Saturday, April18th, it's that time of year

My sweet sister and her friend came this weekend to attend the annual Quilt Festival at the Donald E. Stephens convention center with me. We had so much fun saw some wonderful things.
Some of the beauty:

Those are just a little appetizer for the thousand or more quilts that were on display. The art quilts could not be photographed, but they were astounding.
In addition to the museum like display of work, there were 450 vendors. I told Beryl and Linda that the whole thing is so exhausting that we probably couldn't stay until it closed........but we did. Huge apology to the ladies for doubting their endurance!!! We only hit 4-5 rows of vendors today.

It was so exciting to see many of the "celebrities" of the quilting world and realize they are just normal human beings with incredible creative talent.
This is Jodi Barrows, a fabric and tool designer who has gorgeous fabric lines and patterns and her latest is called "Celebrating Abe", which is a tribute to Abraham Lincoln. She was so kind and showed us the line and the quilts she had designed around them.
This is Lori Smith, a prolific pattern designer of "From My Heart to Your Hands". I have quite a few of her patterns and I have never been to a quilt shop yet who doesn't carry at least one or two of them. I don't think she ever sleeps because there must have been 300-400 patterns in this booth.
We also saw Pokey Bolton from "Quilting Arts" TV show, the ladies from the Chicago School of Fusion, the woman who designed the fabrics for the "Charleston" collection of Civil War Repros and many, many more.
Aaaah....sensory overload, but such creative inspiration!!!