HOUSTON - the return

The Houston Quilt Festival was great fun -- I'm just now getting my energy back,, my house back in order,, and my credit card tallied (( EEEGADS!!! )). My friend tirane and I drove down ( Dallas to Houston, about 4 hours - depending on how fast you drive! ). We arrived Friday afternoon and after checking into the hotel ( we got lucky and stayed at the Hilton next to the convention center! ) we went right to the show.


These are shots from the second floor windows that overlook the vendor floor. If you have not been able to attend,, I'm so so sorry! You can't imagine how big this is... but OH the beautiful quilts!!! I will NEVER, EVER, Never be able to be as creative or as talented, or as precise as those quiltmakers who had quilts on display. EVER. NEVER...

This is the view from our room at night,, gee, the Houston lights are pretty!

I really did pretty well shopping. I'm still on my kick of not adding to my stash, and so far I have done really well! Fab Fanatics is a vendor from Dallas that is always at the Houston show with absolutely wonderful batiks at absolutely wonderful prices. I always save my pennies to show their booth -- see the gorgeous colors! I don't know what I'm going to do with them,, but I'm sure I can find something!! I also picked up some more of the rayon thread that I like to use for satin stitching machine applique... hhmmm,, haven't done a lot of that lately, but I have the thread!!!


I bought 3 books, too -- now that I'm a stay-at-home non-working woman for awhile, I think ( that's the secret word, "think" ) I have all this time to do stuff,, sure,,,

I didn't really take a lot of pictures of the quilts,, not sure why??!! But I have been browsing around the we, and lots of people have them... go surf - they were just beautiful!
This is one I really liked and I got lucky and was able to hear the artist talking about her quilt, Gail Thomas said she received a black and white picture from Alex Anderson and made this quilt from that picture -- the little blond girl in the corner is Alex Anderson, her sister, and Ms. Anderson's grandmother.
Ms. Thomas was telling us that Ms. Anderson said that from about the age of 3 she started sewing and new that this was what she wanted to do. Cool story, huh! I found this site describing it http://www.thequiltshow.com/os/blog.php/blog_id/1940. You might remember Ms. Thomas from the 2007 show, she had the quilt "Three Sisters" in that show,,, quite remarkable! You can see it here http://www.quiltinglife.com/ThreeSisters.html.

Since we drove, tirane had the idea to bring our machines and have something to do in the evening. Neither of us are big bar people and downtown Houston isn't really the place to hang out. So I took my Tar Baby - the Featherweight and she took hers and we put together a charity quilt. Between the two of us, ( she brought some fabric ) we decided on the pattern, got it cut, sewed, pressed ( thank goodness for the in-room iron and board! ) and VOILA!! This is our Houston charity quilt!



So we had a good time,, saw lots of awe inspiring 'objects d'art', spent some money and enjoyed ourselves.

aahhh,, back to reality!