Sisters, OR Outdoor Quilt Show

John was so kind, he took me to Sisters, OR last weekend for the Quilt Show!

I actually booked our hotel room in January, so I've been really looking forward to going down there.  It's about a 4.5 hour drive from Walla Walla, so we left Friday morning ~8am, which gave us plenty of time to visit one of John's work buddies in Bend for about an hour.  Bennett at Performance Authority is building the SEMA truck for Diamond Eye Performance and we got to see it's progress.  The following are some photos from our trip, and just a few of the quilts that really caught my attention.

 

It started as a '48 Ford cab-over, which they are creating a truck-loading ramp for so it can haul another custom truck.  It will be really neat to see it progress, and John is very excited to be helping out with the project this year.

Eee!  So excited!



Hmmm, not so great, although it still is Friday, so go ahead weather!  Get it out of your system!

Pretty great store!  During quilt show time they stay open from 9am to 9pm.  We were thankful the next day that we visited Friday evening.

Lepidoptera Quilt

This hit my funny bone :)

John got this good photo of us as we were on our way out, in front of a beautiful water feature.

This is where we ate breakfast, I highly recommend it!



Neat sculpture in a field before you get to Sisters, for those who get to wait for entrance into the show.

I think we only waited 10 minutes, it wasn't too bad at 9am.  I heard you can actually go earlier, when they are setting the quilts up, and the traffic is much less.

I thought this picture turned out really nice, and might make a neat quilt someday.

This is in City Hall, all the panels are quilted by different people.

This looked like one I would be most likely to imitate, if I ever decided to make something along these lines.  We really liked the progression of the quilts.

This may be the best memory quilt I've ever seen, what a cool idea!

This was incredible, those little squares are .5 inch (half inch!) and then it's all embellished with beadwork.

Here's a close-up.

This was one of John's favorites, which made sense to me because he likes war planes and clever quilting.

Such a cool idea.  What a great way to practice different quilting techniques/patterns.

An example of the quilts hanging on the buildings.  And me :)

This one is amazing.  I really like the cream background and rainbow batiks.

Had to try on a floppy hat!  There were some pretty fancy ones at this shop.

I haven't seen many log cabin quilts that really attract my attention, and this one definitely did.  I like the trees and bear paw blocks a lot.

I saw this tiger from across the street and squealed a little... I love how it looks like he is nosing up to the camera!



Pretty awesome to meet Rob Appell of Man Sewing!  Hoping to take a class with him next year if possible.

Another shot of quilts on the building, and an example of why John and I walked in the middle of the street for most of the 4 hours we were there.

This log cabin quilt is clever!

Be sure to visit the flaming rhino!



We visited the shops in Bend after walking around the quilt show, and found a few goodies.  I decided I will work on a rainbow of fat quarters from the shops I visit this year and see if I can't make something fun with them.  And you can see John found some more motorcycle fabric, he is very happy.

I ended up with a yard of this for adding to my Halloween collection that I am building up, I think it will make a really cool background fabric.

I am contemplating using this for a new ironing board cover, but may go with something less busy since I tend to take a lot of my block photos on there.  Either way, I was really attracted to this fabric.

John bought me the earrings and magnet, how thoughtful is he!  And I have some fabric waiting to become Hawaiian shirts, and figured I should pick up the snaps while I was thinking about it.

 Our overall impression of the show was that it could have been a little less spread out.  We walked around, pretty quickly, for 4 hours and were just wiped out from it, and didn't see everything!  It is my understanding that in the past the quilts were much more condensed and it caused a lot of overcrowding, and that certainly wasn't a problem this show.  But we were among the younger end of the people attending the show, I can't imagine how the older crowd fared.  But it was pretty cool to see so many different quilts, and to see the appreciation of them from such a large amount of people.  I am looking forward to going back next year.  And maybe I'll enter a quilt this time!

 

 

Belle approving the new rainbow pretties.  I think she wasn't too thrilled with us being gone for a night, she still hasn't fully forgiven me.  I think I will brush her extra, maybe that will help.

Have a super sparkly day!

~Brandy