Houston we have a problem!

I had my camera fully charged when I left the hotel each morning, but the last day when I needed it the most, it ran out of juice. Damn that blue bar in the corner of the camera screen. It kept shrinking from a half bar to a quarter bar…that’s when I knew I was in trouble. I wasn’t even close to finishing the aisles. I can’t really blame it, I think it had a quota and I had far surpassed that, taking pictures of all the quilts on display.  I spent the whole afternoon, sauntering, enjoying and lusting after all the hundreds of quilts on display. The majority of quilts were original designs by quilters.  Totally, totally amazing work.

I wanted to share some of my favourites with you.

This is My friends by Yoshiko Sekine, from Japan, a gorgeous appliqued quilt. Look at the amazing details.

Miniville or It’s 5 o’clock somewhere by Karen Eckmeier. The picture doesn’t really do the quilt justice. You should have seen it in person. Raw edged collage, hand beading, heat set crystals, machine couching and machine quilted.

Eagle eyes by Margery Hedges, a hand pained, machine thread painted and machine quilted. The detail …just amazing. Megumi Mizuno made this delightful quilt in the hopes it would make people smile…and it did. Hand pieced, appliqued and quilted with cotton, beads, spangle and felt balls. She made it during the Japan nuclear power disaster, hoping that life would return to a peaceful state.

Kaffe Fasset’s African Stripe and Overlapping Tiles were vibrant, wonderful quilts to view. Oh I wish I had this talent.

I kept trying to fool my camera into thinking it still had power. The blue bar would shrink and shrink into oblivion, then I would turn the camera off. Leave it a few minutes, then turn it back on…..and I would have a little blue bar again…just enough to get another pic of a quilt. I think I was able to get about 20 more pictures out of it before it refused to co-operate further and would not even turn on….I kept saying to it “ but I’m not done…come on! come on!”…..it had a mind of it’s own and I was done for the day.