Quilt Market - The White Album

On the last day of Quilt Market, I was sleepy and not a little overwhelmed. After Melissa's last booksigning, on Sunday, we had nothing but time to kill until Quilt Market was over and it was time to catch our flight back home to Cape Cod.

I started feeling a sore throat coming on right after lunch. Melissa had a meeting with her peeps at Andover Fabric, so I wandered the floor for the first time all week, really, just gazing at all the bewildering mixtures of colors and patterns. I see now that I was getting increasingly sick over the course of the afternoon, but at the time, it only felt like a pleasant daze, punctuated by the repeated, startling colors and shapes of hundreds upon hundreds of quilts.

You have to understand, I am a very monochromatic person at heart. Even in my knitting, I tend not to stray too far into colorwork, preferring instead to work complex lace, cables, and other interesting stitchery into yarn of -- generally -- just one simple hue.

So quilt market was overstimulating, at times overwhelming.

As I wandered, moving slowly but steadily up and down each aisle, I found myself increasingly drawn toward the very occasional patches of simple white-on-white needlework. Oases of simplicity and understatement in the unending kaleidoscope of Quilt Market.

It was indescribably soothing to me:

Eventually, even the massive white dome overhead took on the appearance of a great, stitched block of fabric:

I was entranced by these blue-and-white antique quilts:

...and took several deep, intoxicating breaths of their delicious, aged perfume. Like heaven. Like bread rising. Like a well-kept cedar chest. Like pure, clean cotton that has been waiting, in patience and in silence for over a hundred years, simply so that it might one day have the opportunity to be of some comfort to you.

Finally, it was time to get back on the plane and turn our weary heads back east.

I loved Quilt Market.