Mrs. Murfreesboro: Quilt show presents product, fabrics beyond imagination on The Murfreesboro Post

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Mrs. Murfreesboro: Quilt show presents product, fabrics beyond imagination

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By: JEANNE BRAGG, Post Columnist

Posted: Sunday, August 31, 2008 8:31 am

If you walk into any retail establishment these days you notice a lack of activity. Every retailer I know will verify that sales are VERY slow.

But I surely didn’t notice signs of an impaired economy last week when I attended the American Quilters Society Show at Opryland Hotel. There were vendors and attendees in droves, and there was a lot of money being exchanged between hands.

I love attending these large shows, and if you’re a sewer, and most especially a quilter, you’ll think you died and went to fabric heaven if you attend. A show usually comes to Nashville once a year.

Enjoying it is like a hunter going to a gun show or a lover of primitive antiques attending the Heart of Country Antique Show, also held yearly at Opryland. I’m telling you, when those quilts or antiques come to town, you need to be there. I can’t testify to the guns.

These trade shows are not only for quilters; they are for anyone who enjoys the sewing arts.

Typical vendors include those selling professional quilting machines, thread companies (with every color and variety imaginable) and vendors from all over the country selling the most beautiful fabric imaginable, Just when you thought you’d seen it all, there would be a booth around a corner selling fabric prettier than the last one. And there were booths with state-of-the-art sewing machines that cost as much as my first house, and most of us can only dream about owning in this lifetime.

I have often referred to the fact that I love to sew and enjoy in particular my embroidery machine; I attend sewing classes in Gallatin to often improve my skills. We have very skilled teachers in Murfreesboro at Mid South Sewing Center, now off Cason Lane.

Owners Fred and Karen Rouse had over 60 attendees at one of their recent Saturday seminars featuring embroidery and the numbers are growing.

I purchased my machine a few years ago from a talented seamstress, Joyce Moebes, when she owned Dream Stitches here in Murfreesboro. But I had to make the trek to Gallatin to learn how to use my software after Joyce ‘s business closed. I had my complicated machine two and a half years before I learned how to use the embroidery feature, but now that I’m mastering it, I just can’t get enough. Personalized monogram things have been a fun hobby for me.

At a recent embroidery class in Gallatin, several of us decided to attend the quilt

show together. Last year I went by myself, but during the year at classes my buddies would say, ”But did you see THAT at the Quilt Show?” or “I found THIS at the quilt show. ” So this year some of us went together. We wanted to make sure no treasures were left unturned.

We also agreed not to let the others buy something we felt like we didn’t need – like the rug-making kit two of us I bought last year and neither of us has taken out of the package.

My sewing buddies ding are a disparate group. One was raised in a conservative religious environment and has her own business as a recruiting consultant. Another is a social activist who makes handcrafted purses to sell at a small shop in Nashville. The youngest (who looks like she is 30 but is, in fact, a breast cancer survivor at age 50) sews draperies for an interior designer and had gotten home that morning at 2 a.m. after having taken her youngest to college in Alabama. That daughter called twice during the show — guess she was homesick?

In about every third booth there was a man helping his wife rake in money. I’d bet that the husbands have realized their wives had found niches that were no longer hobbies, but lucrative careers.

We all shopped at different paces and would catch up with each other from time to time. But the most amusing part came at the end when we compared our “treasures.”

We all had spent almost exactly the same amount of money and ended up buying the same things! We all bought “blank” items to embroider, and three of us bought patterns to make jackets from sweatshirts. We ALL bought “Agent 007,” a bonding agent that repairs rips and holes in garments (the woman demonstrating that was one heck of a salesperson). Of the 12 or so people purchasing “007” after that demonstration, I noted that only one paid by credit card. The rest had paid in cash. I wonder how many of them (us?) didn’t want anybody else to know how much we’d spent?

I have already started making some purses from the fabrics that I bought last week.

I can only hope that pattern that makes a jacket out of a sweatshirt meets the same fate.

ʻTil next week!

Tagged under VOICES

Member Opinions:

By: msylvester227 on 9/3/08
Thank you for such a beautiful article. I only wish I had such skilled talent. I am thankful too that these Quilter's" are keeping the past present to all of us.

ms normal, il