QuiltCon 2019 (part one)
The Modern Quilt Guild holds a quilt show each year – one year on the West Coast, the other on/or near the East Coast. This year it was held February 21 – 23 in Nashville TN and I joined my friends from NH for five days and four nights of quilt related FUN! Here is my review…
First off, I would like to publicly ask the Modern Quilt Guild to please change the time of year the show is held! Traveling from the North East in February can be a nightmare! My first flight out of Newark was cancelled but luckily I was able to grab another flight to make it there but it did make for a challenging trip!
The beauty of having the show in Nashville is that Nashville is a VERY walk-able city. There’s was a lot to see and do outside of the show venue. I was lucky enough to vacation in Nashville a year ago so I was familiar with the city. My friends and I stayed at the Nashville Renaissance hotel which was a fairly short walk to the Music City Center where the show was held. Except for those days when we had rain…which was EVERY day! Yeah, the show can’t control the weather but rain + that much walking makes for some soggy shoes! The worst night was the last night after the show closed, there were torrential rains and thunder and lightening. Walking through downtown there was a lot of water on the streets and we got seriously soaked!
Due to my changed flight, I arrived 4 hours earlier than my friends so I took an Uber to the hotel to freshen up a bit. I saw on the schedule, that I could go to the venue and pick up my name badge so I decided to walk on over and see what was happening.
This is one of the places I think the MQG can make some improvements… first of all, signage. When I walked into the venue I could hear lots of voices, but there really wasn’t any signs telling us where to go to pick up our badges. The spot was on the 3rd floor and when I finally found it, there was the LINE! I waited on line for about 45 minutes. When you got to the end, there were about six tablets where you typed in your email address and it then printed out your name badge. Why don’t they give us the option to print our name badge out at home and just pick up the holder when we get there? That was a long time to wait on a line after a long day of traveling, yeah I could have gotten it the next morning but the line wasn’t really any shorter then.
When I picked up my badge, I was told if it had a “star” printed on it, I would receive a goody bag. The goody bag was given to the first 1000 people who registered online. Funny thing is, my friend registered herself and me at the same time and she got a bag but I did not. I’m not upset that I didn’t get a bag, but I think if they’re going to give out stuff like that, then everyone who registers should get it. Especially when there always seem to be website problems when you try to register so getting to be one of the 1000 when the website keeps crashing makes it that much more difficult.
That night I went back to the hotel and had my favorite Nashville beer (Tailgate Brewery’s Peanut Butter Milk Stout) while I waited for my friends to arrive. After they arrived we headed over for some barbecue from Jack’s (try the brisket!). I was excited to be back on Broadway and wanted to hit some of my favorite bars but my friends were tired from their travels so we headed back to our rooms.
Thanks for reading, please leave a comment to let me know what you think. Next installment…
The QUILTS!
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