Daytona Beach, 2026

I have never gone this long without posting since I began my blog in 2010. I have a lot to catch up on here and I’m starting with my visit to AQS Daytona Beach. This was my third time to teach there and this trip was very different from previous visits.

The Daytona Beach show was concurrent with QuiltCon. Although each show has its own audience, I do think QuiltCon had an impact on the turnout for Daytona Beach. It was a great show! But there were not that many attendees. Of my 5 events, 2 almost filled, and my lecture had a modest but very enthusiastic response. My other two classes had very low attendance. I have seen this happen to others over the years. Even Big Name teachers with reach much wider than mine will have this happen. You can analyze it, but if your other classes and events are filling, you just accept it and go on.

I did have a challenging classroom experience and my students were so understanding. There were 4 different machine types in class, making it difficult for students to understand the machines. The machines weren’t threaded or set up for free motion quilting which took precious class time from a 3 hour class. The machines were misbehaving and students got frustrated. Unbeknownst to anyone, the Center was upgrading their lighting system. This meant that the lights could not be dimmed and those of us who rely on projectors were dead in the water. Furthermore, the walls were lime green, so a barely visible image was almost impossible to see on the lime green.

AQS admirably scrambled late the night before to get tech in to compensate. We each were given a good sized monitor; that should do it, right? Nope. I couldn’t get an image to show, call tech. The image would disappear and not come back. Call tech. Both of my first day classes were tech dependent. Ruler work is nigh impossible to show live unless you have a third hand and a levitating camera. That class NEEDS tech; I show clear videos to demonstrate. Everyone worked to help, but those first two classes were challenging; you just have to roll with it.

As a result, I only have a handful of photos, not worth showing. This was a first for me!

So, on to the show. There were several exhibits of note. Some I forgot to keep track of with my photos, so quilts from some of the exhibits are in my “general show” photos. I don’t take photos of the Cherrywood Challenge. My brain overwhelms with that many small quilts, closely hung, with a common thread among them. I just can’t handle that.

Also, I don’t post photos of quilts I have shown in previous posts (unless I forgot I posted them previously).

Two exhibits I was able to carve out:

Stars, Stripes & Stitches, which honored America’s 250 years with quiltmakers from across the nation.

There was also an exhibit of quilts from the permanent collection of the National Quilt Museum in Paducah, KY:

Now on to the contest quilts. First, the Winner’s Circle:

Now, the main part of the show:

Wholecloth quilts:

And to end my week, the required feet-in-the-surf photo:

And just like that, the show is down:

So there ya go! Great show, tremendous variety and lots of eye candy. I hope you enjoyed the show. I’ll be posting the Valley Quilt Guild show next week and then a post about my amazing week at Empty Spools.

I’ll be linking up:
Nina-Marie’s Off the Wall Friday