Houston International Quilt Festival

A couple of weeks ago, my friend Phyllis and I braved the elements (torrential rains and flooding) in my little Mini Cooper convertible to attend the Houston International Quilt Festival.   If you've never been to the Quilt Festival, then you might not understand why we would have done this; however, if you have been to one and you're a quilter or crafter, then I need not explain.

We were in crafters' heaven for 8 hours straight.  All but 15 minutes were spent roaming the vendor aisles and having lunch.  Yes, tis very sad, but we only spent 15 minutes looking at a tiny little fraction of the beautiful quilts that filled over half the George R Brown Convention center.  The first 3 hours we were there we averaged 1 aisle per hour in the vendors section :)  After refueling, we hit the aisles again only this time we kicked it into high gear and covered many more aisles, but ran out of time, which was just as well since we were each already several hundred dollars poorer.  We didn't get to see a few of the aisles, but we were okay with that since, after awhile, it all started to look the same and, though we would have enjoyed seeing and buying even more, we were really tired.

Here are a few of the quilts we saw:

 

 

 

 

 

 

And here are some of the goodies I bought:

Beautiful baskets from Ghana, Sachiko pattern and supplies, ceramic hearts,
fat quarters, quilt board and pattern, i.e., a no sew quilt square

I also bought some felt balls and a felt pin cushion project from Handbehg Felt. The sellers in this booth were really nice and helpful and I fell in love with the projects they had on display.  I bought an assortment of felt balls with which to make a necklace, fringe for a scarf and a topiary like the one pictured below.  If you like felt projects, check out the free projects page on their site.  They have some really cute ones that would make great gifts.

 

Not pictured are the clothing items I bought, of which there were several :)