Stepping Off the Roller Coaster, Trying Not to Puke: The Saga of Why Spring Quilt Week in Paducah for 2019 is a No-Go

So I got this email on Tuesday  announcing that class registration for Spring Quilt Week in Paducah was open for AQS members.  I've never attended any of the major quilt shows before, but I'd love to go -- and thought it might be a great opportunity to take some longarm quilting classes, if I could only get into the classes before they were full.  I clicked the link to the class descriptions and was EUPHORIC when I saw that both Judi Madsen and Lisa Calle will be teaching at this year's show!  With butterflies in my stomach, I filled my little shopping cart with every single longarm class offered at the show, 9 blissful hours per day of of quilting tutelage with two of my favorite quilt artists on the planet, expecting at every moment to get an error message telling me that my class selections were not available after all.  It reminded me of standing in line for the Corkscrew roller coaster at Valleyfair soon after the ride opened in 1980, with my dad and my older sister Susan: watching the cars spinning through the inversions, listening to the happy screams of the riders, wondering if I would ever make it to the front of the line before the ride closed for the day, and hoping that if I DID get to ride the roller coaster, I wouldn't puke all over myself.

The Corkscrew at Valleyfair, My First Big Roller Coaster Ride circa 1980

You guys -- I got ALL THE CLASSES!!!  I was dancing and prancing and compiling lists in my head of all of the questions I wanted to be sure to ask over the course of this longarm quilting intensive I'd planned for myself.  I was making an itinerary of when I'd visit the exhibit floor and merchant mall, which day I'd go to the National Quilt Museum...  And then, with these visions of sugarplums dancing in my head, I went to bed because it was midnight and apparently it's difficult for my family members to sleep when I'm dancing and skipping around the house.

For those of you not familiar with Calles' and Madsens' work:

I signed up for Lisa Calle's class "Pebbles, Echoes, Crosshatches, Oh My: Fillers on the Longarm" to learn how Lisa quilts magnificent designs like these:

Lisa Calle's Longarm Fill Quilting

I also signed up for her 6-hour" Meet & Greet the Longarm" class to learn alternative methods of loading and setting up for quilting, and in hopes of building a better foundation of the basics to build upon.  I signed up for her ruler work class, too, as well as her free-motion feather class.  Can you imagine?!!

As for Judi Madsen, well, it's pretty much all her fault that I bought a longarm quilting machine in the first place.  I stumbled across her blog some years ago and her longarm quilting was just the most beautiful, joyful, playful and expressive quilting I'd seen ANYWHERE, including hand quilting as well as machine quilting.  I never had any desire to own a longarm quilting machine until I saw the cool stuff Judi was doing with hers:

Ticky Tack Pattern by Honest Fabric, Pieced and Quilted by Judi Madsen

Judi's style is difficult to classify and she is equally adept at custom quilting modern as well as traditional quilts.  To serious traditional applique, her quilting adds a playful whimsy that feels fresh and current.  To simply pieced modern quilt tops utilizing solids and vast negative spaces, the complexity of her ruler work and free motion fills brings the magnificence of the whole cloth quilting tradition into the 21st century.  

Luscious Quilting by Judi Madsen, See More of This Quilt on Judi's Flickr Page Here

Now, did I expect to emerge after a single week of workshops transformed into a master quilter on par with Lisa Calle and Judi Madsen?  Of course not -- but I was sure I'd come home from Quilt Week a more confident and capable quilter than I am today.

So the first thing I did on Wednesday morning was to sit down at my computer and book my flight to Paducah for the show.  No hiccups there.  And finally, now that my classes and dates and flights were all pinned down for the trip, I went back to that handy-dandy APQS Approved Accommodations list on their web site -- which EVEN TODAY is still showing 20+ well-known commercial hotels in Paducah as having availability -- and started calling them to try to book a room.  And this is the part of the roller coaster ride where they flip you upside down suddenly, the inversion that comes along out of nowhere when you're speeding down the track at over a hundred miles an hour and your entire stomach, along with its contents, is suddenly inside of your mouth instead of in your abdomen where it belongs.  Yes, this is that part -- including all of the screaming, the tears, and the desperate prayers that go along with it!  I literally begged the manager of the Hampton Inn to let me bring a sleeping bag and camp out in their lobby at their regular room rate, but he turned me down.  Someone must have warned him about my singing...

Not Me, But This Is What I FELT LIKE When I Started Calling Hotels in Paducah!

Those of you who have attended any of the major national and international quilt shows probably already knew where this story was headed, but I was completely blindsided to find that every decent hotel in Paducah, Kentucky was already booked solid AND had a WAITING LIST for Quilt Week, even before registration opened up for the event.  Show attendees book their hotel rooms a full year in advance.  I talked with a very kind and helpful woman named Lindsay at AQS who suggested that Airbnb website where you can book your stay in the guest room of someone's private home, kind of like the lodgings version of Uber or Lyft.  I looked into that, but the listings that still had availability were either too far away from the event venue and outside of where the shuttles were running (across the Ohio River in Metropolis!), or they were entire houses suitable for groups to stay in together, or the landlord/host of the property was advertising a "private entrance" and "having the whole place to yourself."  And I was really nervous about returning to a strange house in a strange neighborhood late at night, all by myself, especially having never been to this town before and having no idea where the safe neighborhoods and where the sketchy ones might be, whether the properties were well-lit at night, etc.  I had to face the reality that the stars were just not aligned for me to attend the show this year.  My roller coaster was in flames.

So I called Lindsay back and told her to go ahead and cancel all of my class registrations.  As sad as it is to miss out on riding the roller coaster, it is better to see the flames from a distance, before you're strapped into the ride!

I Don't Know This Girl, But I'm Pretty Sure She's Crying About Quilt Week

So...  Who wants to go to Quilt Week with me in 2020?

Friday, January 11th UPDATE:  OH MY GOSH, y'all -- my husband helped me find a hotel room, my flight was still available, and a computer glitch delayed my registration cancellation so I still have all of my classes!  I'M GOING TO QUILT WEEK IN PADUCAH IN APRIL AFTER ALL!!!  

Yeah, Baby!!!  This Is What JOY Feels Like!  (Photo Credit: Yuliya Evstratenko/Shutterstock)

I'm DEFINITELY whooping with Joy, so I'm linking up with: 

·       Whoop Whoop Fridays at www.confessionsofafabricaddict.blogspot.com