I'm almost to the halfway point quilting on the SBS. I'm using a thread I've never used before, and for the first time experienced backlashing. I had a little bit, so I messed with the spring in the bobbin case and pulled a rather large mass of lint out from behind it. That made things much worse as it loosened the pressure it was putting on the bobbin. So I had to lift it and give it a bit more bend (it's spring steel) and then I had to readjust the tension . . . I think I have it worked out now, but I've also gotten to the part I'm FMQ and I was having the problems more with the robotics.
The trip to the quilt show was fun. DH and I stopped at the "mother store" to our local one that is going out of business. That one was twice as big and I found a lot of fabric that our store had already sold out of. And at half price, I walked out with a couple of large bags of fabric. The bad part, after getting fabric for under $5 a yard, it was very hard to feel like paying the quilt show sale prices of $10 a yard!
I only bought a few yards at the show, but there was almost no specialty fabric sellers. It was mostly the LQS stores so mostly what I see routinely. I did get a couple of Creative Grids rulers at 20% off, that is my favorite brand.
DH tried a few of the other LA's. He was not impressed with any of them, but he was super impressed with the industrial straight stitch Juki. I've not sewn on one with a servo motor (use to the older style) and was impressed with how well it did at very slow speed.
I also got rather depressed looking at the quilts. Made me feel like I should go home and toss mine into the burning barrel lol!! Didn't help that I ended up looking at the "best of show" quilts first without realizing that was were I was. After I got around to the unjudged section, then I felt better about my own ability. I think I'm not too bad with peicing, but my quilting is very much in the amature arena. And to be truthful, I'm not sure I want to slow down and take the time to do better. The quilts that won best of show were all very intensly quilted and I don't like doing that on quilts meant to be used. Maybe I'll do one quilt a year to try for show quality, and just enjoy making the rest.
I didn't take pictures of the quilts. I saw many wonderful quilts, but very few that were something that I felt I'd want to replicate and figured I'd only take pictures if I wanted it for inspireation. I really don't need to collect more ideas! And right now I"m attracted to sampler style quilts anyway. Don't recall seeing any SBS quilts.