Houston International Quilt Festival - Part 2

Welcome to the Houston International Quilt Festival 2013.  I'm not going to go over every detail or anything.  Just hit some highlights.

This is Ebony Love.  She was my instructor for the Modern QR code quilt class.  The QR (quick read) code is that little scanny thing that is on everything now.  You scan it with your phone and it gives info about whatever it's advertising.

So in this class, we started making one in quilt form.  Ebony was the most professional quilt instructor I've ever had.  Her instructions were all written down for each of the 4 quilts that we could choose from.  She even had them bound with a spiral.  Just that alone made her class awesome.  
We could choose between a gray or off white background and I got to class too late to nab a gray but that's ok because I probably would have chosen the white anyway.
When our quilts are finished they will look like a QR code.  Because they are in color, they won't be scanable but Ebony said that she will send us a label for our quilts that has the scanable bar code on it when we finish our quilt tops.  I'm working on mine now and hope to have it done in time to enter it in our local quilt show.

I really enjoyed all of the classes I took this year.  Not a stinker in the bunch.  I have pics on my phone of some of the other classes and maybe someday I'll get them loaded to my computer so I can post some.

Here I am in my witches costume for Quiltapalooza.  I loved my tulle skirt.  But out of all the people there, about 80% were dressed as witches.  It occured to me that I could have made mine in pink and gone as a Barbie or something.  Maybe next year.  It was a fun party though.  Lots of great costumes and they gave away tons of prizes.  Unfortunately, no one at our table won any.  :(

This was my favorite quilt from the Modern Quilt quild display in the quilt show.  It is called Fireworks Quilt by Tara Faughnan, an individual MQG member.  To see all of the Modern Quilt Guild display, go here.

One of the classes I took was called Fifty Shades of Groovy By Leslie Tucker Jenison.  Her Fifty Shades quilt is one of the ones on display in the above link.  Her class was fun and she is a great teacher.

One disappointment I had was that the majority of the quilts seemed to be landscape quilts.  I love landscape quilts and art quilts but it seems to me that such a major show could have divided the categories up better.  Maybe have an equal amount of each kind of quilt.  I also wish the Modern Quilt display had been bigger.  It's quite a large movement at this point and I think there should be more recognition.  They did offer Modern quilting classes this year, which was a first.  I took as many of them as I could get into.  I'm hoping for even more next year.

Houston International Quilt Festival Part 1 - Preparing to go

Sometimes I have so many things to say on my blog that I don't know where to start and I get overwhelmed.  That's why it's been so long since I posted.  I just didn't know where to start.

On October 29th (Tuesday) I headed down to Houston for the International Quilt Festival which is awesome by the way.  If you are interested in sewing or quilting and you have a chance to go, take it.  They have so many classes, so many quilts to look at and so many vendors to shop from.

Before I left, I made some prayer flags for the prayer flag swap that was taking place.  I had never made one before and honestly, I had to look them up to see what they even were.  My friend Robyn, who also went to the festival, told me all about the ones she had made and sort of talked me into trying it out.  (Thanks Robyn!! I had fun making them and hanging out with you at the festival!!)  So I ended up making 5 and here they are.

 I like to think of them as inspiration flags instead of prayer flags as most of them don't have anything to do with religion or prayer.  I'm not sure where they got their name but I like Inspiration flag better.

 There's too much light in all these pictures and it washed them out.  Ug!  Someday I'm going to master simple photography.

 I bought a sack of these old quilted hearts years ago and I still have some.  I just sewed it onto this batik fabric which looks like it was painted with water colors.

 More batik fabric.  I cut the passage about hope out of a fabric that I've had for awhile. 

 I sewed these sweet felt flowers onto some natural muslin and stamped it with a "sending happy thoughts" stamp. 

 This one says Poppy Garden.  I hand stamped that and sewed on the felt flowers and ribbon.  And of course buttons.  Everything needs buttons.

 A washed out close up view. 

 I also needed a handmade name tag holder.  I sewed this one up really quickly and attached all my pins to it.

 Half moon modern fabric on the front and Michael Miller stripe on the back.

 This year the festival took place over Halloween.  The had a party called Quiltapalooza.  It was a Halloween dress up party/dinner.  Lots of fun.  I made myself this fun skirt.  Guess what I went as.

Closeup.  There was lime green, black and black glitter tulle. 

In my next post, part 2, I'll show my whole costume with some quilt show pics.

Thanks for reading!

The Happiest Place on Earth (it's not Disney!)

This post is a catching up post of some stuff that happened this past fall that I just had to share.

This past November, I was fortunate enough to be able to go to the International Quilt Festival in Houston.  I decided I was going to go several months before and just sort of informed my husband that I was going to fly out of Tyler to Houston on one of the little puddle jumpers and stay in a downtown hotel near the convention center.  I think I freaked him out a bit.  The last time I went on a trip without him was about 16 years ago and it was to present a research paper in Philadelphia.  Although, he goes on trips to Disney World by himself every year or so.  The reason he goes by himself is because my son and I are so freakin' sick of Disney and all things related to Disney that we just refuse to go at this point.  (Believe me, we've been enough to last a lifetime!)  But as I've mentioned before, he's addicted much like I'm addicted to fabric.

Anyhoo, once he realized I was serious about going, he decided to go with me.  I think he was afraid that with my illnesses and all the meds I'm on, I would just pass out in the street or something.
So, we drove down there - it's only 4 hours by car and about 45 minutes by puddle jumper.  We stayed in a downtown hotel about 6 blocks from the convention center.  It took about 10 minutes to walk it.  We went on Thursday and came back Sunday afternoon so I had 2 whole days there and the half day Sunday. 

I signed up to take 4 classes which were great and I really learned a lot.  The instructors were awesome.  All of the quilts entered for competition were amazing.  But what truly made it the happiest place on earth was the vendor area.  OMG.  It was like being in heaven completely surrounded by fabric, notions, gee gaws and doo dads.  I'm breathless just thinking about it.

Here are some pics of my loot:

 

It's kind of piled on top of one another and you can't tell what most of it is but let me just say, it's a huge pile of awesomeness.  Sigh.

 

To commemorate my first Houston quilt show ever, I decided I had to have a handmade tote.  So, I spent a couple of days right before we were to leave, making this one.  I looked up simple totes on google and let me tell you, there are a lot of tutorials.  I don't remember which ones I looked at but basically, I just got the general idea from them and then just winged it. 

 

 

 I used about 5 different fat quarters to make it cute and then lined it with red Ta Dot fabric from Michael Miller.  I also embroideried my name on it with my new Brother embroidery machine.  It's a really big tote and it carries a lot of stuff.

 

 This is the back.  Pretty huh?

 Locally, we have a really good quilt show put on by the East Texas Quilters Quild (which I'm looking forward to in the spring!)  But it's nothing like the Houston show.  There were some ladies from other states staying at our hotel and they all said that the Houston show spoils you for all other shows.  I had a great time and I'm looking forward to the 2013 show :)