Houston International Quilt Festival

Oh  my word!!! One of the things I really really really wanted to do, now that we are back in the Houston area, was to attend IQF with my bestie. I've attended exactly one quilt show in my life, in a small city in Brazil, and it was overwhelming with the amount of vendors and quilts on display.

Ahem.

You would laugh if you saw my photos from that day...the comparison....oh my goodness. Hilarious.

I was struck absolutely speechless when we walked into the hall on Preview Night and saw All.Those.Quilts. Row after row after row, just waiting to be walked through and looked at, ooh'ed and aah'ed over.....oh my word. Speechless. Not a state you'd often associate with me, at all.

We took a brief walk through one section on Preview Night, then went to the vendor hall and again....oh.my.word. Stuff everywhere. Luckily for me, my bestie is a pro. She'd not attended Houston IQF before but has been to Paducah several years, has had a quilt in the Des Moines show, and, well...she knew enough to go through the vendor list on line and decide what booths she wanted to visit, and then direct me immediately to the booth where we could get the show book and find the map and locate said vendors and formulate a plan. Good thing, 'cause otherwise you could wander aimlessly for ages and ages and not find what you wanted.

We spent a few hours on Preview Night, then returned on Saturday morning with a few other friends and spent the entire day, opening to closing. We still didn't see it all.

I can hardly describe the event.....some quilts stopped me in my tracks, from way across the hall. Some left me shaking my head. Some were not my style, but amazed me with their complexity all the same. Color and movement and detail.....oh my goodness.

I learned that I can appreciate the hard work that goes into even the styles that I don't particularly like; seeing some of those up close.....holy cow. Amazing.

I learned that I have a very long way to go to become a truly good quilter, let alone great. Yikes. Inspiring, and intimidating, and amazing, and just....wow.

I skipped the miniatures, on purpose, because the level of workmanship on the regular sized quilts was making me feel inferior enough. I decided I didn't really want to see that level of awesomeness, in miniature, when I am mediocre at best in full size. Vanity, yes, but as we couldn't see everything anyway, it seemed a logical way to choose what to skip.

I learned I prefer seeing quilts with people, not by myself. We split up to go tour different sections, and I kept wanting to turn and talk to the people gathered around whatever quilt I was looking at. Of course, they were mostly with their friends, so random comments from strangers...not high on their list. After the third or fourth time I did that, I left to go find my bestie and just look at what she was looking at; much more fun that way.

I got to meet a pair of my quilting idols, Alex Anderson & Ricky Tims (as well as his partner Justin Schulz), from The Quilt Show. Ricky was demoing his freestyle feathers......I've watched that on video several times, but seeing it in person.....wow. A lot of what I've learned has been from the DVDs of their on-line quilt show, and from their forums, so it was really fun for me to stop and say hi, watch Ricky sew for a bit and just visit. Starstruck just a tiny bit, yes, but not too much, I think....

Ricky Tims, demoing his feathers

me and Ricky!

me and Justin

I cannot wait to go back. I'm already planning on more days next time, and maybe taking some classes, and my bestie & I have agreed -- annual event, if at all possible. New tradition born this year.

my bestie, and our own Proclomation:
We will repeat this, every year! So proclaimed. 

I am so glad I live close enough to make this happen, every year. I hope my budget can keep up!

Mug Rug Swap ~ What fun!

I am a sometimes member of the forums at The Quilt Show website; I love love love the DVDs of the shows, and really need to just commit to being a full time Star member so I can watch the shows as they debut on the computer, instead of waiting for the DVDs, especially now that I'm back in the US and my internet will actually support streaming videos like that. The classes and wealth of information are more than worth it!

Luckily for me, though, even a Basic member (which is free), can participate in the forums. I've "met" some fantastic women there, learned a lot, enjoyed the friendship, and treasure the ability to ask any quilting question I might have and know I'll soon have several answers. Yay!

Part of the fun recently has been a "Mug Rug" swap. This is a very informal swap, where we each just said "sure, I can send one..." and then people reply and say, "Oh, can I have one from you? That would be lovely!" and back & forth, back & forth, back & forth it goes. When you ask to receive, you also agree to send one back, and so Mug Rugs have been flying across continents for a while now.

Now that I'm back in the US, I finally was able to throw my name in and participate instead of watching the fun from the sidelines. Yay!

I wanted to send Brazil-themed Mug Rugs, and bought this fabric for this project before I left Brazil. Beautiful butterflies, which I fussy cut and made the centerpiece of the mug rugs, and then assorted Brazilian scrap fabric to pair with each one. I used a much-coveted fabric on the back, which is in the pattern of my favorite Brazilian cobblestone sidewalks. I have a large amount of this, because I have a quilt in mind for "one day" and this will be the back of that quilt, once I get there.

I used a cute Flip Flops fabric for the binding as well, since it is fairly representative of Brazil to me.

I did decorative stitching on each one, and outlined the butterflies in the quilting as well. 

The Mug Rugs I received back have been stunning! I feel like mine are rather inadequate in comparison, but this was the best I could do at the moment. Life for me is swamped with moving, and getting ready to move again, and adjusting, and settling in, and I'm still not fully unpacked (we aren't unpacking much until we get into our final home, which should be soon!), and, well, this is what I could accomplish just now. Maybe later I'll do this again and spend a bit more time on something  more intricate.....