Those of us that go to quilt shows know a little about crowding in to see a quilt. Shows usually go over Friday, Saturday and Sunday. However, there is a little known day called Preview Night, where you can go and avoid some of those crowds. You are limited to 4 hours, which, for me is plenty of time to spend at one time at a quilt show.
Our quilt group, Northeast Quilting Friends, started out going with 6 people and room for others. I guess I got a little nervous about all the people that were going to the Cincinnati show and decided our group needed to go to the show on Preview Night. The change caused a drop from 6 to 4 people. I've been to a few Preview Nights, and I'd say on the whole, there were a lot more people at this Preview Night than others I'd gone to. But, I have no doubt, the emptiness you see in my pictures will be completely filled with people on the regular advertised days of the show.
First we stopped off at Pompillios in Newport, Kentucky which is less than 10 minutes away from the Duke Convention center in downtown Cincinnati. The quilt show started at 5:00 so we got to the restaurant at 3:00 thinking it would take some time to be served, etc. We ordered and food came pretty quickly. It was very good, I highly recommend it. We got the sampler platter and 2 could split it. Then you want the tiramisu for dessert, some of the best I've ever tried.
Off to the Preview Night we went. We parked at the 5th street parking garage with a covered walk bridge from our parking garage. You want to park on the 3rd level (green) to be able to walk right on to the bridge.
The next bit of information for future reference, get the program and plan your day at the Preview Night. Since there is only 4 hours you might want to be able to plan to see certain quilts. The program is laid out very well and of course you have the list of all the vendors to see as well.
