A1 Quilting Machines loves Texas

Guess where I am? Setting up the A-1 Quilting Machines booth at the Dallas Quilt Celebration!

I'll try to recap the past few days, but I'm warning you ahead of time - typos and grammar will be questionable as it's now after 11 PM and I've been going strong for several days!

So, this is the completed Texas quilt I started last week...I have almost 3500 yards of thread in this one - 1500+ in the pink border alone. It was such a joy to quilt.

The interior of Texas was quilted with the little feather puffs that I just love making. Below you can see where I quilted my butterfly logo near Galveston Bay - this represents where the Texas A-1 dealer is located on the quilt map - ME! (grin)

Of course I quilted in the A-1 logo too, it's freehand so just a little rough around the edges... but I like it .

The last item I added was the nautical star in the borders - or as we call it down here The Lone Star of Texas!

Finished the Texas A-1 Quilt on Tuesday, putting the machine stitched side of the binding on late Tuesday night. Loaded the car early Weds morning and drove north on 45 until we came to the big D - Dallas. (for the record, hand sewed the binding down Weds night in the hotel!)

Can't come to Dallas without a detour to P&B Fabrics! Trish and I had a blast picking out bolts of fabric for our next projects.

Naturally I'm drawn to the bright colors, anything purple, and feel extra blessed when I find butterflies! So much fabric, sew little time. Sigh.

We ran into some longarm friends during our warehouse shopping and made plans to meet up for dinner later that evening. Lots of laughter and fun at the Genghis Grill.

Our plans today included more warehouse shopping at Moda/United Notions. They opened at 7:30 AM, and we signed in at 7:35!!

It was a blessing to get to see Sarah, our friend from Quilts by the Bay in Galveston who has moved to Dallas to work with Moda...Her mom, Patricia, owner of QBTB is also a vendor here at the Dallas Quilt Show so we enjoyed visiting with her during set up today.

So this is our booth!

Most people have no idea how things look before a big show. I just love watching things grow as everyone is doing their thing to get their booths ready for the public.

We arrived at 10 AM and were there until they ran us off at 5 PM (then back again from 7 to 9 for preview night - I tell ya', it's a great show!)

Justin Plank, A-1 tech/machinist and son of our owner Stewart Plank, worked really hard to get the machines set up while Trish and I decorated the walls. If you've been to my home studio you'll recognize some of my quilts - left the walls bare and took one of the quilts off the couch that Pixxie likes... all to make the booth brighter and more inviting.

One thing I like about having my quilts in the booth, besides that it makes me feel at home, is that my quilts are "just quilts" - not the show quilts, but what I like to call "real quilts" -- the type that most quilters make - the ones that are used and enjoyed. Kinda shows that as a dealer I'm a quilter just like my customers - I know what they want in a quilting machine and I do my best to service their needs. More than anything I love to quilt...and to teach....and Justin is a quick learner! I demo-ed my feather puff and poof! He was quilting them himself!

It's such a joy to quilt on an A-1, can't wait to share this joy tomorrow at the quilt show!

So...here's our booth, all ready and waiting for a fun filled weekend!!

Don't you want to come and play on one of my machines??

Hope to see you at the quilt show!