AQS Show Syracuse NY

In my trip to NY for my nephew's wedding, I was fortunate to realize the AQS Show was going to be in Syracuse, only an hour from my brother's in Utica. I took my sister-in-law Sue and we had a wonderful time. The show was awesome! I could not believe the extreme quality of all the workmanship. The intensely dense machine quilting, the thread painting with colored thread on plain background areas. All the details added to each art work. Every quilt was worthy of a ribbon. Seeing quilting on a National level was quiet an eye opener. Others always tell me I should enter my quilts into big shows, and my response is that I am not a perfectionist. I can see that I really need to up my game to compete at this level. But I am too concerned with the "art" of quilting, color, pattern, texture, design, embellishments. I could care less if all my points match, if the edge is straight, I make them crooked on purpose half the time. I do care if the tension is correct on my machine, but if I change thread, it may change the tension, and I often forget to recheck. Blocking a quilt, I don't have floor room for that. So I don't think I'll be entering a National show anytime soon. Maybe "Visions" show is more my art quilting style. Anyway, I digress, I loved the show, I'm not going to post any photos due to copy right considerations. There was a beautiful whole cloth painted tiger, with intricate thread painting. A "Dear Jane" quilt to inspire me to finish mine. Several photos printed in a large format, and the thread painting brought them to life. The applique florals, Baltimore and pictorial quilts had great deal of intracacy and must have taken hours and hours to complete. They had the SAQA show "Wide Horizons" which was diverse but rather drab. Also the Cherrywood Fabrics challenge "Wicked" based on the Broadway show. It was hard to vote on a favorite, among the many lime green & black art pieces. All in all it was exceptional, and I'm so glad I was able to go.