Houston Goodies

Home from the Houston International Quilt Show and am glad I took today off to unpack and do a little cleaning. Hopefully a little quilting tonight. Now I'm pumped and ready to finish what I have started so I can start some new stuff.

The Texas teas and fabrics are just things that I bought that were Texas specific.  The teas were delish and since I've been drinking more tea lately than coffee, I thought I'd update my stash.  I only got one quilt related book and it was Bonnie Hunters String Fling book.  The kids book is for my grandson for the 25 days of Christmas books I'm going to do for him.  Saw the cute wool pin cushions and pins and thought they would make great gifts as I did some of the shiny things.  The clips are for the shawls/scarves I got or have already and the misc. stuff is just some stuff I saw that I thought was kind of cool.  Some of the above items are for gifts too - for family and friends and also for a gift basket I'm putting together for the Common Threads Quilt Guilds Christmas party.

The kits at the top were either new ones I had never seen or as in the Shabby Fabrics one, I saw at PIQF and didn't get because I wanted to save my money for Houston.  So instead of getting it in Santa Clara, I found it in Houston and toted it half way across the country.  But it is beautiful.  The kit on the right is all pre-cut Halloween fabrics and even biased piping to use.  The black and white dotted fabric isn't even on the market yet.  It's prepared for dying fabric but I just liked the dotted design.  The blue and white fabric in the bottom left is from the Hungarian quilt exhibit - which was my favorite exhibit at the show.  However you couldn't take pictures of that exhibit.  The pinks on the front right are for a round robin I'm working on and the blue squares and striped fabric, well, I just liked them and they are replica fabrics from 1700 Dutch chintz.  I knew I liked it and when I got home I figured out why - the stripe was a fabric that my sister and mom brought back from Holland for me.  Oh well, you can never have too much fabric, especially a good stripe.  And the array in the bottom picture...can you believe I bought all the fat quarters first and then found the striped fabric above.  Aren't they pretty?  I don't know what I'm going to make with them yet, I'll wait for the right pattern to find me and until then, I'll just pet and look at them.  

I did take a 1/2 day class taught by Cindy Walters.  Below is a picture of what I got done in class as well as the paints that we got as part of the class and some other paints/pens and stabilized fabric that she sold during the class.  

I did take lots of pictures of quilt and hopefully will get a few on blog entries during the next week.  I was surprised at how many exhibits you weren't allowed to take pictures of.  

As a whole, I loved the show.  Our hotel was spectacular and convenient and all the activities we attended were fun.  I think everyone who went with my group loved it.  Will I got to Houston again?  Maybe not for another 10 years or so.  Our next trip we want to plan is Paducah in 2014.  I need to do some research and see about renting a condo for our gang.  Maybe a mini trip to Sisters Oregon next year.  We'll see.  

To Anna Koelewyn, Barbara Brown, Barbara Sawyer, Pam Larsen, Janice Minyard, Kathy Morrison, Elaine Berry, Grace Hoya and her friend Linda, thanks for being such great travel mates.  Sorry I was in a funk one day - but I think the dancing and dinner put me back in a better mood.  To Barbara Brown, Janice and Elaine - thanks for being great bunk mates.  

Thanks for looking.