My QuiltCon 2024 Adventure

Wow! QuiltCon was an experience like no other. I was fortunate to be in Phoenix the same weekend as QuiltCon 2022 and popped in for a day; and I was able to take a 36 hour whirlwind trip to Atlanta to visit the convention in 2023 for Saturday only, before heading back home. It was after the Atlanta show that I decided I would attend the next QuiltCon for its entirety. I wanted to take classes, sit in on seminars, visit with other quilters, and do all the things QC has to offer, and so I made the commitment to attend all four days of QuiltCon 2024 in Raleigh, North Carolina.

Visiting for a single day is certainly possible, and if you are nearby a QuiltCon (or any quilt show), I highly recommend going. For QuiltCon, at least, there is a juried show component with categories; a vendor hall component for fabric, notions, patterns, and quilty-themed merch and activities; highly-coveted classes that sell out literally months before the convention; and lectures from all kinds of folks in the industry. For my single-day trips to QuiltCon, I spent the morning shopping through the vendor booths, took a lunch break to unload my haul of purchases, and resumed the rest of the day looking at the the quilts. Both days were awe-inspiring, intense experiences. There is nothing quite like buying some of your favorite fabrics after you have met the designers in person and then weeping in front of a quilt proclaiming that women are equally valuable to society as men (or something just as meaningful). It’s a powerful and deeply moving experience that is very hard to digest in it’s entirety in just 8 hours. Well, I am here to say that it is a powerful and deeply moving experience that is hard to digest when it’s spread out over four days, as well.

One of the things I was most intimidated by was the fact that I was making this journey alone. I have plenty of quilty friends on the internet, but absolutely no in-person quilt friends to travel with and share this experience. I, like many quilters it seems, am an introvert. I enjoy meeting people and going to events, but it requires a lot of energy, and convincing myself that I will, indeed, enjoy it. I am perfectly content to stay home and sew, listening to a book and not having human contact for hours on end. And though it was easy, and perhaps beneficial on my previous QuiltCon trips, to make my way through it all on my own, I did not want to spend four whole days by myself. And what’s more, I wanted this opportunity to create friendships, meet my online quilt friends in person to solidify them into true friendships, and soak up as much quilty energy from other quilty people as I could, while I had the opportunity.

Though QuiltCon was officially Thursday through Sunday, my journey began on Wednesday. My intention was to already be settled in so I could make the most of my time while the Exhibit Floor was open. What I did not realize, or perhaps forgot, was that the Awards Ceremony takes place Wednesday night. It is when they award First, Second, and Third place ribbons in all categories, as well as awards for Best in Show, Best Machine Piecing, Best Hand Piecing, Best Original Design, and the MQG Award of Excellence. Unfortunately, by the time landed and got settled at the hotel, I missed the award show altogether. Fortunately, I had reached out in advance and make plans for dinner and drinks with internet friends to meet in person that evening; so even though I missed the show, I got a recap.

Eva of Gingerly Quilt Co, me, and Sammy of Sonder Quilt Studio

Thursday

Thursday was the first official day the Exhibit Hall was be open. Since I missed the opportunity to register before the Award Show Wednesday evening, I made sure to get down to the Convention Center as early as I could, where I registered, got my pre-purchased merch, shopped the QuiltCon store for my commemorative tote bag designed by the Ruby Star Society crew, and then waited in the queue to enter the Exhibit Hall at 10am. I made two new friends in line who came all the way from Alaska and from Germany just for the show. It was Fern and Rae’s first times to QuiltCon so we chatted a bit about what our plans were and what items we made just for the convention (nearly everyone was sporting a quilted coat, backpack, or name tag made specially for the occasion). We immediately started following each other on social media, so even though our paths parted when we made it into the hall, I was able to keep up with them and see them tick off all of the people they wanted to meet. I spent much of the morning amongst the vendor booths, where I found Karlee Porter who was “tattooing” people with graffiti quilting. I met Brittany Lloyd of Lo & Behold Stitchery (again) and told her how much I enjoyed her Curve College course. I ran into Lacie & Ashelyn of The Grateful Thread Podcast and got a sticker from each of them. Then I found an online quilty friend, Jennifer, who went through Pattern Writing Academy with me and I tested a quilt pattern for her. I spent the rest of the morning wandering through booths and refraining from purchasing things I knew would not fit in my suitcase.

