Pennsylvania National Quilt Extravaganza

The Mancuso brothers have brought the PNQE back to the Philadelphia area. We were all excited. It had moved to Harrisburg for 3 years and that was about a 1 1/2 hour drive for me. The show seemed to get thinner and thinner both in terms of quilts and vendors. So I was ready for a great show.

I volunteered to white glove. In return for this, our quilt guild, Calico Cutters, was allowed to sell tickets for our raffle quilt. So I had a lot of time to peruse a lot of the entries and exhibitions.

I’m going to stick my neck out here a bit and give my opinion of the new venue and the new show. The venue was nice and bright and ccccccold! The aisles were very wide and there was plenty of room to get around. There were lots and lots of vendors with a huge assortment of merchandise. Liza Lucy with Glorious Color had a great booth with tons of Kaffe Fasset fabric and some great new appliques patterns.

My favorite quilt in the entire show was a quilt that won a first place ribbon in the innovative category in a travelling exhibit from the World Quilt Competition.. “Parrot’s Island” was made by Claudia Pfeil from Germany. Although I am not a big fan of bling and crystals, the applique and machine workmanship on this quilt was outstanding. And even more exciting was the back of the quilt. She used black fabric and for her quilting, she used the same color thread in the bobbin as in the top. The result was spectacular. Here are 2 pictures of the back.

Now as to the quilts. I found the quilts to be OK. I felt that some of the ribbons were well deserved and some – not so. The most glaring mistake was a completely machine created quilt – including both piecing and quilting. This quilt was awarded a blue ribbon for Best Hand Workmanship! What was that about? The woman white gloving that aisle even pointed this out to the management and they pretty much blew her off. It makes you wonder, doesn’t it?

The PA Mancuso show has historically had many exhibits. This was still true. Just as a pure guess, I would have to say that the quilts on display were 50/50 competition and exhibit quilts. I just feel like they use the exhibit quilts to fill in. Why aren’t more people entering this show?

So one of the exhibits featured the quilts of Rose Hughes. Rose is a prolific quilter and I really enjoy her use of silk, beads and hand embroidery.

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Our quilt guild, also had an exhibit of our 2009 guild challenge entitled “Share The Bounty – Help Fight Hunger”. (Maybe I shouldn’t complain about the number of special exhibits.) We had 34 quilts and after the show, we are going to sell them and donate the money to our local food bank. (Mine is the one all the way on the left – titled “Food For Thought”.) I included lots of hunger statistics printed on some of the blocks.

Overall, I see some room for improvement. More quilters should be encouraged to enter their quilts. I know there are a lot of talented quilters out there. I have seen some wonderful quilts at guilds’ Show & Tell. I would love to see these quilts in this show.