Sully Quilt Show and Sale

Another Fall ritual is the Sully Quilt Show and Sale, which always falls on a Saturday in early September. Unlike most quilt shows that i go to where almost all of the quilts are new, the quilts at Sully for the most part are antiques, and they're there to be sold. Some vendors have piles of quilts at their booths. Others have quilts draped over quilt racks or hanging on a clothesline...the show is outside, on the grounds of historic Sully plantation, and the weather can range from beastly to chilly and damp. This year we lucked out--it rained enough on Friday to slake the dust, while on Saturday it was lovely warm, dry, and breezy. Interesting mushrooms on a tree stump on the Plantation grounds.

You can take a tour of the plantation house, and there are usually people in Colonial-era garb doing some needlearts...here a group of women are carding, spinning, and weaving wool.


I'm always interested in the old quilts from an academic point of view, but i've never seen one that i liked well enough to buy...well, the couple that i have liked that well have been outside my price range! I've learned that i'm much more of a quilt maker (and fabric collector) than a quilt collector. So i'm always somewhat disappointed in the antique quilts on display...they earn my respect or i pity the ones that are faded and worn but they don't trigger my creative juices and most of them don't have any history with them as far as where they were made or when nor certainly who made them. I just ran across a blog with very nice pictures of some of the quilts that were at this year's show...
Marlene's.

What i end up spending most of my time doing is wandering from booth to booth, looking at all the new fabric, tools, patterns, notions, and books. For some reason this year i wasn't in a very acquisitive mood, maybe because my sewing room is already bursting at the seams and i've been spending money on Stampin' Up! supplies that i might previously have spent on my quilting hobby.

One of my favorite booth's was this one...she had lovely necklaces and earrings that she had made from antique buttons. She did a very nice job of displaying her jewelry, using antique or antiqued picture frames, mirrors, and windows as frames to highlight individual pieces. I spent a long time in there, just admiring and enjoying everything.