Luckily, I had previously exchanged numbers with a friend in my online quilting guild, Farrah. Farrah is mentioned in my previous blog post, too, as she was a participant in my Improv Challenge group. Farrah and I planned on meeting up for lunch. So we left the convention center after her class let out, and she found another one of her friends, Mary. The three of us went to lunch across the street and got to know each other a little better. It turns out, I was already following Mary on Instagram. Farrah and Mary pattern-tested together previously, and Mary, now an “Aurifil Artisan”, had several pieces displayed at the Aurifil Threads booth.

Mary, Farrah, taco refuse, and myself

After lunch, I took the opportunity to spend some time alone. I dropped off my bag of merch at my hotel and walked to get coffee a few blocks away. From there I went back to the convention center to start looking at the quilts. Front and center were the award winning quilts. The most noteworthy was Best in Show, by Ginny Robinson, of Minnow Peck, entitled What We Will Use as Weapons: A List of School Supplies. The quilt is immediately eye-catching because of the stark contrast between the the bright yellow background and the black objects appliqued to the top. But then you notice the objects on the quilt are unusual; jugs, fire extinguishers, scissors, hammers, keys, etc. Reading the artist’s statement you learn that this quilter, a school teacher, asked other school teachers what classroom objects are at your disposal that you would use to defend your classroom against a shooter. The quilt has the dimensions of a classroom door. The quilting is the outline of a human with lines for targeting. The back of the quilt is most impactful of all, in my opinion, where you can truly see the shape of a person in the quilting, and appliqued on top is the shape of an automatic rifle.

As hard as it was to follow up Best in Show and the other award winners, the next quilts I went to see were those of this year’s featured artist, Jacquie Gering. Jacquie Gering’s name is basically synonymous with Modern Quilting. As the featured artist, she had an entire section of the quilt floor devoted to exhibiting her quilts. Jacquie is known for her walking-foot quilting. Her two books, Walk and Walk 2.0, will teach you how to quilt with a walking foot, going through the process step by step, and showing several creative ways to use your walking foot. Whoever says you can only sew straight lines with a walking foot has never heard of Jacquie Gering. I actually took a Craftsy class by her back when I wanted to move past hand quilting, and many of the fundamentals of the way I quilt came from her course. So it was no surprise that many of Jacquie’s quilts displayed were quilted using a walking foot, and in the most extraordinary ways you can image. Though all of her quilts were amazing, some of the most impactful to me were those of social justice, and a series that were tributed to her father.

Later that evening, I attended the first ever “Ice Breaker Dinner” hosted by Kaitlyn of Knot & Thread, Laura of The Gathering Quilt, Lindsey of Pear Tree Market , and Laurel of Snowberry Street. There were about 50 attendees. We all met outside the convention center in front of the big statue of Sir Walter Raleigh, and walked to a BBQ spot. Went spent the evening exchanging gifts, drawing raffle prizes, filling out trivia, and getting to know new folks.

The inaugural Ice Breaker Dinner at Sam Jones BBQ

Friday

Friday morning was a meetup of our online guild, Modern Fusion, over coffee. This guild is made up of Individual Members of the Modern Quilt Guild. The term “Individual Member” means that we don’t have, or belong to, a local chapter of the Modern Quilt Guild. And since we meet online, we are scattered across the world. While in line for coffee, I had a chance to meet a few of my fellow Individual Members, including Amy of Quito Quilts. Amy lives and teaches in Quito, Ecuador. Before QuiltCon, she put out a request to the group for donations of cotton wovens, because they are apparently difficult to get in Quito. I had come prepared and was able to give her my bag of scraps there so she could bring them back to Ecuador for her quilting students.

By the time I had my coffee, I found a group of my people on sofas in the lobby. We had the best time comparing quilted jackets, discussing our lack of local guilds, teaching each other how to airdrop pictures, and generally just chit-chatting until we had to go to classes, the exhibit hall, or a volunteer shift. Someone put it best when they said something along the lines of, “you’d have never thought we were an online-only guild.”

