My "loot" from Houston

I LOVE this fabric.  It has 4 huge flower panels and coordinating pieces.  I'll make it into a quilt...someday.

I think I must have been in a brown mood, 'cause I sure bought a lot of brown fabric. 

...and blues, and giant buttons...

...and a few tools and a few fat quarters...

...and patterns

A line of Phillp Jacob's fabric.  Irresistible.

Some lovely wool and a bright fat quarter.

Now how did this get in here?  I didn't buy him in Houston.  Oh well, I guess I'll just have to show another grandbaby picture.  I'm sure you won't mind.

Family pics

My daughter Andrea is an amazing photographer.  We did some family photos this weekend and some of them are on her blog.  So if you want to see them go to: http://www.facebook.com/l.php?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.amurphyphoto.com%2Fblog%2Fits-just-a-picture-tulsa-family-photographer%2F&h=92f89

More quilts from the Houston Show



I love the bright colors in this quilt!



More bright colors.

The next 6 pictures are details of this quilt.  It was so amazing!  Lots of fairy tails tied up into one quilt.

Leslie---and more bright colors.

Next time I'll show you some of the loot I came home with.

Famous People at the Houston Show

This is Frieda Anderson and Laura Wasilowski of
The Chicago School of Fusing
I love their bright colors and hand dyed fabrics.  They autographed the pattern I bought from them.

These next two are Janice and Marcea from "Abbey Lane Quilts"  Leslie and I have several of their patterns...
...and now ONE MORE!

None other than Elanor Burns of "Quilt in a Day"  I've been watching her on PBS since I was a very young quilter.





Lynn Roddy Brown.  She had all the quilts from her latest book in the show.  She was very sweet and friendly and of course autographed the books we bought from her.

Alex Anderson of "Simply Quilts" and now she and Ricky Tims have an internet show. 

Victoria of "15 Minute Play". http://www.15minutesplay.com/ I'm part of that blog.  She's from New York City and this is the first time we've met.

And the most famous of all...Our hostess, Rindy Howard.  We stayed at her house 4 nights.  She worked at the show so she even drove us downtown.  Leslie and I made her this quilt to thank her for the "hotel" room.  Rindy LOVES pink and black.

Last, but not least, Rindy's husband Gene and their dog Diamond (with tennis ball in mouth).  I've known Gene and Rindy since 1988 and they've been wonderful friends.  Thank you Gene and Rindy for your hospitality (and the Blue Bell ice cream!)

Houston International Quilt Festival

Leslie and I started out our "Festival Time" on Wednesday night at the preview.  We were there for 3 hours (not counting the hour we stood in line to get in--we had our tickets and were not sure what the traffic situation would be so we got there a "little early")

We drove down on Tuesday and visited 2 quilt shops in McKinney, TX on the way.  Even the pouring rain didn't "dampen" our spirits as we drove through maddening traffic in Dallas.

We spent Wednesday "resting"--in other words we went to some more quilt shops, this time in The Woodlands where I lived from 1988-1996.  Someone had the nerve to open a quilt shop within a mile of my old house--AFTER I LEFT!



This is Sharon Shamber with her winning quilt.  She's known for her beautiful quilting and for the cording she puts around her quilts.  This time she added cording in the middle.  All of those black and red straight lines are open "lace work" done with covered cording!  It was stunning.  And she won $10,000 for the top prize!



Here you can see some of the quilting and cording.

This was another top prize winner.  I think the catagory was "World of Beauty".

This one was the winner in the "Hand Workmanship" catagory.  I heard the lady say it took her 6 years to make.  All hand appliqued and hand quilted.

On Thursday morning we decided to wait upstairs for the crowd at the door to thin out.  Leslie had a cup of coffee and we relaxed for a few minutes.  This is looking down onto the vendor floor.

Did I mention that there were 1,000 vendors there?  We saw them all.  We didn't stop at all of them.  We did our math before going in and realized that we had only 1.27 minutes at each booth if we wanted to see them all.  Of course, there were many that we weren't interested in at all and others that we visited more than once.  Lots and lots of fabric, gadgets, tools, jewelry, clothing items, embellishments, beads, etc.

I love the bright colors!  I wish I could show ALL the quilts I took pictures of. 

I feel like I'm part of the orchestra.

This full sized quilt was amazing!  It's made entirely of yo-yo's.  Look closely in the next picture.  It's a close up of the little girl's eyes.

We liked this quilt just because of what it said.

Another close up detail  of the winning quilt.

More to follow in the next few days:  Famous People at the Show and more quilts.

Houston

I'm back from the Houston International Quilt Festival and I'm exhausted.  It was tons of fun!  Leslie and I shopped our guts out!  There were 1,600 quilts hanging in the show and 1,000 vendors.  We saw it all.  When I feel better I'll post a few pcitures.  Right now....I'm tired!