AQS Paducah 2025
- Published:
- Length: 553 words
- Reading Time: 3 minutes
This year, I had the opportunity to attend and teach at the AQS Quiltweek quilt show in Paducah. I taught four workshops over three days and gave a trunk show on the fourth day. It was a lot of work, but it was also a very rewarding experience. I had a great time. Enjoy a few of the photos that I took while in Kentucky.
Best Wall Quilt
The first night was the Awards Ceremony. My quilt, The One That Got Away, was awarded Best Wall Quilt! Here is a photo of me with my quilt and the chair—top prize winners are gifted a director's chair with their name printed on it—taken after the ceremony. I've been told I am the only person in history to win this award two years in a row.
Improv Beach Scene
This photo was taken during my Improve Beach Scene class. Students made small, 4"x6" beach scenes out of fused appliqué fabric. I brought two big boxes of fabric in lieu of a "kit", which gives everyone access to a much larger variety of fabric. This class is really fun because everyone ends up making something totally different.
Hands-On Photography
In my How To Photograph A Quilt class, my students set up the photography studio equipment right there in the class. Everyone had the opportunity to practice hanging their quilts and taking a proper photo using their cell phones. At the end of class, I gave a demo on using two different photo editing softwares.
Fusing & Quilting Back to Front
I taught my first ever sewing class at Quiltweek this year. Fusing & Quilting Back to Front is a class I designed to teach the method of quilting I've developed to quilt my own work. In the morning, students assembled a fused appliqué quilt kit. In the afternoon, students got to practice the quilting technique using Bernina Q20s.
The Quilts
This pic shows how the show was hung. The rows of quilt displays were divided into small cubicles, and each cubicle displayed three quilts. There were more than 800 quilts on display spread over two floors of the expo center. It was a tight fit!
The Last Call
On the last night, I met up with a few friends and Ricky Tims to deliver my raven quilt, The Last Call. Ricky had purchased this quilt from me in 2023 when I was on location taping The Quilt Show, which he hosts along with Alex Anderson. He was kind enough to let me hang onto it to exhibit for the past two years. Now that Jacques (the raven) has finally been to its last competition, it was time for him to go home with Ricky.