When I finally got down the the show floor, I had just enough time to look through the quilts of the African American Quilting Circle of Durham (the MQG usually has the work of a local group at each QuiltCon), and the Maximalism category quilts before I met up with Jennifer for lunch. I heard she was getting lunch with two other people, and I quickly invited myself. The group was me, two Jennifers, Eva, and Tom. Other than Tom (Eva’s husband), all of us met through the Pattern Writing Academy group. Every lunch place was stuffed with quilters, so we had to walk a few blocks before we got a table. We had a long lunch and the best time talking about quilting, pattern-writing, quilts in the show (both Jenn M and Eva had quilts in the exhibit, and we’d just learned that Eva’s sold!). We probably could have kept chatting for the rest of the weekend had we not had the convention to get to.

After lunch I headed back to the show floor to see as many other exhibits as I could before my scheduled events. That proved to be only two categories: Improv and Minimalism. Minimalist Design is perhaps one of my favorite categories, so I took my time going though this category. And since Improvisation receives the most entries, it was no wonder that these were the only two sections I made it through before having to leave.

My first event for the evening was a meet-up organized by Hannah, known on socials as Half-Square Hannah. It was Hannah from whom I got the idea to create a name badge for QuiltCon using letters from selvedges to form a name time. It was the “Selvedge Letter Nametag” group that was meeting up to take a picture. From there, we quickly went up to the Mezzanine level of the convention center, because many of us were meeting up with our partners from the MQG Mini-Swap.

The Modern Quilt Guild arranges a Mini-Quilt Swap for any member who wants to participate. Those going to QuiltCon have the option to go to the official meet-up and exchange minis in person. I was partnered with Zach from Savannah, GA and I created single block from Lo & Behold’s Retro Blossom pattern for him. Earlier in the day I was able to share this mini quilt with Brittany (the designer), which was a particularly special experience.

Finding your swap partner is a little bit of an ordeal. There are hundreds of quilters all meeting in the same place to exchange their minis. We were designated a
”Swap Fairy”, who coordinated multiple sets of partners. My swap fairy was Karin. Each fairy held a sign up in the air with their name on it, and I had to hunt through a few people before I found the correct person. A few of Karin’s partners had found each other by then, but not many. And as I told Karin, my swap partner was a man so I already had a greater than normal chance for finding him in the crowd of women.

I did not have to wait too long before I spotted him. We exchanged our mini quilts really quick, took a few pictures, and got to talk about our works for a little bit. He made a version of Carolyn Friedlander’s Hunt pattern. However, the best part was the 15 or so minutes we spent just chatting with each other. Zach is such a delightful person, and I enjoyed our meet-up very much.

From there, I took some introvert time for myself and went to grab a coffee a few blocks away. After little sleep and a late lunch, I thought a coffee was all I would need to keep me going through my 6 to 9pm class. This would prove to be incorrect. But I took my coffee and other supplies to Karen Bolin’s class entitled Design a Quilting Plan. I had print outs of two different quilt patterns I have in the works, neither of which are real quilt tops yet. This and my lack of dinner, may have been why this class was more emotionally challenging for me than it should have been.

Without giving too much of her curriculum away, this class was a creative approach to designing a plan for how to quilt a particular project. She goes though shapes and how they promote specific feelings, what you may want to hide in your quilt, what you want to accentuate, and how to go about doing that. All of this is very difficult when you aren’t working with a physical quilt top, already sewn together. However, it did lead me to a few ideas of how I may want to change my design for the future, plus I made a few more friends along the way.

By the time the class was over, I was over-stimulated, underfed, and desperate for sleep, so I went back to my hotel restaurant for a quick bite, and then to bed.

Saturday

Saturday morning came up quick. My first event of the day was Class No. 2: Getting Hooked on Hand-Piecing with Tara Faughnan. I've had my eye on Tara Faughnan ever since we had a quilt kit of hers for sale at the shop, Traverse. Around the same time, I caught Tara’s lecture through the MQG Sessions on what she does when she isn’t feeling creative. You only need to listen to Tara speak for about about 2 minutes before you are totally enthralled with everything about her. When I saw there was availability in this class, I jumped on it, even though hand-piecing never struck me as something I felt I needed to learn.

