Rhonda Bracey: At Random

The George R Brown Convention  Center is enormous. The views from the circle windows upstairs show just a tiny section of the wholesale market stalls. When the exhibition opens to the public tomorrow (class attendees get a preview tonight) it takes up half the ground floor of the convention centre with the vendor mall taking the other half. The wholesale vendors loaded out after 3 days yesterday and the retail vendors load in today.

Just to give you some idea of the size:
* 65,000 attendees
* 5,000 class attendees
* 415 classes
* approx. 50 quilt exhibitions in the exhibition hall with I don’t know how many quilts on display
* more than 550 vendor booths
* this is the only event that takes up the three full floors of the massive convention centre – ground floor is the quilt exhibitions and vendor mall (retailers selling fabrics,  notions,  machines etc); second floor is admin (registration,  enrolment,  class info,  Starbucks,  FedEx office etc),  and third floor is classes (seems to be hundreds of rooms!)
* one person I know who attended last year walked 32,000 steps at Festival in one day alone!

This is why it’s the ‘holy grail’ for quilters.