AQS Grand Rapids

 

NOTE: I posted last week on Saturday. You may have missed this post.

This was one of my best teaching trips yet!

I love to clean up before I leave so that I walk back into a clean slate. Jealous?

Getting there had some adventure involved. I haven’t flown out of O’Hare in decades – this was a huge improvement since the last time I was there.

Um yeah, I was not in Sacramento! Growing up we had tornado drills regularly and seeing them was not particularly unusual. I forgot about that.

There was an entire section of the terminal that was all things Cubbie – a substantial gift shop, restaurant and of course, a bar. I wondered, where was the White Sox section?

After 3 significant delays, of course I missed my connecting flight. I arrived in Grand Rapids around 11:30PM and did not get to bed until 1:30AM, then up at 5:30 to prep for my first day of class. I was sooooo thankful I chose to not have a roomate. That would have been a disaster.

The DeVos Center was the home for the show and classrooms. It was the nicest convention center I’ve taught at: spacious, light and airy, with plenty of space for people to meet up and hang out.

And the classrooms – just wow! Look at all that room plus lots of tables along the side of the room, intelligently placed and plentiful electrical, and fabulous light. It was wonderful to teach there! The AQS people were so helpful. It was a dream set-up.

My students were the best! They gave me such a warm welcome and were so engaged. Here is a peek at a few first time free motion quilters!

I was blown away. One student combined our beginning free motion motifs into one piece:

No one has ever done that before and I thought it was clever and beautiful.

All 4 classes were filled and I forgot to take photos from the others (forehead slap). But the love poured out from my students. What a high!

I did get to walk around Grand Rapids a bit. This is a look down river:

And upriver:

There was a good bit of interesting architecture, just one  example:

And planters, oh my the planters! Here are just a few:

The DeVoss Center is across the river from the Gerald R Ford Presidential Museum. I didn’t have time to go inside.

This was fun: FaceBook friend and artist Kathy Schmidt came to the show and we got to meet in real life!

Kathy is the author of Rule Breaking Quilts and a designer, artist, teacher and now friend. We found we had much in common. I was delighted to meet Kathy in person, nice surprise!

And I stole this one from Catherine Redford‘s timeline.  We are friends in real life, getting to know each other at shows and BERNINA events and a few lovely visits to Catherine’s home. Catherine brought Lisa, a first-time attendee to a quilt show!

We will meet up again shortly in Houston. Catherine spent some time with Tina in the Turtle Hand Batik booth doing some exquisite hand stiching on one of Tina’s panels. Not familiar with them? Oh do take a peek.

And then there was the show. I am running out of time so I will merely post the photos with attribution, no comments. It is my policy that if I’ve shown a quilt in a previous post, I don’t post it again. Most of the major winners have won previously, hence no photos here. There are lots of great photos if you search the net.

I did have my Midnight Garden showing. Here’s a studio pic because my show pic was awful:

I’m running out of time so enjoy these photos with no comments from me:

I’ll continue on next week with what I called my Midwestern Tour. I had a grand time, stay tuned! I’ll link up with Nina Marie’s Off the Wall Friday and I know you will enjoy the links.