My friends Mary Jane, Patricia and I had a great time at the Pacific International Quilt Show in Santa Clara, CA. I have never seen so many outstanding quilts in one large area. "Outstanding" really doesn't do them justice. The show made me realize just how many amazingly creative art quilters there are in the world. My friend Marylee won third place for her wearable art. I'll try to find a picture to show it to you in another post.
This show specialized in art quilts, fabric art and wearable art, which is what I specialize in now; well, for the last two weeks ;>))
The top quilt is from a woman in South Africa. I'm not quite sure how she did it, but I suspect there is a lot of folded fabric in it The second one is an applique quilt done in a very different way. I think if you click on the photos you can see an enlargement.
There were literally thousands of quilters attending this event and hundreds of vendors. Luckily we went to the preview on Wednesday night when there weren't many people there. I could get a sense of the show without the shoulder-to-shoulder people who appeared the next day. And, of course, during the preview I bought something I needed. Well, okay, wanted.
We stayed across the street from the Convention Center at the Hilton Hotel , which was a real treat. Since I retired, I haven't stayed in many of these. In fact,
my Hilton Honors card had expired. The desk clerk was nice enough to fix that.
I forgot my pillow, which was a bummer. The bed was good, but the pillows were way to hard for me. But after walking miles in the convention hall I managed to sleep amazingly well both nights. One thing that helped me with the walking was my Sprongs. It's a shoe with a spring (literally) in the sole and the heel. My hips and knees did not bother me at all. I had brought along pain patches (love them) and Tylenol but didn't need either.
I do love staying in this type of hotel because you can drop your towels on the floor and someone else picks them up, there is room service and a bar and restaurant where you just sign for stuff.
Mary Jane and Patricia had different plans for dinner so I dined in the hotel both nights. The first night I had a rather unacceptable seafood pesto tortellini (not enough garlic or basil) but the second night I struck pay dirt with a spinach salad with feta cheese, walnuts and pear. The pear turned out to be from a can so I didn't eat it.
This morning I had room service. Divine. One thing that was a shock was the quality of the in-room coffee maker. It was a Cuisinart, which made one or two cups...in the cups. It was good coffee and they had real half and half. Well that's all for tonight.
Tomorrow I'll show you what I bought and something else very exciting.
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