Wow that sounds amazing! I love red and white quilts. 650 is quite a collection. Here is a link that might be useful: FolkArtMuseum

Easy Stitches said: =================== Here's something weird to add to the mix. Our guild judged 4 ribbons for our county fair, pieced, applique, hand quilting, machine quilting. The machine quilting award was given to the person that made the top & entered the quilt, not the person that did the machine quilting???? I thought that was so odd. ================== That's the part about this that perplexes me. I'm guessing people entered their quilts, judges had categories they considered ALL quilts for, and any prizes went to the person who ENTERED the quilt. (Who knows, maybe the winner did send the ribbon to the actual quilter.) I have not been to many quilt shows but I'm guessing that in this day and age of long arm quilting unless they are specifically judging "hand quilting" that the quilting for something done on a little home machine could never compete with that done on a long arm/frame. (Heaven knows MY machine quilting never could!!!! LOL.) So if your goal is to win a ribbon and the "quilting" comes into the judging -- you'd almost have to send it out if you don't have the set up. But then if my quilt won on QUILTING I wouldn't feel that I personally had won anything... As for my own quilts -- I do like to do the piecing most but also like to feel I did "it all." Still I understand the quilting would look much better done on a long arm. But that pretty much doubles the cost of making the quilt too. Now, I plan to make a QOV top and I have no problems with the idea of letting someone else quilt the top. I want the service member to get something nice, and in a timely fashion!

Kate, I'm at the door prize table both mornings and planning to spend my afternoons enjoying the show and shopping! :) I'm taking the whole week off. I can't wait! Donna

The Pacific International Quilt Festival in October is one of the best in our area. It's at the Santa Clara Convention Center. There are also a lot of regional ones by individual guilds, such as Diablo Valley, Livermore's, East Bay, Benicia and so forth. If you join a local guild, you usually get notices of all the local shows each month in your newsletter. If you want to go farther afield, the big show in Ontario is the Road to California which starts Jan 22nd. I go every so often and it's large and offers lots of classes, except it's too late now to get into most. We're lucky to live in the bay area because we have so many resources.