Quilt and Sew Expo

Next week I'll be attending the Sew and Quilt Expo, October 4-5 in Fredericksburg, VA to help out one of my favorite quilt shops, Thread Runs Through It.  I'll be demonstrating the new Gammill Charm, a sit down long arm quilting machine. This big machine is a powerhouse and a lot of fun to quilt on.

I'm looking forward to checking out all the vendor booths to see what they have and to fill my head with all kind of eye-candy. There are a ton of classes offered too. There are some pretty amazing long arm classes offered and Threads Run Through It will be providing 20 Gammills for the hands-on classes. There are some free motion quilting classes too, one is already filled. I'm planning on taking a class by Dusty Farrell on gadgets and rulers for quilters (both domestic and longarm). Most of the time I will be in the TRTI booth, stitching, chatting, and helping interested quilters try this new machine.

I  am hoping there will be plenty of vendors with thread!  I could use more colors as always. I'm especially wanting to find someone carrying a particular Krenik thread. It's suppose to look a lot like a string of beads, even though it's mostly some form of knotted mylar from what I can see online. Looks like it might be fun for free motion couching.

I'm also hoping to pick up some new rulers for doing ruler work. While I was disappointed that Quilter's Rule wouldn't have a booth there, Dusty Farrell will have his line of rulers ther and I will be taking a look to see if some of them would be useful on a domestic sewing machine or even the big sit-down long arm machines.

I am also hoping to track down some of the sewing machine reps and educators of the various brands and see if there are ruler toes/feet available for other brands of machine. I did find a generic Ruler Foot for a high shank machine on Amazon, but couldn't find any manufacturer's info on it to see if there's a low-shank version available. I do think buying the Janome convertible free motion foot set for either a low or high shank machine and the Frame Quilting set for the 1600P to get the ruler toe is a better bet and comes out to about the same price.

In the meantime, I've got two quilts to bind for the Expo and some unfinished projects to work on. I hope you are getting to do some free motion quilting too.

If you are going to the Expo, let me know and we'll try to meet up.