Good friends and inspiration

It's a great combination. Frieda, Trish, Laura, Gretl and I started our day seeing Jane Sassaman's glorious quilts at the Metcap bank in downtown Chicago. Jane's quilts are so gorgeous and they are amazing to see in person because in photos you don't get to see all the beautiful machine stitching and quilting she does on them. Jane really knows how to use thread and make use of those decorative stitches on the machine. The Metcap bank was also a wonderful venue for her quilts because it is in an old arts and crafts period building with lots of period woodwork that echoes many of her design motifs beautifully. It is the most non-bank looking bank I have ever seen.

Here I am with Susan Hinckley of Small Works in Wool, at the One of a Kind Show, we had a lovely chat. It is always so much fun seeing her lovely humorous felted pieces.

I was surprised to see Etsy have a booth, but I guess it makes perfect sense since it is an artisan gift market. The cloth pojagi was beautiful with the light coming through it.

Another new booth this year was Readymade magazine and Janome sharing a large space with sewing machines set up to make pillows with Micheal Miller cotton prints, it was nice to see a booth there trying to put across the idea that everyone can make beautiful gifts.

As I turned the corner of an aisle I saw a familiar face and realized it was Pat Owoc, who I met in St. Louis, manning her sisters booth for the show. Pat uses disperse dyes to create beautiful atmospheric scenes on polyester, that have a beautiful luminosity, be sure to check her work out.

After a couple hours of walking around the show, I actually only made it down 3 aisles of this enormous show since I got distracted by a couple really good booths, we had lunch in the little food court of the merchandise mart building. Frieda, Trish and Laura are having an impromptu SAQA meeting, they are our regional reps, looks like some serious business, huh.

Gretl, an avid knitter, worked through lunch. She is knitting a shawl with Emily Parson's Sophies Toes sock yarn in a beautiful olive green color with bits of cranberry red.

 This is when Trish and crew were singing the cold song waiting for me to take a picture. Winter has definitely arrived in Chicago.

A kind stranger offered to take a group picture of us, maybe it was to quiet the ruckus, lol!