Beautiful quilts and a silver finger...

It seems like the perfect morning to spend a little extra time with some hand-stitching.

 It's a bit grey outside and I've had a lovely couple of days away and feel relaxed, refreshed and peaceful.

On Monday evening I will be presenting the next section of our BOM, Queen's Garden, and I'm almost finished the embroidery part of the blocks...

I was having a bit of trouble marking the lines for the embroidery on this type of fabric, when I thought of my Hera marker, which did an excellent job. Can you see the marks on the lower leaf?...

Here is the quilt so far...

There's still some embroidery to add. I'll try to catch up on that over the Summer. 

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Friday and Saturday we went on a little road-trip to Rochester, NY. 

My husband had come across a big quilt show there put on by the Genessee Valley Quilt Club and suggested we go down...I guess he's a keeper, after-all :)

It was quite the event, held in the Rochester Institute of Technology, a venue that was 70,000 square feet. I think it may have been the best quilt show I've been to. 

Here is the picture I took of the event on the first day...

I didn't realise until the next day that past the furthest bit of the picture was another half of the show! There were 700 quilts and 60 vendors. I was surprised at the amount of quilts that were somewhat new to me....and that a lot of the vendors were selling items that I'd never seen before. 

Since this is Slow Stitching Sunday, I'll stick to showing you mostly handwork that I saw at the show.

A lot of quilts had this "hand" attached to it...

I thought it meant "keep your hands off the quilts"...but it was to indicate a hand-quilted item.

 There were more than usual that were hand-quilted. The most fantastic and my favourite was this one...

Here is the Best in Show, also hand-quilted...

This one is not done by hand, but I love that the applique is done on a background that has been pieced of diamond shapes...

Then there is this fantastic quilt. All of the letters on the quilt spell out the words to the song, Morning Has Broken. Truly fantastic.

I was lucky to see someone selling some of the same type of fabric that I'm using in my Queen's Garden, so I picked up a bundle to add more interest to my quilt...

I made a couple of other purchases that I'll save for another post....but I will show you one more.

There was a woman at the show who is a silversmith and she had a booth filled with the most beautiful thimbles and chatelaine's. I was positively drooling over the thimbles....but made myself walk away and think about it so I wouldn't make an impulsive purchase (yay, me!)...as the thimbles were a little on the expensive side.

I thought it over until the next day when we were returning to the show and convinced myself that I did indeed deserve such a beautiful thimble. After-all, it's like a piece jewelry and art...and something I would use each and every day, right????

I was looking at the thimbles that were open on the back and had lovely filigree work over the fingernail area. It wasn't until I was almost ready to make a purchase that the silversmith had me try it out on a bit of quilting. Well!....it turns out I use a part of my finger that was more toward the fingernail to do the pushing....not protected at all by these beauties! Even the silversmith was surprised. I'm glad she had something to test on before I bought one and returned to Canada. (Although, they come with a lifetime guarantee, so I could have switched it out later)

I ended up with a fully enclosed thimble, which I quite enjoyed breaking-in this morning with my applique...

When my eldest grandson was about 4 years old, he would ask permission to try on my "silver finger"....and proceed to walk around the room carefully balancing my thimble on his tiny finger.

Now I am happy to truly have a real silver thimble and I will use it with great pleasure.

I could show you a lot more to inspire you from this wonderful quilt show, but I'll save some for another day. 

This show is held every two years, the first weekend of June. I'm sure we will go back again!

I am linking up with Kathy for Slow Sunday Stitching. I think I'll sit with an extra cup of coffee and see what everyone has been up to this week!