Machine Quilters Exposition - Manchester, NH

We returned this afternoon from a very nice weekend in New Hampshire. We left Friday morning and it took us about 7 hours to get to Manchester, NH. It was a pretty ride, we could see lots of areas that still had snow on the ground, especially deeper in the woods along the highway. Friday evening we took our daughter to see "Blades of Glory". It was a funny film if you like raunchy, stupid humor. It did have its moments, but in the end I felt stupider for having watched it! :o) After that we went to T-Bones restaurant for dinner. The food was reasonably priced and delicious...my daughter liked it so much that we went back on Saturday night!



On Saturday morning we headed to the show. There were so many beautiful quilts made by talented quilters. I'm so envious of their abilities! As we were walking through the show, we finally made it to the Breast Cancer Challenge quilts. I knew going in that I was not a winner, so I was fine with it. The winning quilt was just beautiful, such creative use of the fabrics we were sent, I absolutely loved it.Now, if you look at the top picture which shows my quilt, there might be a little something you notice that is different. Each quilt in the show had a card attached that gave the name of the quilt, the piecer, the quilter and a little story about the quilt. However...mine only had a little green card with the quilt number on it. Nothing to identify me as the quilter, creator...anything. Unless you happened to look in the program just to see who it was by. As I walked through the show I saw all sorts of quilts made by people whose names I recognized or by people I knew. Unfortunately, no one would have known I made this quilt. I was so incredibly disappointed that after all the work I had put into it, no one would know I made it, unless they took the time to look it up. Who actually does that??? Going through the show there was only one other quilt that didn't have a name tag on it. I stopped in the office, mainly to make sure the quilt was going to be returned to me since it didn't have a tag on it, but the show organizers were off doing other things, so I was asked to write a note in a notebook with my information. I did that, but it didn't change disappointment or the fact that no one knows I had a quilt in the show. We stayed at the show for about 2 hours, then headed out.


From the show we drove to Portsmouth, NH. It's a wonderful little coastal town with lots of shops and restaurants. We stopped for lunch at the Portsmouth Brewery, where the food was good and the beer even better! I highly recommend it if you're ever in the area! After wandering around the shops for awhile, we decided to cross the bridge and go into Maine where there were all sorts of outlets. My daughter had fun in the Pac Sun outlet and my DH and I looked through the shoe outlets....but he and I came home empty handed. My daughter had no problems spending our money though!


We headed back to the hotel and had dinner, then turned in early so we could leave early this morning. The rain was just starting in NH as we hit the road. We went from a light rain in NH to heavier rain in Massachusetts. When we got to Connecticut there was heavy snow, sleet and rain...all at the same time! New York and New Jersey were just torrential rains. The traffic was much lighter on our trip home than on our trip there, so the trip took about 7 hours each way. It was good to get home this afternoon...nor'easters aren't for the faint of heart! I'm very glad that I wasn't driving.


So, except for my disappointment at the show, it was a fun weekend. Now I wait for the return of my quilt. I've entered it into the NJ State Guild show in June, only because a customer insisted that it needed to be there! I'm curious to see what the judges had to say about it. Maybe they didn't put my name on it because they didn't want me to be embarrassed!!!