Naperville Quilts! 2019

I was busy last week at my very own quilt guild’s quilt show. Riverwalk Quilters Guild always pulls out the stops and this year was no exception!

Set up started at the beautiful Northern Illinois University campus in Naperville on Thursday morning. I dropped off my quilts in the afternoon and preparations were all under way. We like to do things a little differently in Naperville ( 🙂 ). The show opens at noon on Friday so that people can pop in after work until 7pm and then we are open all day Saturday.

By the time I arrived on Friday everything was in full swing. A display of 25th anniversary quilts met me right by the front door,and next to them were the hot dog quilts made at the philanthropy sew-in last month. What fun!The NIU building is a great place to hold a quilt show. The atrium has lots of space and super lighting. Here’s a view towards the vendors mall, looking past the raffle baskets and quilt displays. The balcony shows off those big quilts to their best advantage with an ingenious hanging mechanism to keep them in place.The quilts are all arranged in open “rooms” to let every piece shine. Do you recognize the quilt at the bottom left?Three large red quilts from (left to right) Margaret, Valli and Yvette (two).The biggest room overlooking the pond held more quilts, arranged by theme, color or style.

Hexagon quilts. The big one on the left was made by Nancy. I had one in this section…Our guild encourages all styles of quilters and their quilts. These are all modern star quilts, made for the Naperville Modern Quilters Guild Seeing Stars challenge.Here’s some quilts I recognize!Traditional quilts were well represented too. This is Dorothy and Chris’s Founders Quilt, started 25 years ago by Dorothy and finished recently by Chris! There were both founder members of our guild.Beautiful hand appliqué and hand quilting with just a few pearl beads.Three house quilts caught my eye. They were made by Carol, Karen and Jen.Some quilts had stories, including this one,  Light in Darkness,  made by Amy using her mom’s dresses.Leesa made her Marguerite’s Yo-yos quilt from her mother-in-law’s 1930’s yo-yos she found in her cedar chest.Here’s a detail. Leesa likes to hand quilt.

Svetlana Gluskin from Woodridge was our featured quilter. A selection of her lovely quilts hung in the atrium. You can see them in the image at the top of this post.

There were also lectures and demos, the vendors and a large well organised rummage sale on  the upper floor… lots to see and do!

But before we knew it it was time to pull the winning tickets for the raffle baskets and clear up.

It takes all the family to get the job done.That was it. Another show over. The quilt show committee did an awesome job. Who’s going to chair the next one?

Julia and family came over yesterday for a Mother Day’s lunch. We had Chinese carryout! I did manage to make a cake. Now I have two days to finish my preparations for Market. I just booked my taxi for 5.45 AM on Wednesday. No time to get into trouble?