the quilt show

 I think I mentioned yesterday that I was reminded the quilt show was happening this weekend. So I decided to go today. I still don't feel great - dry asthma cough and it's almost certainly particulate matter because it's better in the house with the air purifier running, and then gets worse when I go out and do things. 

But I went anyway. It's at our library. Well, MOST of it was at our library; they split it between the library and one of the buildings on Main Street (I think it is an old bank from the early days of town that's now sort of a small "event center")

I am QUITE sure this was done to try to entice people to shop in the little downtown, but it made it harder to see everything, because you had to find parking two places (the library has good and easy parking, Main Street not always so much, though it wasn't busy today; maybe a lot of people are out of town or just not out because it's unbelievably hot 

I went to the library first; I hadn't known about the second location until I paid my admission. 

Most of the quilts were at the library though, and the vendors. (There weren't a LOT, some of the quilt shops in the area seem not to come to this? I don't know if it doesn't seem worth their while to close the shop for a couple days, or if there's some kind of personality thing going on - I don't really participate in the quilt groups here so I don't know)

The show seemed smaller than previous years to me, and it seems like maybe some of the more innovative folks didn't have quilts in this year - I think a couple of them have passed on, though, so that might be it. 

The "historical" quilts (that is: ones made before 1970 or so) were at the second location. I found that interesting. One really beautiful one, that was all hand embroidered in the early 60s, had the state flowers on it

(I asked permission to take a photo for "non commercial use"). I really liked this one; the state flowers interest me anyway (most of them are not actual native wild species, but that's OK) and this is also a LOT of work - all hand embroidered from apparently stamped blanks (you could see the names still stamped on some of them, the person did not embroider the flower names). 

I also spotted a couple fabrics I've seen in other places. There was a small green and yellow calico (no photo) that I KNOW my mother has scraps of from HER mother's scrap bag, and then there was this:

That red with the little floral-decorated animals - I know my mom had some of that; I may even have had a dress of it in the early 1970s. 

There were a few vendors, as I said before - the local quilt shop was there, and one person who does quilting, and a relatively new (? I think) place that's like a recycling center where people donate craft supplies and she sells them at v. low cost or gives them away to schools.

I bought a couple of fat quarters from the local quilt shop:

I don't know, I just kind of like the color combination (with the mustard color) in the second one, and the pink one is a nice floral.

And the person with the craft-supply recycling shop had some fabric and I grabbed this, thinking it was a (slightly coarse) fabric fat quarter:

there are two pieces there. One is hemmed and has a tag - apparently it's a small towel (maybe for drying dishes?) from Daiso. Which is a surprise, because there's no Daiso within  a hundred miles of here, but I guess someone donated it to her shop. 

I still think I can use it in a quilt top even if it's a bit coarser than standard fabric.

I took her card because I do want to take some of my unwanted fabric to donate. I might call her in a few weeks and see what's up; she said she was looking for a new location and might be moving, and I'd rather wait until she moves (if she's going to) to take my stuff down there. 

And a slightly sad thing: I guess these past few weeks of being "radically alone" and having some really negative interactions with strangers has made me a little feral, sadly. For one thing: the woman who runs the quilting service - which I've used in the past and really haven't used for 3 years or so (she moved, and is farther away, and I just never got myself to her new place) came up to me and practically hugged me and asked me how I was and that surprised me. (I expect people not to remember me if they don't see me all the time). And then as I was leaving someone said hello and asked if I found it inspirational and I just kind of stared at her wondering where I might have known her from, but I think she was just being friendly? I was polite back if a little scattered about it because I realize now I've come to expect people not to want to talk to me. And I admit that's sad, but it's been a hard summer and I've had some people be unpleasant to me - not just out on the roads. 

I probably need more pleasant, low-key interactions with people I don't "expect" to be kind to me (because they already know me) in order to break me back into NOT expecting people to meet me with hostility. 

Also I need to either work more on the moominhouse stuff, or find a way to store it, because I do have a quilt top I need to finish, and another that I just need to run up a backing for (and then could take down to Sue to quilt for me), but my cutting table has the various bits and pieces on it, and there's more sitting on my ironing board. It's hard having a small house some times.