This will be my 12th year to attend AQS show in Paducah. Is that possible? It has to be. In 1997, as luck would have it . . truly without planning, Vince and I ended up in Owensboro looking for a house and it happened to be the week of the quilt show. I didn’t even know the show was going on . . too much else on my mind at the time. We looked at houses on Thursday and Friday and then Vince offered to drive over to Paducah to the quilt show on Saturday. That was a trip! Leave in the morning, attend the show and drive back all in the same day. Although it was only a little over 2 hours from Owensboro, it’s impossible to make much of a dent in the Paducah show in one day. But we did it and I’ve been back ever since.
When we lived in Louisiana, I went to the Houston show every year. I had heard a lot about the Paducah show. To be quite honest, that first year we went, I left thinking what’s all the fuss about Paducah? I’ll take Houston any day! But, after having not been to the Houston show for 10 or 11 years and then going back last year, the AQS show in Paducah is definitely my favorite show. Maybe it’s the small town atmosphere – the whole City of Paducah supports the quilt show. The restaurants know everyone in town is a quilter, the antique stores downtown stay open late for the quilters, the empty buildings are rented out by quilt related vendors, Eleanor Burns takes over one of the city parks . . it’s just amazing! Maybe it’s running into friends because of having lived in Kentucky, maybe it’s because we stay at the state park and that’s my favorite place in the whole world to stay (the rooms are big and quiet, the air conditioners work really good and the view is the best!), or maybe it’s just a combination of everything that happens in Paducah next week, but I’m having the hardest time waiting for next week to arrive.
With my wordpress blog, I can see incoming links and just noticed this blog. She has some quilters mentioned who will be attending the Paducah show and she has me listed there. How cool is that? And, she mentions that my quilting hero, Bonnie Browning, has a blog. I didn’t know that! Check out Bonnie’s blog. She talks a lot about Paducah and reading all that didn’t help my excitement any at all. If Bonnie has time to update her blog between now and the end of the quilt show, that will prove she’s Super Woman. 🙂