Here are some highlights from Houston, hopefully some wonderful things you wouldn’t get to see otherwise unless you also attended yourself. First is one of Annika’s (and my) favorite 2007 journal quilts, Forgotten Flowers by Frances Holliday Alford.
And this is Nostalgia for Japan by Tokiko Kashiwagi. These very large appliquéd flowers are outlined in sashiko. See the detail below for a better view.
I love the way it looks like a little ribbon of white polka dots.
Here is Sheri Wood and her prize-winning Night Blooming Dahlia. She started dying fabrics because it was hard to find the colors she wanted where she lived. Now she dyes all her fabric herself. Sheri hand-dyed each petal individually on this quilt.
You just have to see the back of the quilt. It’s as lovely as the front!
Saradean Hallman made Summer Dreams for her granddaughter. Can you tell that I love bright colored flowers on black?
I also love yellow quilts. This is Carnival Calliope by Kathy Kelley.
Taupe quilts are charming too. Mayumi Ueda made My Sweet Town oh so sweet.
Here is another cute storybook quilt from the 2007 Hoffman Challenge exhibit, Costa Rica: Our Beloved Home by the East Mountain Quilters of Costa Rica. I love the 2008 Hoffman Challenge fabric. I forgot to take a photo, but thanks to the wonders of the Internet, you can see it here. What you can’t tell from the image is that it’s a larger scale print than the 2007 fabric was. I liked the pattern and the colors for 2007 but wished the pattern had been printed about five times larger. I also got to see Debra Spincic‘s wonderful (and prize winning!) crazy quilt, Little Flower Urchins in person.
I brought my favorite Alex Anderson book, Fabric Shopping, to The Quilt Show booth for Alex to sign. It’s a really fun book, not just about how to buy fabric, but also about color, value, and how to best use the different kinds of fabric you find in a quilt shop. It has a great selection of quilt patterns to make. I LOVE the Hearts quilt at the back of the book. That pattern alone is worth purchasing the book for.
And the shopping of course! I bought some vintage Japanese fabrics, sashiko thread and needles, and hand-painted Tussah silk fiber, among assorted other things. I hope to do some experimenting with the Tussah silk and my Clover hand needle-felting tool to see if I’d like to really get into felting and buy one of those needle-felting machines. As you can see, Annika enjoyed the shopping as well.
Can you tell what I’m going to be doing? I went crazy for beads this time. Most of these are from Beyond Beadery. I’ve never seen so many seed beads in one place before. (I know, I’ve lived a sheltered life!) I felt like a kid in a candy store, but frankly these beads are so much more delicious (even better than Chocovic or Scharffen Berger I must admit), and they’re calorie-free to boot.
happy quilting! Next post I’ll tell you about Houston, day 2.