International Quilt Festival Chicago -Day 3

This morning came bright and early and I was off to the show before you know it. Traffic to the show was much lighter, though it has not stopped raining. I get there and parkin a good spot in the garage. It's 8:20 am.

I head to the Education Office because I am the "Teacher's Pet" for this morning's class on foiling on fabric. Tricia, our instructor, doesn't like the term "teacher's pet" so I was the classrom "cat". Despite the upsetting events at the end of the class (see previous post for the long winded story), I did enjoy the class very much, and Tricia was wonderful and I enjoyed her presence very much. She is a reverend and a spiritual healer, and I think her energy in this area helped me get over what happened and be able to get on with my day. I helped clean up and returned my materials to the education office and recieved my pin for a job well done.

As I walked to the show, I was in shock over how many people seemed to be pouring in. It was amazing. But, there is also a fashion accessory show going on int he same hall as the quilt show, so many of these folks were there for that. I can only imagine what parking was like after 10 am when both shows opened...
Anyway, once I was in, it was not as bad as I had thought. The quilt area was populated about like so:

So, I was able to the entire quilt area in about 2 hours, except for the small journal quilts, which I am saving for tomorrow. I read a lot of the current 2007 journal quilt artist's statements, so that took the longest. While there are amazing works in the show, it seemed like there are fewer than before, and I mean about the larger works, the bed sized quilts, as it were. Could be my perception though.
I ran into a fellow guild member in the bathroom, of all places.

I ate some lunch and walked to floor a bit more too. The floor was not as jam packed as I expected, so either a lot of people were eating lunch, or the busses of tour groups had left. It mainly looked like this:

I ran into Bonnie McCaffery again. I met Beryl Taylor at the Quilting Arts booth. At this point, I resume my aisle walking and complete the circuit. I shop again at a few booths that I wanted to go back to, but for the most part, my shopping excusion is done. In a separate post, I will do Show and Tell of my shopping treasures. The floor was still frustratingly slow paced, especially when the folks in front of you stop abruptly because something caught their eye. I found a seat and people watched for quite a while, but in the end decided to cut out before the floor closed in order to do some errands at home. While I sat there, I came up with new show floor rules:

1. Like driving, walk on the right side of the aisle, and let the people on the left flow in the other direction. You slow everyone down by "swimming upstream".

2. If you see something in a booth that catches your eye, be courteous to the people behind you and step into that booth and out of the flow of traffic.

3. This should be a given, but do not take pictures of the quilts at the booths. Ugh.

4. While some bumping is inevitable, there's no reson to be intentional.

5. Say "excuse me" if you want to get past someone, and acknowlege someone else's plea to be excused in some way that lets them know you heard them.

So those are my rules. There could be so many others, but this would help immensely.