Capital of Texas QuiltFest: one day left

If you have never spent a Saturday surrounded by hundreds of quilts, the Capital of Texas QuiltFest is a good place to start. The Austin Area Quilt Guild, a 501(c)3 non-profit, has taken over the Palmer Events Center for the weekend, and there is still one full day left to catch it. The show opened on Friday and runs through Sunday, August 23, so today is the middle day of the three.

The scale is what surprises people who have never been. The Palmer Events Center at 900 Barton Springs Road is a multi-purpose facility that opened in 2002, with more than 130,000 square feet of total space and 70,000 square feet dedicated to the exhibit floor. The guild fills that with somewhere between 300 and 400-plus member-made quilts, which is a lot of fabric to take in. Alongside the quilts, there are more than 30 vendors, a member-made raffle quilt, a special exhibit, demonstrations, a boutique, and a silent auction. The venue can hold around 4,000 people, so it is built for a crowd.

Getting in is straightforward. Admission is $15 at the door, and children under 12 get in free, with both cash and credit cards accepted. If you are driving, the Palmer Center Garage sits right next to the show entrance, a four-story structure with about 1,200 spaces, which makes the last mile of the trip the easiest part. The hours shift a bit as the weekend winds down: today, Saturday, the doors are open from 10:00 to 17:00, and tomorrow, Sunday, it is a shorter run from 11:00 to 15:00.

For anyone who actually sews, the vendor booths are worth a look. Northwest Sewing Center has a presence here, and they are running a few deals that are worth knowing if you have been eyeing a new machine. They price match any listed price on sewing cabinets and machines, and if you buy a machine from them, they throw in unlimited, free one-hour 'how to' classes, which is the kind of thing that actually helps a new machine not sit idle in the corner.

And if you leave the weekend wanting more, the guild keeps going. A Thread Painting Workshop is set for September 12 at 09:00 at Austin Sewing in Round Rock, followed by a Chop It Like It's Hot! workshop on September 13, also at 09:00. The guild's September meetings fall on the 14th, with a morning session at 09:00 and a hybrid evening session at 18:00, both at Westminster Presbyterian Church on Exposition Boulevard. There is also an Open Sew Day, South, on September 25 at the Travis County Oak Hill Community Center, so the sewing does not stop when the Palmer Events Center clears out. For now, though, the quilts are the main event, and they are only here through Sunday afternoon.