Taiwan Quilt Festival – Taipei – November 2025 – Intro

2025 was such an amazing year. I was so honored to be invited to show my work as a featured artist and speaker, at the Kyoto Quilt Festival in March 2025. This opened more doors and I was again honored to show my work in a gallery at the Taiwan Quilt Festival in November 2025. At both events I spent time with talented artists from Korea, Taiwan and Japan. After so many years attending the Tokyo Quilt Festival at the Tokyo Dome (since 2008, to the last event in Jan 2020), I missed seeing those beautiful Asian quilts, and I missed my beautiful Asian quiltmaker friends! So these 2 trips have been such a blessing in the last year.

Many thanks to Reiko Nakazawa and Chih Ting Kuo, who extended these gracious invitations.

Traveling abroad to share one’s quilts is always an adventure. With the world and the United States in such turmoil, it was especially worrisome. However because I make quilts with messages of inspiration and activism, I decided it was worth the risk. Thanks to Betty Busby for suggesting this Samsonite hard shell golf case, I was able to easily and safely transport my precious work to these shows. Because I have Gold or Platinum status on Star Alliance /United airlines, I was able to transport free of extra charge.

In my quest to find ways to pack and transport my rolled-up art quilts, I also purchased these soft cases to hold and cover the quilts inside the hard case. They are replacement bags for folding camp chairs. You know, like the ones you take to your kid’s soccer games. The pink one is 44″ long and the red one is 40″ long. I roll up the quilts, wrap them in a white cloth, then put them in a plastic bag, then put them inside these carrying bags which have a handle and an outer pocket. I put my contact info in the pocket. I also printed out a color copy of all the quilts and placed it in a clear plastic folder for customs in case they want to have a look at what is inside the case.

This is my international travel set-up that I came up with after several rounds of trial-and-error, so I hope this is helpful to any of you hoping to hand-carry quilts on an airplane in 2026.  If you are taking just one or two quilts, you can roll them up and just take one of these pink/red carrying bags, and they will fit in the overhead compartment on the plane. (unless it is a smaller regional plane) Of course there are other colors available – I chose bright pink and red so they are easy to spot.

Stay tuned for my next post about the Taiwan Quilt Festival!