I am so glad I did, too. We were given templates ahead of time to have prepped on a more sturdy material. I used cut up plastic filing folders. We used the templates to make a four-pointed star block. Tara told us how to cut and trace the fabrics, how to back stitch by hand, how to stitch, and essentially worked through a full block for us. That was pretty much it and it was a wonderful class. I learned so much and am very excited to get to a point where I can continue to work on my hand-piecing. Just as Jaquie Gering was the featured quilter for QuiltCon 2024, Tara Faughnan will be the featured quilter of QuiltCon 2025 and I am so excited to see what is exhibited.

Class ended at 12pm, and I intended to go get lunch, but thought I would pop into the Exhibit Hall first to see if maybe I would run into someone with whom I could invite myself to lunch. I very quickly got distracted with more quilts. This time I saw the categories: Applique, the Super Scrappy Quilting Challenge, Piecing, and some of Use of Negative Space (my other favorite category). I also did a bit of hunting around the vendor floor trying to hunt down a few people to introduce myself to; in particular, Christina of Kindred Quilt Co. I have slowly been trying to force myself into a online friendship with her, and I had messaged her earlier, letting her know I was trying to find her. I was successful! I found and and introduced myself to her. I also found another Laura (of Neutral Design Co.) who was doing the same thing, and now we are internet friends, too.

Christina of Kindred Quilt Co and me!

From there I really did need to go get lunch. I had also not eaten breakfast that day, and it was getting on 3pm. I had my last class of the evening that night, and I was not going to show up to it hungry. On my way out of the convention center, I saw Christina again, this time she was speaking with some other notable folks. Brooke from Eudemonia Quilts, Genny of Genny from the Quilt Block, Talyor from Toad & Sew, Ashelyn, again, of Urban Dwell Studio and The Grateful Thread Podcast (and whose class I was taking that evening), and a few other people I did not know. I mustered up some courage, and I went and interrupted their conversation. It sounds so rude that way, but there is no other way to say it. I jumped into their conversation and asked if I could take a picture with everyone present.

I stuck around a little after the picture just to listen to folks. I was able to introduce myself to those I hadn’t met already, particularly Sam and company, who came to QuiltCon as members of the Houston Modern Quilt Guild. I have a feeling everyone who meets Sam hits it off with her immediately, as she is so friendly and easy to talk to. At this point, I was incredibly hungry, but I didn’t want to part from Sam for good, so I asked what she was up to later in the evening. And that’s when she invited me to Legends Night Club that evening for a Drag Show! Apparently, this was a pre-planned event by other QuiltCon attendees, but this was the first I was hearing about it, and was super excited. So I bought my ticket, exchanged info, and told Sam I would see her later that night.

I ate my third meal of the trip at my hotel restaurant that afternoon and took my daily time to myself while having a burger and a glass of wine alone at the bar. It was perfect. It had been a big day of go! go! go! and talk! talk! talk!, and I still had another 3 hour class and late night group plans ahead of me. I definitely needed to enjoy the solitude while I could. But with a burger to sustain me, and wine to fortify my social skills, I set out back to the Exhibit floor to see the remaining quilts.

By that point, unfortunately, I had stopped documenting the quilts as thoroughly, but I know I walked through the categories Group & Bee Quilts, Youth Quilts, and Small Quilts. I know there were other categories, like the Color Challenge, and Community Outreach, but I have no photos to jog my memory. At that point in the day, I felt I would be lucky to get to lay eyes on the rest of them, much less absorb all that I was looking at. As it was the last full day of the show, many people were starting to head home. When I saw a friend, I would chat with them and tell them “bye” in the event I would not get to see them again before they left. Pretty soon it was time to head out to for my final class, taught by Ashelyn Downs, “Large Scale, Minimal Improv”.

