Sewing & Quilt Expo - Tinley Park, Il

Something exciting happened this weekend - my quilt was on display at the Sewing Expo!

Look at the official sign for the show!

This past summer Emily and I organized a mini quilt swap for our Chicago Modern Quilt Guild. 24 people participated, and we made mini quilts that were inspired by a work of art chosen by our partner. I can't begin to explain how awesome these quilts turned out. They are really outstanding.

Here's my quilt, made for Natalie Granato.

At the end of the swap we all brought our quilts to the CMQG meeting and shared a bit about the inspiration work, the process, etc. It was great to hear about the process each person went through to create their quilt.

This hangs below my quilt - telling bout the process of making the quilt, inspiration etc.

Exciting enough, our guild member Sara H. pulled some strings and all 24 quilts were chosen to be displayed at the quilt show that accompanies the Sewing Expo. The first stop for our quilts was last weekend in Tinley park! They will then go on to travel to 17 cities across the nation throughout the next year!

Obligatory picture of me next to my quilt.

Sara managed to get us all tickets to the expo too - so several of us carpooled on Saturday (Shout out to my boss who let me off work for the occasion!). Guild friend Cathy drove our group, and I spent most of the day wandering around with Emily and Sally. It was an excellent experience - I'd never been to a quilt expo before!

People admiring our quilts!

When we arrived the first thing we saw was our quilts - all hanging in a row! I guess I have never thought of how professional it would all look! It was a lot of fun seeing other people looking at our quilts and talking about how neat the idea for the swap was.

I may have taken a zillion pictures.

Filming with Ellen.

Upon arrival we also met Ellen Rushman (she'll be a lecturer at QuiltCon!), we were told to ask for her. She is a quilt historian and is traveling with the show and shooting 3 minute videos titled "This is My Quilt" for their website. Emily and I both filmed "This is My Quilt" segments. It was really fun chatting about our quilts!

My first try at a long arm!

Also noteworthy about the Expo, I tried a long arm for the first time! There were several long arm dealers who had booths there, and I decided to give it a try. I'm planning on using my friend Marla's long arm to finish a baby quilt before Christmas, so it was nice to get a feel for it and see that my free motion work on a domestic machine will translate over pretty well!

Here's what I quilted - Not bad if you don't count my mis-spelled name! 

I tested out three machines, an Innova, a Gammil, and a Juki long arm. My favorite was the Innova. (as if I know enough to form an opinion on such things!) I did however, manage to get distracted and misspell "emedoodle" - lol. Note to self, don't get distracted when quilting.

If anyone happens to visit the Sewing Expo later this year, I'd love to hear what you think of our quilts on display! You can find a list of the cities it'll visit here.

You can read more about the Chicago Modern Quilt Guild Modern Art Challenge here.