–=May 3 Week: pt. 1=–

Monday.

I got up—way early for me—packed up and drove to the city with a carful of lights and technology. This is the only professional gig I ever do, the SLC Home Machine Quilting show.  I spend weeks fretting about this thing, trying to figure out how to streamline the work, worrying about putting the lights together (WILL I do it right?).

It’s taken me three years to figure out how to do it right, but yesterday we were a magnificently well-oiled machine.  The first year it took two days to work through all the quilts.  At the end of that first day, my back was killing me and I had double vision—ask M.  He knows.  He went with me to set up that year.  The second year, the job only took one day, but I still ended up cross-eyed.

How safe is it really to drive forty miles home in rush hour traffic when you’re seeing two of everything?

But last Monday?  We were so hot.  I had my laptop set up with a special image library.  Cam rented me two sets of lights and included a dolly and a thousand extension cords, and two full sets of bulbs – half daylight, half tungsten.  With a card reader and two huge cards, two batteries and one body (I’m referring to the camera’s body, but I could be saying that about myself)—and a new set up with several teams and two sets, we got the whole show recorded in under seven hours.  WOO-HOO!!  All I had to do was leap from set to set, keep everybody laughing, remember to alternate eyes at the view finder, and thank the quilt chasers for their back-breaking service.  And I packed a lunch.  Too much work to do for socializing over scones.

Usually, when I come to the glorious end of  the job, I just quietly pack up the lights and go home.  But that day before I left, somebody stopped me to say how much she’d loved my images of last year’s show.  It was the first actual feedback I’d ever had for this job.  I was elated.

And I wasn’t even cross-eyed.

It’s amazing to be in on the ground floor of a thing like this.  Like meeting the stars back stage.  We get to go all up-front and personal with some pretty breathtaking quilts.

Last year, I almost got thrown out of the show because when they unveiled one of the quilts, the words, “OH, MY GOSH” just came erupting from my mouth—and not just once, but three times as the thing unrolled, passion increasing with each roll.

ROLL ONE

The huge room full of staff and judges went utterly silent and as everybody turned and stared.

Yes, I can work a room.  But the judges had this thing about other people influencing their perceptions . . .

Let me explain what you’re seeing here.  This is one whole piece of black cloth.  The design is expressed entirely by means of a long arm home quilting machine, free hand.  The quilter, Sue Mccarty of Roy and one of the nicest people ever, had entered the show the year before as a ROOKIE.  She’d been quilting for maybe four years before this.

And let me tell you:  ANYBODY who chooses to quilt with contrasting thread is taking a horrible chance.  The mistakes just show up like fireworks against a night sky.  But to execute the entire design in thread (there’s a tiny bit of paint, I’m told) is cheeky beyond belief.  Here, my dears, is natural genius.  True Gift.  And True Grit.  If you want to see ALL the quilting, because there’s plenty done in black, click over to Flickr and take a look.  She won Best at Paducah, KY this year, which is one of the hugest shows there is, and they bought the quilt from her.  If somebody offered me the price of a good hunk of a kid’s college education for a quilt, I think I’d take it.

So here are some highlights of this year’s show—from the photographer’s POV: