Road to California – Quilters’ Conference & Showcase – Ontario Convention Center

Hi Quilting Friends!

This past weekend I attended my first quilt show at the Ontario Convention Center, Road to California Quilters’ Conference & Showcase.  It… was… AMAZING!!!  I didn’t take nearly as many photos as I wanted to!  (Partly because a lot of the time, photos were not allowed.)  There were so many quilt entries that were mind blowing- amazing!  Awesome!  I just couldn’t get enough of them!  Quilters of all ages and backgrounds.  The quilt above, the Japanese quilt, was my favorite of all of them.  I love the colors, the women, the detail, the fact that it’s three dimensional with the addition of the cherry blossoms, and the quilting.  Oh my… just beautiful.  I’m sorry I didn’t get the info of the quilter that made it and the quilter’s name was not in the quilt book either, unfortunately.

There were so many vendors there and so many wonderful quilting notions and things to look at.  I came to the realization that I know absolutely NOTHING about quilting!  I didn’t know about all the different types of quilts and quilting methods, and gadgets and doodads used for quilting!  Most eye-opening experience was that I didn’t even know that quilting machines can run up to $20,000!  You bet I gave those machines a try!  It was awesome!

Here are some more photos from the quilt convention, including some quilt entries and super cute vendor booths.  I loved their displays! Can you believe that this pavilion was actually built over a parking lot?  Notice the trees that they had to work around? This is Shabby Fabrics booth and they had the best selection of fat quarter fabrics, in my opinion.  I am a big fan of floral prints and they had plenty of it!  I’ll have to upload a photo of the stash I bought from there in a later post.
I took a bunch of photos of this display because I kept thinking about how many patchwork quilts I could make from each individual box.  I was in fabric heaven, really! I spent four hours at the convention and I didn’t even realize that I had been walking around for that long.  I didn’t even remember to eat.  I didn’t feel hunger.  I only felt the need to look at EVERYTHING and touch (where permitted) and just take it all in.  So many beautiful quilts!  I can truly appreciated the talent and the patience it takes to create such quilts.  I liked the vendor booths and seeing the latest quilting products.  I’m not really the quilter type that needs every new quilting notion that comes out.  I’m a practical quilter, but they are fun to look at and try out at the quilt shows.  They were handing out “save the dates” for next year’s quilt show and I already can’t wait to go back!  (January 21-24, 2016, Ontario Convention Center – www.road2ca.com) I believe there’s a different quilt convention in Los Angeles soon too.  I think it’s called QuiltCon… I’ll look into it.  It’s definitely something I’d really like to go to as well!