and fun was had by all..

Honey I'm home! Wow that was fun... my first experience at the International Quilt Festival in Houston has left me enlightened, exhausted, inspired and in awe... When "they" say that quilting is a four billion dollar industry, "they" ain't kidding. The place was huge and packed with people, and "they" say things are slow this year...

First, I thought I'd share a picture of the sunrise that Jane and I saw from our hotel room every morning. This office building looked really cool when the sun reflected off it. There maybe art work coming from this picture someday, the grids are wonderful and I don't usually get inspired by grids. Here is Jane teaching her class at MIU (Make It University) from Cloth Paper Scissors Magazine. The class was called "Stampmaking for Quilt Artists" and that get up that Jane is wearing is her Halloween costume. Halloween was the theme for this whole weekend as people started dressing up on Thursday and were still dressed up on Saturday. Scary. There lot's of interesting classes given at MIU, plenty of people were very inspired. I had fun meeting new people and hanging out with other vendors. Here's a picture of Kristin Rodriguez from Fiber on a Whim in Atlanta. She's a cool chick. On Sunday night Quilting Arts Magazine hosted Surviving the Runway 80's style. The contestants had items from which they had to fashion outfits inspired by the 80's while they were grooving to appropriate music. This was really fun to watch from the sidelines, they really got into the spirit of things. Here's everyone making it work. And here's Pokey Bolton in motion, actually this is how she was the entire time, just zipping back and forth, talking to everyone, where does she get all that energy... Oh and here's the parade of all the contestants in their outfits. That was certainly a fun way to end the Festival. I jetted away on Sunday afternoon leaving Jane to end the festival by herself, but things were quiet by then so hopefully everything went smoothly.

I did get to see the exhibits, mostly by speed walking as time was limited. The SAQA exhibits were exceptional, as were the Town and Country exhibit, Quilt National 2007 exhibit, Tactile Architecture and Sky Is the Limit. Beautiful inspiring art that makes me want to get to my studio. Sorry no pictures, some exhibits didn't allow them and I really couldn't do any of the artworks justice anyway.

I met some wonderful and inspiring artists over the weekend, let's see: I sat next to Judy Coates Perez on the way to and from Houston (we bumped into each other in the Chicago airport); I was also star struck by Lesley Riley, Frances Holliday Alford, Jamie Fingal, Leslie Jenison, Robbi Joy Eklow, Sarah Ann Smith, Kathy York, Sandy Snowden; and the really cool and hard working chicks from Quilting Arts/Cloth Paper Scissors: Barbara Delaney, Helen Gregory, Trisha Waddell and of course Pokey Bolton. Big thanks to Pokey Bolton for inviting me to do Open Studios at MIU. And the biggest thanks of all go out to my friend Jane Davila, who's fault it was... thank you Jane!