Road trippin' with NEQDC

NEQDC, or New England Quilt Designers Cooperative for those of you just joining us, is packing up and moving out in just a couple of weeks as we will be vending once again at Genesee Valley Quilt Club's Quilt Festival, June 3-5 2011 at Rochester Institute of Technology, Rochester NY. This will be our second consecutive time at the show and we are very excited. Come along as I attempt to excite you as well!





Quilt Festival is the biannual show for Genesee Valley Quilt Club, a huge club from Western NY that really knows how to put on a show. It's three full days of non stop action, including fashion shows, auctions, special lectures and exhibits, a chance to sew a pillowcase for charity, and of course about 900 billion quilts. The ladies, and I would imagine a few gentlemen, of GVQC are not only prolific in and of themselves, but they also secure travelling exhibits for show at their event, so the floor is just amazingly full of gorgeousness. I spent three days there and couldn't see it all. Granted, I was supposed to be helping in NEQDC's booth, which cut into my show viewing, but as anyone who has worked with me in the booth in the past knows, I tend to wander off and hope no one notices.

Add to all the fun the vendor shop hop. This is such a great idea and I wish more shows would adopt it. Perhaps it only works for GVQC because the vendors are so fantastic (they truly are!), but here's the deal: As you shop, save your receipts. Then head on over to the shop hop booth. Volunteers with calculators will add up your totals, and for every $100 you've spent, you get a ticket to put in a Chinese auction style basket raffle. Baskets feature products donated by the vendors, from patterns and notions to alpaca sweaters. It's truly fantastic and a win win for the vendors, the show, and the shoppers.

This year's special guests are George Siciliano, Pat Pauly, Rami Kim, and Carol Ritter-Wright. Carol will be doing a live auction with some of the proceeds to benefit Gilda's Club of Rochester, a support system for women with ovarian cancer and their families. As a daughter who lost her mom to ovarian cancer almost ten years ago, I absolutely love that I can be part of a show that supports fighters and survivors in this way.

NEDQC will be in booth 610/611 - oh yeah, we sprang for the double! - and we'd love to see you there. Myself, Terri Sontra of Purple Moose Designs, and Cary Flanagan of Something Sew Fine will be there in person. We aren't George Siciliano, but we think we are pretty awesome, so please stop by!