Houston Quilt Festival 2014 - 2 -

As promised in my last post, here is my second post with pictures of the Houston Quilt Festival.

Fun with friends!

And inspiration from the quilts!

 

 

This girl did not look very happy…

Quilts from the Quilts de Legende exhibition, all completely handmade

 

 

 

 

Antique quilts from the collection owned by Mary Koval

Look at this wonderful fabric!

Quilting is “The art of making do” (Roberta Horton)

And my favourite!

no quilt police here J!

All that walking through the huge exhibitions and sales booth halls makes a girl hungry, luckily there is a food hall just as large, it looks like this in the morning

and like this at lunch time!

 

Those who have been to the Quilt Festival will recognise this lunch: the taco salad, and yes, you eat the bowl!

And there is a place for tired husbands too.

To be honest, I wouldn’t mind a lounge like this for tired quilters too, nice to literally be able put your feet up like that!

This is still just part of what I want to show you from the Houston Quilt Festival, there is just so much, soooo I have decided to make a third post next week.

See you then!

Phyllis

 

 

 

 

 

 

Houston Quilt Festival 2014 - 1 -

So much to show you, so I will do this in two posts.

The exhibitions at the Quilt Festival were beautiful this year, the best I have seen so far (this was my fourth visit).

I don’t use the word often nor easily, but the red and white exhibition (put together because this was the 40^th edition of the Quilt Festival, their Ruby Jubilee) was amazing, I could not get enough of it!

Every day I went to the Festival I made sure to enter through Hall D because then the first thing I saw was this:

 

The inspiration for this exhibition clearly was the Red and White Infinity Exhibtion a few years ago in New York (click).

More from the red and white exhibition:

 

 

I wasn’t alone at the Festival , it is always fun to meet up with friends from home in such far away places!

 

Back to the exhibitions: another very special exhibit was this one: the Tristan Boutis Quilt:

 

 



In order to show the workmanship  the quilt was lit from underneath, something I had never seen before.

 



Contrary to how wonderful the exhibtions were, I found the sales booths less so… strangely enough I did not buy as much as I expected to….  (and back on the plane I spoke to two Dutch quilters who had the same experience).
Fabric wise the choice was disappointing…. Very few repro fabrics, the ones I saw were either too dark (there was a tendency towards primitive work  – lots more primitive style booths this year - which probably influenced the fabric choices made by other booths)  or the fabrics were already in my stash … but maybe that says something about my stash ;-)   ?!

Also I looked out for the more modern fabrics I like: Bonnie & Camille, the new Cotton & Steel collection etc.  but could not find them…..

So in the end I only bought a few fabrics, some notions and then decided to fill up my suitcase with batting, four packages of battings to be precise: two queen size silk battings and two twin size battings of a blend that I did not know yet: 80% cotton/20% wool.
They both feel wonderful and so now I have a batting stash too!

See you back here next time for more from the Quilt Festival!

Phyllis



When you read this.....

… I will be in one of these…..

….on my way to…

…. this….

 

I cannot wait!

Since it is the Ruby Jubilee (40^th edition) of the Quilt Festival the organisers promised wonderful exhibitions and from what I have seen from those who are already at Quilt Market now and are watching the exhibitions being installed, they were not kidding.

I hope to be able to take a lot of pictures to post when I return.
At the Quilt Festival there are always exhibitions where you are not allowed to take pictures, some years there are more of these exhibitions than other years, so we’ll have to see what is allowed, hopefully a lot!

In the meantime (for the next 1,5 weeks approx.) I will be so busy I will not have the time to read blogs or FB so will also not be commenting on posts.

Sorry about that.

See you back here in a few weeks!

Phyllis

 



When you have nothing to blog about....

…then don’t blog.

Well, that is what I think, so it was a little quiet here.

Not that I haven’t been busy, I have, but with things I did not care to blog about, so it has been a few weeks since my last blogpost.

Also, unfortunately, I did not have much time to stitch, but I did find time to square up 3 blocks of my King George III quilt, so here they are:

 

 

Block 1:

 

 

Block 2:

 

 

Block 3:

 

 

And I attended a workshop at the Quilterspalet, all about the Marti Michell templates. I found these really handy and apart from learning about these, Evy gave a few tips to improve my way of using the rotary cutter, very helpful indeed!

 

On non-quilt related matters, we visited the new Markthal in Rotterdam and were impressed. What a great building! And the artwork on the ceiling!

Those square windows you see …. They are from apartments, people actually live there! And are able to look down at all the hustle and bustle down there.

Silly us, we went two days after the Markthal officially opened, so it was just too busy to really enjoy the place and look at all the market stalls with food. We were lucky to find a place at the Vietnamese stall, where we enjoyed a lovely Pho (Vietnamese noodle soup) , but other than that we did not stand a chance. But I will return soon!

Also – sort of food related – Onno and I attended a coffee tasting workshop at our local Nespresso Boutique and we were amazed. We learned so much about not just the taste of coffee, but also its origins and the way Nespresso conducts its business (Fairtrade) , now I understand why politically correct George Clooney is in their tv commercials, I always wondered about that….

Early October it is my birthday, a quiet affair, but I was spoilt with lovely presents from friends and family and my better half surprised me with a gorgeous, huge bunch of red roses.

 

The roses lasted for nine (!) days, I could not resist another picture of the last day, look how big they had become!

This week it’s a school holiday week over here, so I will be spending time with my teenager (shopping…) , hopefully I will find some time to stitch as well…  and you do too!

Phyllis