I had gathered my fabrics for this class before I left for QuiltCon. I was working with some of favorite fabrics that I had been saving for a special project. Ashelyn’s class was the only time during the weekend I actually had the chance to sew at a machine. It was a very relaxed in format. She gave us a quick overview of the big-picture that we are aiming for, and she let us loose to sew as we wanted. It was much needed sew-time. I did not realize that I had been missing my time in my sewing room until I was there. I did not get terribly far in the quilt top I was creating, but it was the perfect way to pass a few hours with new friends, needle, and thread.

During the class, I discovered that one of my classmates, Jordan, was also going to the show that night. So we made plans to meet up with the Houston crowd and share a car (or two) over to the night club. The Houston crew was so inviting, it felt like I already knew them. Over drinks in the hotel and the ride to the venue, it was like hanging out with old friends.

While at the show, I realized that the whole club was full of quilters! It was so fun seeing folks who are “Instagram famous” (at least in the quilting world), and here I was rubbing elbows with them. The drag show was about 45 minutes long and was fan-tas-tic! It was a tiny venue, and the show sold out, so a few folks in our group went to the next showing, while some of us went to the dance floor! While there, I met Shelby, with whom I also became fast friends. And while both of us said that going out dancing until 1 am was something neither of us did regularly, even in our college days, that’s exactly what we both did.

Unfortunately, I was having so much fun, I did not get any pictures, so you’ll just have to believe me.

Sunday & Monday

Getting up and out of bed the next morning was by far the most difficult of the trip. There were no classes or meetups to attend. I had been through all of the quilts and vendor booths, so I did not feel a particular need to head back to the convention center when the doors opened at 10am, but I did mosey in about an hour after. My goal was to wander around for just an hour or so, to see if anyone was there to tell “hello” and “goodbye” to. I did find a few friends from the night before to chat with one final time. Sunday was by far a slower day, so I was able to actually fit in the booths to look at the wares being sold. This proved to be a poor choice, because now that I could fit in the booths, I was buying more stuff. So soon, after about an hour or two, I left QuiltCon for the final time.

On my way out, I ran in to Ashelyn again and this time she was with Lacie, so I finally got my picture with my new favorite podcast hosts, and I got to tell Ashlynn how much I enjoyed my sewing time in her class the night before. From there I walked to brunch, and the quarter mile to the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences, and finished out the day there.

Lacie, me, and Ashelyn

I did not fly out of Raleigh until the next afternoon so I had plenty of time to wind down, repack, and decompress before my final day of travel. As nice that that was, it was one of the things I would perhaps change for the next year.

Sunday was basically dead on the convention floor by comparison to the rest of the weekend. Many people go home that day, and while I would not say it’s worth skipping altogether, I definitely could have flown home that evening at the latest. The extra night in the hotel, while nice, was unnecessary. I would also want to arrive a hair earlier to arrive in time for the award show. While you certainly see the winners in the show, I like the idea of taking the time to appreciate each award winning quilt and quilter during the ceremonies. On the show floor, it is quite easy to overlook the quilts with ribbons when truly all of the quilts around them are phenomenal and grab your eyes just as easily.

Another “must do” for next year that I missed out on this time is to go to the listen to the featured quilter’s Keynote address. One of my biggest regrets was missing Jacquie Gering’s lecture Saturday afternoon. I took a total of 3 classes this year. I was originally signed up for 4 but was able to give my spot to someone else, and even then, I think it was one class too many. Next year, I hope to only register for one, maybe two classes. (Of course, I need to remind myself of this when registration comes around this fall). Next year, I wan to have Bullerbee Quilt Co stickers to give out to folks. People were trading stickers left and right, and while I took home plenty, I want to give some away next time. Lastly, I regret not signing up to volunteer. I had intended to volunteer, but I just never got around to signing up. Not only did I hear great things about meeting other volunteers during the two-hour shifts, but I also feel that the MQG does so much for us with QuiltCon and the other resources it provides to its members, volunteering is the least I can do to give back.

My haul of stickers I received from new friends

Well, if you made it through this novel of a blog post, congratulations! I hope it gave you a bit of insight in to my QuiltCon 2024 trip, and perhaps inspires you to go to QuiltCon 2025 if you are on the fence about it.

Until next time!

Laura