Paducah 1 of 2

 It's Friday and I feel largely back to normal now.  I think I will do a second post with more quilt photos, rather than make this post ridiculously lengthy.  Then the people who don't care about the quilts can just skip the next post.

I was in Paducah for a full week, Saturday  through until the following Sunday, flying in to the tiny airport via Chicago.  Despite my foreboding, the flights were fine both ways although United definitely seems more at the economy end of the airline scale.  I had booked the full week thinking of my prior three trips (the last one 17 years ago) when Paducah was a huge quilt show with many ancillary events and a lot of community participation.  The town used to be full of shop window quilt displays, pop up fabric shops, markets, girl scout or church groups offering crafts or homemade lunches, artists' studios etc.  The free shuttles ran frequently and took you out to other small shows and events like the Eleanor Burns roadshow and the Rotary show.

Well it was pretty different this time.  It was a much smaller show altogether.  The vendors were easily done in a day, with many people expressing disappointment that there were only half the number that used to come to recent shows.  A few people had heard that some vendors didn't think the crowds would turn up so they didn't bother booking, but in fact I heard 35,000-50,000 people had registered for the various days. . Since the old days when there was only Paducah, the American Quilter's Society now runs other regional shows which may contribute to downsizing Paducah.  The Rotary quilt show normally held at the Civic Centre was cancelled due to renovations at the Centre, the Eleanor Burns shop and most other downtown quilt shops have closed down, there seemed fairly minimal participation from local shopfronts and the small town has pretty much reverted to being a sleepy residential town.  The free shuttles were sparsely scheduled and only available during show hours which made it difficult to get around. I have an American friend who used to be a vendor, and she said that because the Paducah show was cancelled two years in a row due to COVID, and the general move to online shopping, this had led to the closure of many of the former studios and fabric places.

Nevertheless, I still had quite a good time.  I got quite  a lot out of the 'American experience' and was happy to go spend quite a while going up and down the aisles at Walmart for example, and made pilgrimages to both Michael's and HobbyLobby to marvel at the cornucopia of craft products and buy things on my wishlist.  I made the mandatory visit to the famous Hancock's of Paducah, where I managed to stop my head from exploding by shopping from a small list of things I needed for future quilts.  I spent an afternoon at the Kentucky Oaks mall shopping American clothing and homewares (and surprisingly three stores selling Japanese food, tshirts, figures and other cultural exports).  I visited Dollar Tree and hung out at Books-A-Million perusing the craft books.  I ate at Cracker Barrel and Red Lobster and various other fine dining establishments near my hotel.  I spent a day walking around the historic downtown area following the online tour and shopping and sitting in cafes.  I went to the Quilt Museum twice, and to the Civil War Museum, and walked along the murals painted on the floodwall.

This is half only of Hancocks', there is a whole nother half.

unpacking piles of loot and a few gifts

The dogwoods were flowering all around town

A typical Lower Town wooden house, with the usual big porch

I saw the quilts during the Tuesday night Sneak Preview, when it wasn't too crowded and you could get better photos without people in the way.  It was pretty packed on Wednesday, the first main day of the show, but the crowds got lighter as the week went on.  I had booked a 9am lecture most mornings (which required getting the 7:30am shuttle because it was the only reliable arrival, I tried getting the 'next one' and waited 45 minutes and was almost late) and saw talks on Red and Green antique quilts, Gerald Roy's antique collection, and the history of feedsacks.  

Feedsack quilt in the cramped lecture room

Red and green quilts (I think, or it might have been Gerald Roy's talk)

In the main show hall

Gerald Roy

The 'dome': a giant inflatable tent with more vendors and quilts, 

set up about a block away from the main hall.

