The Houston Int’ Quilt Festival – the experience

Oh I do love the whole experience of teaching at the Houston Int’l Quilt Festival! We used to fill the George R. Brown Convention Center, now it looked like Festival took up about half of the center. But now worries, it was still an amazing experience.

I enjoyed this view from my room each night:

There was a false fire alarm during Festival, but of course we didn’t know it at the time. A handsome group of buff firefighters arrived. Too bad I don’t have a better photo😊

Houston is so very greeeen! Views of Discovery Green across the street from the convention center:

This seems to happen on Saturdays, maybe a weekly thing? There is a large group of lighted bicycles cruising downtown. It’s quite colorful!

It was the 50th anniversary of Quilt Festival. One of the big moments of Festival was when Author Teresa Duryea Wong, Nancy O’Bryant, and Festival Founder Karey Bresenhan discussed the history of the show chronicled in their book “Magic and Memories.” This was a Moment:

Some of my favorite vendors:

These two gentlemen from Brazil (Afonso Franco Fabrics) were so friendly and fun. Their fabric stopped me in my tracks. So vibrant, so soft, beautiful sheen, lovely hand. Oh my! I reeeeeally do not need fabric but these came home with me. Yummmmm.

Jenny Roche, of Jenny Roche Vintage had an amazing booth. Her booth is small but packed to the brim with all manner of unique goodies. I go for the vintage hankies; she had hundreds of them, well organized and easy to view.

The Scanfil people reached out to the teachers before the show and offered a sample of their thread if we stopped by their booth. I took them up on it and in turn received a beautifully packaged gift of one spool each of their threads. This is a new-to-me line and their thread is divine – very smooth, so shiny that it almost rivals silk, just yummy.

This is a Swedish company and I’m hoping I’ll start seeing their thread in local quilt shops.

Oliso had a huge booth, complete with this blinged out iron on a mirrored, rotating platform. It was pretty cool!

I am sorry, I forgot the name of this booth’s vendor. But I can’t forget their um, fig leaf!

The Education people are crucial to the success of the classes and teachers. They work HARD to work through problems and glitches and to keep things running smoothly. I grabbed this photo from their Facebook page. I love these ladies!

They had a Jen Kingwell challenge and look at those gorgeous quilts that hung in the Education room!

I taught a total of 4 sold out classes and gave one lecture. I had students from the UK, France, and Canada, as well as who knows how many states; it truly is an international affair.

My teaching week started out with a bang with my Sheers class. Oh they had fun and I am so proud of their creations:

I barely remembered to take class photos for my other classes. My Straight Line Ruler Work class was a blast! Students realized all that they could do with one unique straight line ruler:

I provided pre-printed wash out panels for each student to work on. I love how it looked from the unmarked side:

I do stock this unique ruler on my site. I get rave reviews on how easy it makes straight line ruler work.

Next was an all day Feathers Four Ways class. Oh yes you CAN feather!

What beautiful work!

Sadly, I completely forgot to take one single photo of my Fills ‘n Frills class, but my students learned a variety of less-than-common fills to add beauty to their quilts.

I was thrilled with the turn out for my “My Tippy Top Tips For Successful and Joyful Free Motion Quilting”. It was very well received, with some vigorous note taking going on during the lecture.

And yes, I do love to share my quilts. So much of what they might think is difficult is actually very doable and I love to show that!

Oh there were lots of fabulous quilted garments. I only thought to take a few photos, but there were so many cool garments at the show:

There is an area called Open Studio where presenters have a 2 hour time slot and do a demo or talk on their subject, usually on repeat, in 15 min-ish sessions. I was able to attend two, both very impressive.

I was delighted to catch Sherri Lipman McCauley’s talk. She had an exhibit in the show, “Ten Years of Flinging Paint”. She generously shared her process and the specific tools and paints she uses. She did an on-the-spot demo and came up with a pretty cool piece. Inspiring!

And I am glad I caught Sue Heinz’s “Our Friend Elmer” talk. I was amazed at what you can do with Elmer’s glue. She is so entertaining and informative, giving very practical solutions to vexing quilting problems. She’s a gem.

And then there was the people! Festival is all about reconnecting with old friends and meeting new ones. There were so many memorable people I talked with that I forgot to take photos of. Here are a few that I remembered to snap a selfie with: