Houston International Quilt Festival 2014-Teaching

I will have several posts about the 2014 Houston International Quilt Festival. I am starting with my experiences at a teacher since my view of the festival was through the eyes of a teacher.

Just to give a little perspective, a few facts: The George R. Brown Convention Center is 1.8 MILLION square feet! The Quilt Festival is the largest event in Houston, the largest quilt show in the world and the only event that takes over the whole center. There were 130 plus teachers and I was one of them. Over 65,000 people were expected to attend and this year marked the Ruby Anniversary (40 years).

I arrived at Festival Tues afternoon-in plenty of time for the evening awards ceremony. I opted instead to head directly to the Phoenecia International deli. Teaching at Festival is intense and sometimes stressful-I needed quality food to fuel my body. I ran into my friend Diane Loomis dining with her Mom at the Phoenecia-what a treat!

Diane and I met in 2009 at Empty Spools in a Diane Gaudynski class and have been friends ever since. Diane and I can geek out together (and did!) over free motion quilting, thread, machines, tech-what fun! Yes, terrible photo, I know.

Wed night was Preview Night. My strategy was to hit the vendor floor since it is always much more crowded than the quilt floor. I thought I would have time later to do the quilts. I don’t really need or want much from the vendors, just really exotic or unusual stuff, like….

Oooo-hand crafted unique batiks from Malaysia at the Turtle Hand booth! Once word got out among the SAQA attendees we all kind of flocked there. I got this cool panel that I can’t wait to quilt!

Of course you run into all kinds of people you know. This chance meeting of SAQA Royalty was a noisy one!

I did not have time to take a class but if I did, Gilbert Muniz‘s Fascinator class would have been on the top of my list. This lucky student obviously had fun in class! I am a FB friend of Gilbert and had about 2 seconds to meet him in person. I love his garments! I lurked outside of his classroom door, jealous of the students inside.

One of the perks of being a teacher is the freebies that come in a loaded goodie bag. And it’s good stuff! I had fun looking at new products and fondling some of the treasures in our goodie bag.

There was a brief lull right before my first event, Machine Quilter’s Forum. We all got set up and had this moment to say hi and cruise each other’s table. I learned a lot from my fellow teachers about marketing and display. Sarah Ann Smith has been a sweet mentor to me with tips from what to wear to how to display my quilts.

I shared the Machine Quilters Forum with co-presenters Sarah Ann Smith, Wendy Butler Burns, Pat Blair and Charlotte War Anderson. It was sold out and what an enthusiastic group it was! I presented on “Basting and Blocking”. So that means you say the same thing 5 times straight without a break, then head to your next class!

Once classes started I was hyper focused on teaching. All my classes were full and that was a great feeling! There were students from all over the globe in my classes: Japan, New Zealand, Australia, Ireland, Dubai. The energy in class was fabulous.

And this is an auditory experience, but I LOVE the sound of a class full of sewing machines a hummin’!There were so many highlights of my teaching experience yet these are all the photos I have of this part of Festival. I’ve been invited back next year so maybe then I will have more and better photos.

It’s hard to describe what it’s like to teach at Houston. I was scheduled for 4 3-hour classes back-to-back on Thursday and Friday, and a 30 minute lecture during Meet the Teacher on Thursday night. I followed that with a full-day class on Saturday. It was intense.

It’s an exhilirating/exhausting/challenging/fulfilling experience to teach at Houston. I met the best of teachers from across the globe, made new friends, visited with “old” friends and learned to be even MORE flexible. I had extra students, not enough machines, various unexpected events that robbed precious time from my class, classes that unexpectedly had to shut down early, an unhappy student or two and an absolutely freezing cold room. And I also had the blessing of excellent machine reps in each class and the unflagging support of the Education Team who always had my back.

I was thankful that my energy did not flag and I arrived home healthy and not too tired. What an experience! I’ll follow with a few posts on the few quilts that I got to see so stay tuned! I’m posting to Off-the-Wall Friday too.