Wednesday I had a lecture/demo on one artist's method of appliqueing Dresden Plate blocks onto pieced backgrounds which was interesting.  Thursday afternoon I was supposed to have a class on Machine Sewn Bindings which I have never been able to achieve a good result with.  Sadly the teacher had suffered a bereavement while at the show, and although bravely showing up so as not to let us down, was unable to teach effectively and was obviously very distraught and tearful. So we didn't learn very much and didn't get time to make the sample project we had all brought.  I made mine up this week (a book cover with a bound edge) and made the usual mess of the binding when I tried to do it by machine. I even tried sticking the binding down with doublesided tape and still didn't catch it properly in several places when I stitched in the ditch.

Friday I had an all day class to make a ByAnnie project pouch called the 'Zip it up!' which was excellent although very cramped.  I was quite unimpressed with the classroom facilities they use in the convention centre.  In the old days when the Executive Inn was still present, lectures used to be in the theatre or in the auditorium, this time they were crammed into a long thin conference room with poor-quality audio visual supplements to help people see what the speaker was holding up.  And in the machine classes we were crammed in cheek-by-jowl with only about 20 inches of working room which made it very awkward. We also had been generously provided with state-of-the-art machines which we pretty much all hated, they had no presser foot lever so you had to press a button to get the presser foot up or down so much less control and visibility, and they had strange 1/4" feet which made accuracy difficult.

The green cutting board is also your only working space

On Saturday I went to the All-Star Review, which was back in the cramped lecture room.  This was a revolving platform of  nine speakers who all got 10 minutes to briefly show you a technique (usually to sell you something), some of  whom were interesting.  I got quite a shock after one speaker finished when my grey-haired neighbour leaned over to inclusively say to me "These young people have so much energy!".  Now I would have pegged the speaker to be in her 40s and my neighbour to be in her 70s.  For many years I have been used to being 'the young-looking one' in a craft crowd, because I have a baby face and because I often am one of the younger ones in the quilting and lace worlds in the UK.  I have obviously crossed the grey divide and can no longer fool myself.

One thing that hasn't changed about Paducah is the southern hospitality.  The default behaviour seems to be kindness and strong hospitality, everyone was so friendly and helpful.  And I mean really helpful, such as the hotel clerk offering to drive me over to the airport herself if the taxi didn't show up, and one of the Welcome ambassadors literally driving me back to my hotel when I asked for help in ringing a taxi (my phone was misbehaving and didn't like connecting to the foreign network).  I must make special mention here of my blog friend Suzette and her partner Ray, who generously chauffeured me around for most of Monday from Hancocks to Hobby Lobby to my hotel then to lunch and then down to the Quilt Museum then back to Hobby Lobby. Swooze and I have been blog friends since 2007 and we have skyped and zoom'd in the past, but this was the first time we have met in person.  She was just as kind in real life and we had a really nice day together even though she had unfortunately injured her ankle just before travelling from Texas so was wearing a foot boot.  Quite by accident, I also ran into her at the show the next morning so we were able to have lunch together again. It was so nice to finally meet her.

Food was a bit of a challenge.  Unlike Britain, virtually none of the menus displayed allergy information so it was buyer beware.  I ate a lot of salads and grilled chicken, and spent one meal scraping batter off the battered chicken ordered by accident. I still got to enjoy some Southern delicacies such as catfish, American-style coleslaw and potato salad, ribs, frozen cheesecake on a stick (yes that is a thing and it was very hard to eat), normal cheesecake (leaving the crust), red liquorice, etc.  It was a very calorie-filled week.

I met lots of nice people on the trollies and in queues and in classrooms.  There was a big map up where you could apply a sticker to show where you're from: these pictures were from mid-week and there were a lot more dots by Saturday but still not too many from Europe.

By now I have put away most of my purchases and updated my projects-in-waiting lists, done my washing, completed a negative COVID test, caught up on my paperwork, and am getting back to the normal routine.  I must spend more time sewing, I have so much I want to do and currently my acquisition rate is far outstripping my production time.  My sewing room is so crowded and full of things that I would like to get to.  It was a wonderfully nostalgic trip and I'm glad I went, a return to Paducah had been on my retirement bucket list for a long time.

I'll make another post with pics of some of the quilts I saw.