Back from a very wet Houston :)

My quilt buddy, Phyl, and I met up in Houston again this year, along with a few more of her Phoenix friends. As always, it was a fantastic time! The only downside was the very wet weather, which saw Phyl and me almost swimming to the convention center one day when the rain was pouring down and the streets were all flooded. LOL! We survived and enjoyed the show, though the vendors were feeling the hit when so many people simply couldn’t get there.

We began our very scientific exploration of the show in the vendor area, as we usually do. Phyl and her friends are very interested in wool appliqué, so we looked at a lot of wool in an amazing array of colors and shades, as well as even more threads to use for embellishing the appliqué. I admire wool appliqué and have given it a bit of a try, but it’s not my first choice. Still, I enjoy looking at the beautiful supplies for it.

All of that looking, though, didn’t mean that I didn’t have some things of my own to look for. 😉 Over the course of the next few days, I managed to purchase everything I’d been looking for, as well as one or two “surprises”. 😉 I found some Wonderfil Invisafil and Deco-bob threads, which I like for embroidery and may try in some quilting, too. Martelli had an interesting tool (Get-A-Grip) for keeping the sewing machine pedal in place, so I’ll give that a try. Something I ran across accidentally and picked up was the Hearts and More rulers for making various shapes for appliqué: hearts, flowers, circles, ovals, teardrops, and leaves. Oh, and I found some Quilters Select batting, which is two-sided water-soluble batting; I think it should make machine quilting rather nice, since the quilt won’t have all of the pins to weigh it down.

On Thursday morning I had a class from Lisa Calle called Divide and Design. We learned her technique for coming up with a plan for quilting without using what she calls the “Stand and Stare” method. That’s the one I’ve used most often, and it really doesn’t make life easy. 😉 I took advantage of being in her class to buy some of her rulers, which I’d wanted/planned to do. All except the one in the very front of this photo are from her line. That front one is a double-S curve from Ronda’s Rulers, and I’ve been looking for it for some time. The booklet you see in the back is part of the kit for Lisa’s class; the kit also included some sample photos and tracing paper, as well as pencils and the loan of some rulers and templates. By the time the class was over, my hands were positively covered in pencil from rubbing against the drawings we were doing!

As always, our group spent quite a while admiring the quilts on display. They were gorgeous, of course, and there are lots of photos posted online, so I won’t post any here. However, while three of us were admiring one particular quilt in a special challenge exhibit, the artist who’d made the quilt came up behind us. We’d been speculating on one aspect of the quilt, and she very kindly explained it to us, after which she told us the very interesting story of how she came to be a quilter. Her name is Lisa-Marie Sanders, and she gave us a little book to tell more of her story. I’m reading this very funny story now and will get it off in the mail very soon so that Phyl and Monica will be able to enjoy it, too.