lucky. This was my first time going to the MQX show, and the first time I have taken a class at any big show like this. I signed up for a hands on longarm class, and to say I was nervous would be an understatement. I had visions of me going into class and tripping on the first machine and knocking them all over one by one like a set of dominos. Now that would be classy, especially considering how sturdy these machines are. But if it could happen, I would probably be the one to do it. Luckily there was no tripping when I entered the class room. Just a lot of smiling faces. I signed up for this class hoping I could find some glimmer of hope that I might one day be able to sew something more than a nice looking meander on the machine that takes up half my basement. So I was pretty stoked when I learned something before the class even started. I learned that I have been putting my backings on the roller backwards!! This is how it *should* be done:

See how the backing is over the roller, well my backing has always been under the roller. Oooops ….. Luckily this didn’t affect the quilt or quilting itself, but every time I put a quilt on there I seriously wondered how in the world people do it. Nothing rolled smoothly and it took me longer to roll my quilt than it did to sew it!! Just for this reason alone, I am excited to get a new top on my machine. And of course I learned lots of new and wonderful things in the class that I cannot wait to try out!

After the class I headed over to the vendors to see what they had. When you go to a show like this, it’s easy to get distracted by all the shiny new toys, but my goal was to collect cards for products I thought would fit well in the store. I would like to have a tricked out longarm section, so this was a great chance to have a peek at some of the items available to longarmers. Of course I had to stop by the Superior Threads booth (who can resist all those pretty thread colors) to pick up some items for the store. I think I saw a lady giving me the eyeball as I was throwing things into my cart …. I’ll have one of these, two of these, one of these, oooh and three of these …… Good thing hubby wasn’t there, he *may* have had a heart attack. Pictures coming soon of my haul!! I already list a few tension gauges in the store, hopefully the rest will be up real soon.

After the vendor mall, I meandered over to the show quilts and let me say I may have cried a little tear of envy. These quilts were stunning!! However, I have to be honest here, there was only one quilt that moved me enough to haul out my camera and take some pictures. This quilt won second place in Art/Pictorial and was made by Cathy Wiggins. I will admit I *may* have an unhealthy obsession with Halloween, so this quilt was right up my alley.

This is a full shot of the whole thing. There was soooo much detail in this quilt.

Here is a shot of one of the witches and a bit of the background.

Here is the scroll, which was all hand embroidered. I believe it said it was about 250 hours spent on just this scroll.

The best part was the 3D quality of the quilt.

I wasn’t sure how I would like MQX, but it turned out to be well worth the drive down. I could see this becoming a yearly tradition.

Happy Quilting!
Rachel