Opening Day

Breakfast call was 7am. Cathy and I were able to give brief promos to our own group at the hotel of what we will be lecturing on at the festival.

First bus departure was 8am. Duncan and I were downstairs ready to go with my four quilts, the giveaway, my laptop, power cord with adapter, handouts, etc.

Upon arrival at the bus dropoff we walked to the organising office in order to get instructions for where my lecture was going to be held. This beautiful banner hung above the registration desk and further down the hall to the right was the Cead Mile Failte Exhibit. I even found my own block!

I was finally able to connect with Nora and she took me to room #201 in another building. It was locked, so we'd have to wait until 9am to get in and set up. She assured me a projector would be in the room and ready to use at that time. That gave me time to gently encourage a method of advertising to the festival goers.

There was no daily schedule available that might make festival goers aware, no announcements had been made, nada. No explainations as to why this hadn't happened were available either. I didn't push it, but given the circumstances, we needed to just make the most of the situation, it seemed that the Town Cryer would be a great solution, but he was walking around the Quilter's Village making his announcements and needed to be located. I finally decided it was time to go get set up and we happened to run into the Town Cryer on the way. I asked if he'd make the announcement that the lecture about EQ would be at 10am in #201. It worked!!

It was a nice ampitheatre style room but Mr. Fabric Freedom's wife was waiting for her husband to return to set up in the same room. A bit later someone came back and told them that they would be in another room, so my announcement was still going to be ok that the Town Cryer was sharing. After setting up, I stood in the hall and made periodic announcements of what was about to happen in this room. There was no signage on the room to indicate what was about to happen.

I brought "Spinner" and in the background you might see that I also have the three rounds of McCall's entries as well. Each of these were designed using EQ extensively, so it was fun to share the concepts behind various challenges I have attempted using EQ as a starting point and show the end result in person. We ended up with at least 20 people at the lecture. It seemed to be very well received, good questions and appreciation expressed for sharing the information. That always feels good. Several asked if it would be given again during the weekend. With better advertising I think the lectures would have had higher attendance. Duncan was a great assistant in holding the quilts and helping with the raffle. I asked a passer by in the hall to draw the winning name and it was Janelle Reed. She received a copy of EQ7, courtesy of The Electric Quilt Company! Thank you!!!!

After packing up, we were able to tour quite a few of the exhibits. Here were some of my favorites.

In the Patchwork Promenade

 Traditional Miniatures Exhibit

Each log was about 3/16" wide

Hoffman Fabrics 3-D Exhibit

My photo doesn't show the 3D, but looking at it through the 3D glasses was phenomenal! Best fabric to show the 3D effect for sure. There were 3 quilts that used this particular fabric.

 Yin and Yang Exhibit

I liked this as a best Irish representation

Storm at Sea - both traditional and modern interpretations

Wings of Dreams

Patchwork Promises Exhibit - these were done as round robins from various countries.

Pam Holland was part of this one from Australia.

The Irish Craft House
Road Less Traveled Exhibit

Quilter's Castle

My Quilted Garden Exhibit

Longarm Lane (no real quilts were hung on these trees, just pieced blocks printed on signage)

Movie House
Neighbour's Exhibit

Back at Towne Hall a bit of live music.

Had lunch in one of the college (National University Ireland - Galway) deli's that reopened just for this event and re-named "Stack and Whack Cafe".

I was priviledged to take a class from Claudia Pfeil in the afternoon. APQS brought in a machine for her to demo and we did drawing and took turns with hands-on. She taught me a new way to start and stop. I'm looking forward to trying it out on my own. It will allow me to not have 'starting stitches' or 'ending stitches' that are really tight together in comparison to the other stitches in the quilt and without a birds nest underneath! I'll try to explain.....take a stitch, bring up the bottom/bobbin thread, hold both the top and bobbin thread and pivot them from side to side as you stitch in the same spot until the thread is taut (2-4 times). I was able to take lots of photos of various stitchouts she demonstrated and ask lots of questions too. She even gave me some ideas on how to further quilt my 1892 Rondure. I just might have to put it back on the frame and work out some of those open spaces in the 'beams'.

Before the bus left for the day and took us back to the hotel, we made it through the vendor area and also to the Fat Quarters Chocolate Shop - Chocolate Decadence Exhibit

Amazing binding technique, each turn is mitered and pieced together.

The dark round circles are actually holes in the quilt.

A larger than life cupcake and a true to life box of chocolates (one piece is already gone!).

A long first day to the Festival, but valuable time spent learning and beautiful things were seen.

We got lazy and ordered pizza to be delivered for supper and just stayed in the room. Looking forward to a good night's rest.