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Block Party Quilt Show in Yankton South Dakota

The Yankton Dakota Prairie Quilt Guild’s Block Party Quilt Show is probably the smallest show that we have participated in, but it’s also one that deserves to be a lot bigger. For us to attend a show requires quite a bit of planning, packing, work, and money. Especially if the event happens to be out of town. While we are a business and making more than we spend to attend a show is always high priority, it’s not the only factor that can make or break a show. Walking in to find friendly helpful people and a great venue can do a lot to make the show feel like more fun than work, and that’s what we found here. It was much appreciated and goes a long way to making us excited to see you all again in a couple of years when the next show happens.

Quilts

I did my best to capture all of the beauty and techniques stitched into these quilts. I’m going to let the pictures do the talking from there, and if you don’t see your quilt pictured, that was not intentional!

Our Booth

The red backdrops at this event center complimented our booth contents so well that you would have thought we planned it that way! It’s just a shame this event didn’t happen mid February we might have had a visit from cupid himself with this much red and white!

How we filled our booth:

Janome:

We brought out our Janome QM15 to show that you don’t have to spend a fortune to do your own longarm work. This machine was also our go to for shows because it doesn’t take up a ton of space or need an army to move it and sent it up!

Quilt EZ:

Of course a longarm doesn’t do you much good unless you have the talent to do free motion stitching or happen to have a friendly butler to just make it look like you know what you are doing. Since none of us happen to be blessed with that talent, we packed our Ruby Butler!

Elna:

Up front and center in our booth was the Elna eXcellence 792. This machine has a ton of features to offer any quilter. It’s large size is perfect to pass even the largest projects through. Combine that with an included stitch regulator for free motion or or ruler work, and it’s multiple stitch modes including Sashiko and other hand look stitch patterns and it’s enough to keep any quilter happy for a lifetime.

Our Elna table wasn’t nearly large enough to bring all of our favorites, but we narrowed it down to a few that we thought the quilters here might enjoy taking for a test drive.

The Elna eXcellence 710 is great combination of size and stitch options. It has a 9mm stitch with giving you 91 needle positions to really dial your seam allowance in. It also features Elna’s Dual Feed System that will make easy work of any difficult fabrics that might follow you home.



We had the eXcellence 680+ set up for ruler work. With a Sew Steady Wish Table and ruler foot on it. We find that this combination works really well and this is just an all around impressive and favorite machine of our staff.



Last but certainly not least was the eXpressive 850. This combination sewing and embroidery machine offers a good number of features of all of the above machine with the added bonus of being able to do embroidery! You really can not go wrong with this machine.

Necchi:

Our second table was all about Necchi and held a trio of their Creator Series Sewing Machines.

The Necchi Creator Series C2000 is their flagship sewing and embroidery machine. It offers over 700 stitches, 1200 embroidery designs and dual feed. This machine is the perfect choice for any quilting project!



If you want the machine that gets the top vote for most features for the money than you just found it. The Necchi Creator 360 is the perfect combination of quality cost and features for so many people.


Our most budget friendly machine to make the trip was the C35. It was also our only choice to represent the all mechanical sewing machine cagegory. A great basic machine capable of making most anything the average sewist could want.

Aurifil:

A large selection of Aurifil 50wt is usually a regular in our booth and our stop in Yankton was no exception. We love it, you love it, and we love providing it for you.

Fabric:

I still don’t think we stock enough fabric in store to claim to be a fabric store, but our offerings are growing each week which means we do have enough to play favorites.

For this event we brought our Tilda pre-cuts along with a our French Fat Quarters and some fun options from Fabric Editions.

Quilt Patterns:

You don’t always have to follow a pattern to make a quilt, but with patterns this cute, you will want to follow one.

Locking Rulers:

The locking rulers are one of our favorite cheats when working on a quilt. Being able to lock the built in guide to the correct size is the perfect way to make sure all of your pieces are the exact same size for every cut. We don’t leave home without or demo pieces or a few to share with our customers.

Ruler Work:

As great as it is to put a quilt on a longarm it isn’t the only option to get a quilt done. Ruler work can be done on pretty much any household machine and put the control literally back in your hands. For me it feels more like sitting down to draw and doodle letting you easily be more creative on the fly versus the planning that usually goes in to a quilt on the longarm with pantographs or robots. Best of all the rulers make the design creation a breeze compared to free motion.

Bucklebee

Bucklebee provides some of our favorite notions. From the cleaning brushes to the skinny pins, you will find a lot of their products within arms reach while we are working on any of our own projects, so of course we are going to offer some to you as well!

Italian Quilt

What good is going to a quilt show if you don’t do a little quilting? If you read our blog introducing our new Necchi Sewing Machines then you might already be aware of our “Old Italian Block” project. If not shame on you! In the days leading up to the show we assembled the top half of the quilt utilizing a combination of custom embroidery blocks designed by us to represent some of our favorite aspects of Necchi’s home country of Italy. These are framed by the “Old Italian Quilt Blocks” which used this way make a nice lattice effect. At the show we got a chance to use the Necchi Creator Series C2000 to stitch out some new rough drafts of the next embroidery patterns that we have developed. While that was busy working on the embroidery, the C360 was used to piece some of the green blocks that will make up the lower part of the quilt.

Other Booths

Obviously we weren’t the only ones sponsoring the show, so here’s a few photos of some of the other booths around the venue.

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