In April I was lucky enough to have a holiday in the USA with my husband, Brad. We had an awesome time travelling around Southern USA in Kentucky, Alabama, Florida and Tennessee. I’m not going to tell you about the whole trip but about the 3 days towards the end when we went to Paducah, Kentucky, to attend the American Quilters Society (AQS) annual Quilt week. The main reason I went to Paducah was that I had a quilt in the travelling “Beneath the Southern Skies” exhibition which was being shown there. Of course when I suggested this to my husband he said – you want to go to Paducah in the USA to see one or your quilts hanging in a quilt exhibition? – When I said yes he said okay lets go!

Paducah is on the south western border of Kentucky beside the massive Ohio river where it intersects with the Tennessee river. It has a population of about 25,000 people so is not a big town. When AQS quilt week comes to town they have an influx of 40,000 people, so this week is where local businesses do 90% of their business for the year! The whole town gets behind Quilt week and this is evident when you arrive in town and there are neon signs everywhere saying “welcome quilters”. There are quilts in most shop windows and the local police are on full duty to stop cars and let the quilters walk across the road. Empty shops are filled with pop up quilt vendors and cafes and restaurants have been busy training staff for one week of work.

Our first stop was to the NationalQuiltMuseum. This is an amazing facility. Specifically built as a textile museum it has a shop, meeting room and large, well laid out exhibition space and of course proper textile storage. There was an exhibition of their collection showing as well as exhibitions by Regina Alexandra showing a modern quilt take on faces with different expressions, really clever. Next was Emiko Toda Loeb who did reversible log cabins. These were amazing with all sorts of leg cabin designs. Check both of them and the Quilt Museum on www.facebook.com/nationalquiltmuseum/.

  After a spot of shopping we then went to the infamous Hancock’s fabric store. They started in Paducah and have three large rooms of fabric on the bolt, boxes of fabric in all colour ways cut up into all different shapes: jelly rolls, batik strips, kits etc. There were bus loads of people and lots and lots of cars. I went in for a look and watched everyone going crazy buying lots and lots of fabric. Mind you at $6 to $11 a yard it is really cheap. Given I am part of Distressed Threads and we do our own fabric, I think I was the only person that went in and didn’t buy something!

We stayed in a gorgeous B&B in Metropolis which is about Christchurch – Rolleston distance away. Yes Metropolis should ring a bell if you are a Superman fan! This is the birthplace of the comic and the only claim to fame the town really has. We visited the 15ft statue of Superman and the smaller bronze of Lois lane. Turns out the creator of Superman modelled Lois on his girlfriend at the time. At the B&B I received a little gift bag of girlie bits and pieces (pens, nail file, chocolates etc) which they had for each quilter staying there that week. A nice touch I thought.

 The next day was the start of the quilt show. So nice and early into Paducah and WOW! The first hall we went into was I thought only merchants but no, it had the Tent Makers from Egypt there with lots of their quilts for sale. Two of the men were sitting there demonstrating their hand appliqué techniques. Very fast and no templates or pre-cut shapes. They picked up snippets of fabric and stitched and cut these to a desired shape. Their finished pieces were gorgeous. Check them out on www.AmericanQuilter.com.

 While I was checking out the merchant stalls Brad came back and said your exhibition is down here. So off I went and saw my quilt in exhibition for the first time. I have to say the quilts were not as professionally hung as we do here, however it was good to see mine. At 3.30 that day, Brenda Gael Smith the curator was giving a floor talk on the quilts and because I was there I got to talk about my piece. My piece is the silhouette of a soldier and I was talking about the Anzacs. Funnily enough it was ANZAC day in NZ at the time I was speaking. The first day I also went into one of the other halls and saw the first half of their major exhibition. The workmanship was amazing as you will see on the CD I have of the show. There were a lot of traditional and pictorial quilts beautifully executed and not many arty quilts.

By this time my body and feet were aching. Brad took me down to the shopping mall as he had seen other merchants there. While down there we found an Asian Massage place. So I decided to have a 30 minute neck and shoulder massage then realised Brad was doing the same. Another option was having your feet massaged so we decided to do that as well. 30 minutes latter it was like walking on clouds and we couldn’t believe how good our feet were.

 The second day I had mapped out what I wanted to do as there were other quilt things to cover in Paducah as well. I started by going to a $5 book sale – all new books and mainly traditional. Happens each time I believe and they are the end of runs or books that haven’t sold out. I bought a couple but only because of the price then beside that was another batch of merchants’ downtown. Brad checked out the local maritime museum and took me along for a look. Really interesting history about the shipping lines and how Paducah had been badly flooded years ago.

 From there he dropped me off at legendary quilt maker Caryl Bryer Fallerts studio. She has three quilts in the NationalMuseum. Her work has always been her brightly hand dyed art quilts but I have to say that these days she designs the colours and they are printed as a commercial fabric.

This studio was the best piece of merchandising I have seen. Caryl had her quilts around the walls with pattern attached at the bottom and a colour coded chart showing colours and numbers of the fabrics. Below this on a bench were pre-cut yard lengths of the required fabrics and a box of patterns. They were selling very fast. I have to say that this is not me as I have never done an exact copy of someone’s quilt and fabrics but it was am impressive piece of marketing.

After this I walked over to the main show and saw the other half of the main exhibition and the rest of the merchants. These were the large bed quilts and they were exquisite. The merchants in all parts were mainly traditional and sold all sorts of fabric, kits and patterns. There were the usual sewing machine sellers and a lot of long arm quilt machine merchants. AQS also had a massive stall in each exhibition area. They sold t-shirts, caps, mugs, carry bags, CDs of the exhibition and an exhibition catalogue among other things.

The whole show was very well organised and it was interesting to see that those doing classes sometimes did these in the evening. They also ran silent auctions of goods and an outdoor auction of quilts to raise money for the museum.

 Another exhibition running down town was the Fibre Festival exhibition at the Yeiser Centre. This is very similar to Changing Threads in Nelson and was about fibre used in different ways. It was really interesting but no catalogue as yet and you can’t take photos. It was the same with the NationalMuseum – no photos but I bought a catalogue of their collection up to 2009.

 Just down from the Yeiser centre was another quilt book sale. Felt it was my duty to go and have a look. Ten minutes later I had bought two surface design books. One was just new to the market. Cathy who runs this calls it Quilt Books unlimited and travels the shows selling. She now lives in Paducah. If you paid cash you also got a discount which was handy for me.

 For the rest of the day I checked out a couple more art studios where they hand dyed fabric but nothing like what we are doing with Distressed Threads which was interesting.  Everyone was very welcoming and interested in talking. They were amazed that I would travel from good old NZ to go to a quilt show in Paducah. I did my best for the USA economy and purchased 5 books, very little fabric but a few notions including an easy thread needle which should be good for my eyesight.

 The next day we headed back to Nashville to catch a plane to Los Angeles and start our trip home.

 All in all it was an awesome trip and well worth doing. It was easy to get to but you need to organise accommodation well ahead by starting in the September the previous year otherwise you will miss out.